Death of a Salesman Abandonment Quotes

Work a lifetime to pay off a house. You finally own it, and there’s nobody to live in it.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. A pessimistic Willy is hit by the realization of the pointlessness of working hard all his life to to pay for his own home, only for his sons to leave him and him to grow old and die. This quote is linked to Willy’s feeling of failure to achieve the American Dream. It’s also about the themes of abandonment and family. His words are echoed by wife Linda at the end of the play in the Requiem. As she mourns her husband’s death by suicide, she says over Willy’s grave: "I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home."

BEN: I was going to find Father in Alaska…At that age I had a very faulty view of geography, William. I discovered after a few days that I was heading due south, so instead of Alaska, I ended up in Africa.
LINDA: Africa!
WILLY: The Gold Coast!
BEN: Principally diamond mines.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy’s brother Ben is already dead as the play begins and only appears as memory flashbacks or hallucinations, or maybe a mixture of both. In this exchange we learn how Willy’s father abandoned them to go to Alaska. The adventurer Ben went to find him but took a wrong turn and ended up in Africa, where he discovered diamond mines. The story sounds so wild and far-fetched that one wonders if there ever was a Ben, or what parts of his character is Willy just inventing.

Can’t you stay a few days? You’re just what I need, Ben, because I – I have a fine position here, but I – well, Dad left when I was such a baby and I never had a chance to talk to him and I still feel – kind of temporary about myself.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. As Willy speaks to his imaginary older brother Ben, we learn that their father abandoned them when Willy was a baby. While Ben may only be in Willy’s imagination, the feelings of being "temporary" and abandoned are real for Willy, who asks his brother to stay for a few days.

I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. In one of the play’s most famous speeches, Linda makes this impassioned appeal for the ordinary human being to be respected and afforded their dignity. Accepting her husband’s weaknesses, she strongly defends him to her two sons after Biff calls him crazy and says he has no character. Her soliloquy admonishes and pleads with them not to abandon him. It is her cry of insistance on the dignity of the weak, those cast aside by the system, and not just the strong. The life and death of the little man is of as much importance as that of the great man, she believes. The message of her speech is that every human being matters and no one is disposable. This includes an insignificant person like Willy, betrayed and abandoned by a capitalist system that has no further use for him. Miller uses pathos throughout the play but here it is heightened as Linda, who is devoted to Willy, asks for respect to be shown to her flawed husband. During this key moment we hear in Linda’s voice the rage of Miller as he questions the morality of a society that uses people as tools for profit and then discards them. Employing a graphic simile, Linda pleads with Biff to reconcile with his father and not abandon him so that he dies "like an old dog." Linda appears to accept the inevitability of Willy’s imminent death, which is foreshadowed here. The passage shows her deep devotion to Willy.

A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man. He works for a company thirty-six years this March, opens up unheard-of territories to their trademark, and now in his old age they take his salary away.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Linda demands from her sons that they pay attention and respect to Willy after he is fired from his job. Devoted to her husband, she explains how an ordinary man like Willy can be as exhausted by life as a great man. She is angry that having devoted a great part of his life to the company he worked for, he has been discarded by his employer. She is making the point that any individual, regardless of status, can be ground down by the burdens of life.

BIFF: Those ungrateful bastards!
LINDA: Are they any worse than his sons? When he brought them business, when he was young, they were glad to see him. But now his old friends, the old buyers that loved him so and always found some order to hand him in a pinch – they’re all dead, retired. He used to be able to make six, seven calls a day in Boston. Now he takes his valises out of the car and puts them back and takes them out again and he’s exhausted. Instead of walking he talks now. He drives seven hundred miles, and when he gets there no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him. And what goes through a man’s mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? Why shouldn’t he talk to himself? Why? When he has to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it’s his pay? How long can that go on? How long? You see what I’m sitting here and waiting for? And you tell me he has no character? The man who never worked a day but for your benefit? When does he get the medal for that? Is this his reward – to turn around at the age of sixty-three and find his sons, who he loved better than his life, one a philandering bum…

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Linda delivers a long, powerful monologue to her sons in defense of Willy. It comes in response to Biff blasting his father’s employers as "ungrateful bastards" for placing him on straight commission "like a beginner, an unknown," as Linda puts it. She is aware of her husband’s failures and self-deceptions, the downward spiral in his career and mental health, his borrowing money from Charley to make ends meet. But nevertheless she is devoted to Willy and her family. Linda may display a meek nature throughout the play, but this emotional speech highlights her strength of character. She defends her husband as a hard worker and good father who sacrificed to provide for his two sons. She upbraids Biff and Happy for their neglectful behavior towards their father and not recognizing his true worth.

I’m – I’m ashamed to. How can I mention it to him? Every day I go down and take away that little rubber pipe. But, when he comes home, I put it back where it was. How can I insult him that way? I don’t know what to do. I live from day to day, boys. I tell you, I know every thought in his mind. It sounds so old-fashioned and silly, but I tell you he put his whole life into you and you’ve turned your backs on him. (She is bent over in the chair, weeping, her face in her hands.) Biff, I swear to God! Biff, his life is in your hands!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Linda Loman is the classic enabler, whose passive ways contributes to the dysfunction of the Loman men. She supports their bad decisions and fails to call them out when they are wrong. Her enabling is very obvious when she learns of her husband’s suicide attempts. He has been attaching a rubber pipe to the gas line and inhaling the deadly carbon monoxide. Instead of urging her husband to stop, Linda says nothing out of fear of insulting him, but simply removes the pipe each day. She admonishes her sons Biff and Happy for turning their backs on their father, insinuating that their abandonment is linked to his suicidal thoughts. This passage foreshadows Willy’s suicide.

