Well, I am not too sure that we are given that much
information about Willy's job in the play except that it is something that is bound up
as part of Willy's identity and that it means everything to him. He overtly says that he
loves his job and that he lives for it, yet clearly, as the opening scene demonstrates,
other characters such as Linda recognise that his job is too much for Willy to cope with
and that he is in dangerous need of a break. If we examine the daydream that Willy had
and the way that it meant he had to stop driving as he kept veering off the highway, and
the "strange thoughts" that Willy says he is subject to, it is clear that he is a man
who is dangerously exhausted and whose job has swallowed him up. This is why, in
response to being told about not being able to drive the car, Linda
says:
Willy,
dear. Talk to them again. There's no reason why you can't work in New
York.
Linda clearly feels
that for a sixty year old man it is too much for Willy to be doing the kind of
travelling, every week, that his job requires of
him.
Something else we are told about Willy's job is that
he clearly feels he is more successful than his boss gives him credit for. Note what he
says to Linda:
If old man Wagner was alive I'd a been in charge
of New York now! That man was a prince, he was a masterful man. But that boy of his,
that Howard, he don't appreciate. When I went north the first time, the Wagner Company
didn't know where New England
was!
This clearly introduces
the element of fantasy into the play, as Willy believes himself to be incredibly
successful, but in reality, as the audience soon discovers, he is a failure at his
job.
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