The
woman we're talking in here is the one who had an affair with Willy in
Boston. Her role is fairly small, but what she says plays an important
part in here.
She's one of the images
that kept on popping on Willy's mind. It is as if a sense of guilt is playing
a trick on Willy whenever the woman's vision appears.
Of the affair betweenWilly and her is only
known to Biff; he told no one about this. But her role had made a tremendous
change to the father-son relationship. Ever since Biff had given up his
father and himself as well.
There was this very
short exchange of words between the woman and Biff, talking about football.
The woman herself said that she is a football, too. This sarcastic expression
describes clearly how selfish Willy is: pick up the football whenever he
feels like playing it; and throw it away when he feels he had enough of
it.
If the woman has destroyed
the father and son's relation, it could be that the woman was "ruined",
as she described herself, by Willy. It's obvious she needed Willy very
much, "because he makes me laugh". From this we can be quite sure that
she is so lonely to death that even a colleague's or a salesman's jokes
can comfort her that much.
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Analyses