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Throughout the play, Charley is the voice of logic and reason. Charley has been paying Willy’s bills for some time, and he even offers him a job to come and work for him, but for some reason, Willy is too proud to come work for him – but not to take loans from him that he has no way to repay. Willy is jealous of his neighbor’s success – and that of his son, who has done much better for himself than Willy’s son Biff has. Charley has owned his own successful business for years, and his own son Bernard is a successful attorney. CharleyĬharley lives next door to the Lomans and, among all of the Death of a Salesman characters, appears to be Willy’s closest friend. Because he can’t, he doesn’t see his self-worth in any terms other than money. The primary tragedy in this play is not Willy’s death in itself – it’s that he can’t see the love that Linda, Biff and Happy feel for him.
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And so that payout becomes the diamonds that his brother Ben had left home for, decades ago. He has not saved enough during his prosperous years to be prepared for the days when he no longer can sell, and the desperation associated with this knowledge convinces him that “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive” (Act II). He knows that there is a payout attached to his life insurance policy that will do what he cannot – provide for his family and give Biff a nest egg. The fact that Willy’s final act is to end his own life shows that he never comes to terms with his own flaws. Now that the generations of buyers with whom he had relationships have passed into retirement, no one knows him, and he’s having a hard time even getting appointments, let alone making sales. He believes he has been selling products his entire life, but he has really been marketing himself. He has spent his entire life selling, but not in the way he thinks. Willy is indeed the protagonist among the Death of a Salesman characters, but it would be difficult to say that he is a hero.