10 Death of a Salesman Questions | Authors Trivia Quiz

Answer: Linda, Biff and Happy

Though Linda remains devoted to Willy, his sons have become very distant from him and from his dreams for them. Biff, his golden boy, now lives on a ranch in Colorado. Happy, the younger son who could never get his father's attention, is now a businessman like his father - but his wild private life of wine, women and song drives his parents to distraction.

Answer: Biff

Poor Happy tried in vain to win his father's attention and {praise;} his high-school refrain is 'I'm losing weight pop, you notice?' Willy's dreams, however, have always been focused on Biff.

Answer: He loses himself in flashbacks of the past.

He also holds on to several illusions, giving him a vastly inflated sense of his own accomplishments. The lies he tells himself and his family -- lies which he honestly comes to believe in as truth -- are a major player in his family's disintegration.

Answer: His brother, Ben.

Willy is torn between the quick success of his brother Ben and trying to make good on their father's failed way of life. Invited by Ben on his diamond-mining venture, Willy declined - and he spends the rest of his life constantly justifying his decision.

Answer: He had gotten rich, fast, by mining African diamonds.

Says Ben: 'Why, boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich.' Willy, wedded to his work ethic and to his ordinary life as a salesman, persuades himself that Ben had in fact labored long and hard for his money. This lie is only the first that his sons catch him in.

Answer: Football

In one of his many flashbacks, Willy praises young Biff for having stolen a football from the locker room. These constant mixed messages are very damaging to the boys.

Answer: He discovers that Willy is having an affair.

For his entire life, Biff had held up his father as an ideal. On seeing that ideal shattered by Willy's infidelity, Biff's hopes and dreams are destroyed. He drops out of summer school, abandons all plans of becoming a salesman, and becomes a drifter instead.

Answer: That he will be getting married soon.

There is, however, no special woman in Happy's life - there is only the constant parade of women who mean nothing to him. Happy's lies to his mother show that he is following in his father's footsteps in more than just career: he carries on the family tradition of lying to himself, to bring himself up to the level where he thinks he should be.

Answer: Bernard is a lawyer and has argued to the Supreme Court.

Bernard, a childhood friend of Biff's, is the goody-two-shoes son of Charlie, the Lomans' no-nonsense neighbor. His success, especially when compared to Biff's failure, is difficult for Willy to come to terms with.

Answer: He commits suicide by crashing his car.

Willy had long planned to kill himself, thinking that Biff would finally be able to go into business for himself with the money from the life insurance. In reality, though, it is the only way he can resolve his failure with his philosophy that you only have to be well-liked to succeed.

He believes he will be vindicated when his sons see how many people come to his funeral, yet he is laid to rest only by his wife, his sons, and his neighbor Charlie. It has all been for naught - and, ironically, it is on the day he was buried that the last mortgage payment comes through, and he and Linda are finally 'free and clear.'