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.