You see what I mean? They don't know me anymore.
Today, it's all cut and dried, and there's no chance for bringing friendship to bear or personality. There was respect and comradeship and gratitude in it. You see, in those days there was personality in it, Howard. Things were sad on a lotta trains - for months after that. Because what could be more satisfying than to be able to go, at the age of eighty-four, into twenty or thirty different cities, and pick up his phone and be remembered and loved and helped by so many different people? You know, when - when he died, by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the NewYork, New Haven and Hartford, going into Boston - when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. And when I saw that, I realized that selling was the greatest career that a man could want. And old Dave, he'd go up to his room, y'understand, put on his green velvet slippers - I'll never forget - and pick up the phone and call the buyers, without ever leaving his room, at the age of eighty-four, he made his living. And he was eighty-four years old, and he'd drummed merchandise in thirty-one states. And I was almost decided to go - when I met a salesman in the Parker House. I thought I'd go out with my older brother and try to locate him and maybe even settle in the North with the old man. He was an adventurous man! We've got quite a little streak of self-reliance in our family, Howard. I get the feeling that I'll never sell anything anymore, that I won't make a living for you, or a business, a business for the boys. I get so lonely - especially when business is bad and there's nobody to talk to. It's not what you say, it's how you say it - because personality always wins the day. Start off with a couple of your good stories to lighten things up. Everybody likes a kidder, but nobody lends him money. 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 not? When he has to go to Charley every week and borrow fifty dollars from him and pretend to me it's his pay? Now, how long can that go on? How long? 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? William 'Willy' Loman Monologues Attention! Attention must be finally paid to such a person! You called him crazy.Īre they any worse than his sons? He drives seven hundred miles, and when he gets there no one knows him any more, no one welcomes him. He must not be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog. But he's a human being - and a terrible thing is happening to him. He's not the finest character that ever lived. I made the last payment on the house today. Why did you do it? I search and search - and I search, and I - can't understand it, Willy. It seems to me that you're just on another trip and I keep expecting you. You know, Charley, I think there was more of him in that front stoop than in all the sales he ever made. When he'd come home from a trip or on Sundays, making the stoop finishing the cellar when he built the extra bathroom and put up the garage. And always, to have to get ahead of the next fella and still, that's how you build a future. To get on that subway, on hot mornings in the the summer, to devote your whole life to keeping stock or making phone calls? By selling and buying? To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation? When all you really desire is to be outdoors with your shirt off. I spent six or seven years after High School trying to work myself up, being a shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another.
Will you let me go, for God's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens? And I look at this pen and I ask myself, "What the hell am I grabbing this thing for? Why am I trying to become something I don't wanna become when all I want is out there waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am?" The work, the food, the time to sit and smoke. I see all the things I love in this world.
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