

Linda offers to make Willy a sandwich to calm him down, but he changes the subject to their sons, Biff and Happy, who are asleep in their shared room. Wagner doesn't appreciate Willy the way his father did. Willy finally agrees to do it, emphasizing that if Wagner's father were still in charge of the company, Willy would have already had a New York job. 4 After more discussion of all the reasons why he should be working in New York, Linda suggests again that he go speak with his boss, Howard Wagner.

I'm vital in New England." Act 1, Part 1, pg. Linda urges him to talk to his boss about working in the New York area so that he doesn't have to travel anymore, but he says to her, "They don't need me in New York. He was so spooked that he drove ten miles an hour all the way home, and now he's tired and grumpy because he's going to miss his morning meeting in Portland, Rhode Island. Whatever it was, it kept taking his mind of the road, and he'd veer onto the shoulder before he knew what was happening. It could've been the coffee he had at a roadside diner or the way he opened the windshield of the car and the scenery and sunshine just washed over him. Sitting on the bed with her, he explains that he came home because he was having trouble staying on the road while he drove, and he is unsure of what caused his distraction. She seems worried that something has happened, that he has wrecked the car again, or that he's ill, but Willy assures her that he is fine, just tired. His wife, Linda, hears him coming up the stairs to their bedroom. Willy Loman, a sixty-year-old traveling salesman, enters his home late at night with two large sample cases. But when the action is in a memory, the characters step through the walls and onto the forestage. Whenever the action of the play is in the present, the characters act as if the imaginary walls are real and they enter and exit rooms only through doors. The empty stage between the house and the audience is the back yard, the scene of Willy's imaginings, as well as the city scenes. Above the unseen living room is another bedroom with two beds a stairway at the left curves up to the room from the kitchen. To the left and up a little is a second story bedroom with only a brass bed and a straight chair. The sparsely decorated kitchen is visible with a dark drape at the back leading into the living room. A flute plays softly as the light rises on a house surrounded by tall, angular buildings.
