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"They should've arrested the builder for cutting those down. They massacred the neighborhood. [Lost] More and more I think of those days, Linda. This time of year it was lilac and wisteria. And then the peonies would come out, and the daffodils. What fragrance in this room!" (Miller 7).

When Willy says this, I notice a mindset that wouldn't set someone up for a happy life. Rather than finding something to appreciate about his current circumstances or taking action to change them, Willy instead imagines the past and how many things were 'better' then compared to the present. As the video "The Tail End" said, our lives are progressing along further and further every day; we only have a limited time to make life into what we want it. Instead of constantly focusing on how things used to be, Willy would likely be better off pushing himself toward a more positive mindset OR deciding to leave the neighborhood that has changed so much.

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“If old man Wagner was alive I’d a been in charge of New York now!” (Miller 4)

Willy is characterized through several moments in this scene as someone who cannot mentally escape his past, reveling in it as though he still lives there. With this moment specifically, not only can we see Willy’s insistence on how great things used to be, but also his redirection of his current work situation from “I need to do something” to “if it was still like this I wouldn’t HAVE to do something” which ultimately leads to no resolution, keeping Willy rooted to his unfortunate financial state. Especially being in his 60s, it seems unlikely that Willy will be able to escape this mindset before the end of his life and indeed may pass it on to his children if he hasn’t already.

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“And Willy— if it’s warm Sunday we’ll drive in the country. And we’ll open the windshield and take lunch.” (Miller 7)

This moment shows Linda as she tries to avoid Willy’s wrath by redirecting him to a potential positive which likely won’t come to pass due to Willy’s tight work schedule. Linda is clearly a very committed wife, though her insisted attachment to Willy often leaves her blind to the reality she and her family find themselves in, trapping both her and Willy in a cycle of fear and delusion.

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“[My life is] what I always wanted. My own apartment, a car, and plenty of women. And still, goddammit, I’m lonely.” (Miller 12)

Happy’s verbiage here clearly reflects the paradoxical outlook on life which Willy has driven into his sons’ minds. He probably does love and desperately want to be powerful and respected, flinging with girls as he pleases, however I suspect he only wants this because of the promises of happiness that came with this lifestyle.

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“That’s just the spirit I want to imbue them with! To walk into a jungle!”

Willy’s view on life and success as a whole here is shown to be very puerile and idealistic. Since he never met his father really, he viewed Ben as a sort of father figure throughout life. Ben, who got lucky on a foolish mistake, seeds the ides in Willy’s mind that life is all a storybook adventure, like charting through the jungle. With this information in mind, we can begin to understand why Willy believes that all he needs to be well-off in life is charisma and humor (which, unfortunately for him, he never truly caught from the key figures in his life).

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“Who was it, Pop? Who ever said I was a salesman with Oliver?”

The Loman family, particularly Willy, has a history of glamorizing the past and rose-picking positive memories to look back on rather than remembering the greater whole. This causes more bad than good for the family, as Biff discovers in this passage. He chastises Willy for putting these delusions into his head, as he finally elects that he wants to face reality as it is, rather than believing he is something great.

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“Now you hit it on the nose! The scum of the earth, and you’re looking at him!”

Biff is clearly tortured with guilt, confusion and anger throughout the play. He has been told that Willy is a great man by his parents all his life, and suddenly had that illusion shattered in his young adult years when he saw Willy giving his poor mother’s stockings to another woman. When Linda calls Biff a louse, with the knowledge Biff has of what the man she defends has done against her, he breaks down and concedes that he is a louse. To call this moment an act of humility feels like a misunderstanding of what that theme is meant to be, though I can’t think of anything else to describe the scene. Biff has been absolutely defeated and thinks so lowly of himself that he calls himself the scum of the Earth, and while he has reached a state of humility as a result, he has also lost all respect for himself.

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“I’m changing everything. I’m gonna run that department before the year is up. You’ll see, Mom.”

Happy is, in my opinion, very indicative of Willy’s legacy, and more of a “Willy Jr.” than Biff is. After a massive confrontation between Biff and Willy where Willy is called out and then the situation (somewhat) resolved, Happy still clings to his puerile lies of success in order to cheaply please his parents. This is something Willy also does; lying to his family and boasting false success and praises. The truth of his lies ultimately comes to a crux at his funeral, when the only people who show up are his immediate family and neighbor.

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“I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!”

This climax of Biff and Willy’s final argument puts on display the melancholic delusion Willy lives under, and the reasoning for his constant unhappiness. He is of the belief that he is a well-liked playboy who could part the Red Sea, yet never sees people treat him as such, leading to disappointment and anger. As Biff points out during his funeral, if Willy had known who he truly was, he might have lived a life of fulfillment.