WILLY: Oh. Can we talk a minute?
HOWARD: Records things. Just got delivery yesterday. Been driving me crazy, the most terrific machine I ever saw in my life. I was up all night with it.
WILLY: What do you do with it?
HOWARD: I bought it for dictation, but you can do anything with it. Listen to this. I had it home last night. Listen to what I picked up. The first one is my daughter. Get this. Listen to that kid whistle.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. When Willy goes to his boss Howard’s office to to discuss a job move to New York, the meeting takes a disastrous turn. Howard completely ignores Willy’s request to talk, he is so distracted by his latest technological toy, a wire recorder. He continues to play with his new toy, oblivious to Willy’s needs and wants.

WILLY: I don’t need much any more. If I could take home – well, sixty-five dollars a week, I could swing it…Howard, all I need to set my table is fifty dollars a week…If I had forty dollars a week – that’s all I’d need. Forty dollars, Howard.
HOWARD: Kid, I can’t take blood from a stone, I…

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy cuts a pathetic figure as he begs Howard to give him a non-traveling job on a modest salary. At first he says that he could get by on 65 dollars a week, but as Howard remains impassive to Willy’s pleas, Willy drops his price to 50 and finally 40 dollars. Howard uses a "blood from a stone" metaphor to say that he has no job available. Thoughout the exchange the younger Howard repeatedly calls Willy "kid" and adopts a condescending tone to him.

Oh, yeah, my father lived many years in Alaska. He was an adventurous man. We’ve got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. As Willy tries to convince Howard to give him a non-traveling job in New York, he rewrites his family history. Making them out to be imbued with an independent pioneering sprit, he describes his father as a great adventurer. In truth his father upped and abandoned his family and left them fend for themselves. But in order to fit his sales pitch to Howard, Willy has rewritten his father’s desertion as some kind of heroic action. This speaks to the themes of self-deception and abandonment.

In those days there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it. Today, it’s all cut and dried, and there’s no chance for bringing friendship to bear – or personality. You see what I mean? They don’t know me any more.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy is pleading for his job to his younger boss Howard, who is barely interested and doesn’t even look at Willy as he speaks. Willy cuts a very lonely figure, talking about how a sales environment based on friendship has changed and the clients he sells to no longer know him. Despite recalling the good old days under Howard’s father, when personality and respect and comradeship were the keys to success, Willy is still fired by Howard.

You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away – a man is not a piece of fruit!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy is talking to his boss Howard about getting a non-traveling postion with the company, after spending 34 years working for it. When Howard refuses, Willy uses a fruit metaphor to describe how Howard has treated him like an orange. His boss has consumed the best years of his life and when he is of no further use he throws him away like a peel. This is symbolic of an unsentimental capitalist system that treats employees as expendable, discarding them when they are no longer needed. Themes of betrayal and abandonment, found throughout the play, are present here.

Willy, you can’t go to Boston for us…I don’t want you to represent us. I’ve been meaning to tell you for a long time now…I think you need a good long rest, Willy…And when you feel better, come back, and we’ll see if we can work something out.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy’s working life comes to an abrupt and undignified end. After begging Howard to allow him continue traveling to Boston for the company, Howard tells Willy that he no longer wants him to represent them. He is cast aside by the company he gave much of his working life to.

No, that’s not my father. He’s just a guy. Come on, we’ll catch Biff, and, honey, we’re going to paint this town! Stanley, where’s the check! Hey, Stanley!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. In a shocking betrayal of Willy, Happy disowns his father and lies to a woman he has picked up in the restaurant about Willy being family. He is embarrassed by Willy’s irrational behavior. This has echoes of Peter’s denial of Jesus as told in the Bible. In Matthew 26:75 we are told – "And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly." Happy and Biff run from the restaurant with two girls they meet there and leave Willy in a distressed and confused state.

LINDA (shouting after Biff): You invite him for dinner. He looks forward to it all day – (Biff appears in his parent’s bedroom, looks around, and exits) – and then you desert him there. There’s no stranger you’d do that to!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. A raging Linda lashes her sons for abandoning Willy at the restaurant and taking off with two women. You wouldn’t do that to a stranger, she tells them. Linda is so angry that when her sons give her flowers she knocks them to the floor.

Get out of here, both of you, and don’t come back! I don’t want you tormenting him any more. Go on now, get your things together! (To Biff.) You can sleep in his apartment. (She starts to pick up the flowers and stops herself.) Pick up this stuff, I’m not your maid any more. Pick it up, you bum, you!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Family relations reach a new low at the Loman household when Linda orders her sons out of the house. She is angry and hurt that Biff and Happy took their father to a restaurant for dinner the previous night but left him to run off with two girls. Linda the peacemaker abandons her normally calm and cheerful disposition to express outrage and even call Biff a bum.

Why did you ever do that? Help me Willy, I can’t cry. It seems to me that you’re just on another trip. I keep expecting you. Willy, dear, I can’t cry. Why did you do it? I search and search and I search, and I can’t understand it, Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. (A sob rises in her throat.) We’re free and clear. (Sobbing more fully, released.) We’re free. (Biff comes slowly toward her.) We’re free…We’re free.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Linda feels abandoned by Willy after his suicide and tries to make sense of what he did. Speaking directly to him at his graveside, she begs him to help her understand. To Linda they had achieved their American Dream by owning their own house, she having made the final mortgage payment the day of his funeral. They were finally free and clear of debt, she sobbingly tells her dead husband. But it’s a hollow kind of freedom, with no Willy home to enjoy it with her. Linda feels lost and there is a bitter and tragic irony in these last words spoken in the play by her. Willy felt he was doing something good by killing himself in a car crash, because of the financial security the insurance money would provide for his family. But Willy’s final act was resented by his family, who simply wanted the father and husband they loved to be with them. By killing himself he betrayed them.
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