into reality. She knows that Willy is suicidal; she has seen the hose he has attached to a pipe down in the basement. And yet, she cant bear to confront him with it. She leaves it there because if she takes it away Willy will know that she knows how helpless he feels. If Willys fragile bubble of illusion is broken, it would cause him to become even worse than he is. Linda as the eternal wife and mother, the fixed point of affection both given and received, the woman who suffers and endures, is in many ways, the earth mother who embodies the plays ultimate moral value, love. But in the beautiful, ironic complexity of her creation, she is also Willys and their sons destroyer. In her love, Linda has accepted Willys greatness and his dream, but while in her admiration for Willy her love is powerful and moving, in her admiration for his dreams, it is lethal. (Gordon, 56)At the end of the play we find that Willys pursuit of the American dream leads him to his death. By his death, he is providing a way for Biff to continue the dream for him. Willy thinks that with twenty thousand dollars Biff can be magnificent. We see that even when he is so close to the end of his life, Willy is still living in an illusion. Biff has told him that he just wants to be thought of as a bum; he wants Willy to stop imagining a wildly successful future for him and to let him do what he wants to with his life. However, Willy cant get past the fact that Biff has turned to him and cried. He sees this as a sign that Biff still needs him. Willy also realizes that Biff hasnt been trying to spite him for all of these years. This gives him the motivation to commit suicide; to give Biff the easy start that he needs in order to be successful. In the requiem, we are able to see just how different Willys real life was from his imagined one, and how short he came of fulfilling his dreams. all of his career as a salesman had been spent trying to achieve popular...
