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Character List
[align=left]Willy Loman :
A sixty year old salesman living in Brooklyn , Willy is a gregarious , mercurial man with powerful strivings and aspirations for success . However , after thirty-five years as a traveling salesman throughout New England , Willy is tired and defeated by his lack of success and difficult family life . Although he has a dutiful wife , his relationship with his oldest son , Biff , is strained because of Biff's continual failures . As a salesman , Willy focuses on personal details over actual measures of success , believing that it is personality and not results that garner success in the business world .
Biff Loman :
The thirty-four year old son of Willy , Biff was a star high school athlete with a scholarship to UVA , but he did not attend college after failing his high school math course and not attending summer school . He did this primarily out of spite after finding his father having an affair with a woman in Boston . Since then , Biff has been a continual failure , stealing from every job he has had and even spending time in jail . Despite his failures and anger towards his father , Biff still has great concern for what his father thinks of him , and the conflict between the two characters drives the narrative of the play .
Linda Loman :
The dutiful and obedient wife to Willy and mother of Biff and Happy , Linda is the one person who supports Willy , despite his often reprehensible treatment of her . She is a woman who has aged greatly because of her difficult life supporting her husband , whose hallucinations and erratic behavior she contends with alone . She is the moral center of the play , occasionally stern and not afraid to confront her sons on their poor treatment of their father .
Happy Loman :
The younger of the two Loman sons , Happy is seemingly content and successful , with a steady career and none of the obvious marks of failure that his older brother displays . Happy , however , is not content with his more stable life , because he has never risked failure or striven for any real measure of success . Happy is a compulsive womanizer who treats women purely as sex objects and has little respect for the many women he seduces .
Charley :
The Lomans' next door neighbor and father of Bernard , Charley is a successful businessman and exemplifies the success that Willy never could achieve . Although Willy claims that Charley is a man who is " liked , but not well-liked ," he owns his own business and is respected and admired . He and Willy have a contentious relationship , but Charley is nevertheless Willy's only friend.
Bernard :
Bernard is Charley's only son , intelligent and industrious but without the gregarious personality of either of the Loman sons . It is this quality that makes Willy believe that Bernard will never be a true success in the business world , but Bernard nevertheless proves himself to be far more successful than Willy imagined : he is a lawyer ready to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court .
Ben :
Willy's older brother , Ben left home at seventeen to find their father in Alaska , but ended up in Africa , where he found diamond mines and came out of the jungle at twenty-one an incredibly rich man . Although Ben died several weeks before the present time of the play , he often appears carrying a valise and umbrella in Willy's hallucinations . Ben represents the fantastic success for which Willy has always hoped but can never achieve , as well as the lost opportunities in Willy Loman's life .
Howard Wagner :
The thirty-six year old son of Frank Wagner , Willy Loman's former boss , Howard now occupies the same position as his late father . Although Willy was the one who named Howard , he nevertheless is forced to fire Willy for his erratic behavior. Howard is preoccupied with technology ; when Willy meets with him , he spends most of the meeting demonstrating his new wire recorder .
Stanley :
He is the waiter at the restaurant where Willy meets his sons , and helps Willy home after Biff and Happy leave their father there .
The Woman :
An assistant in a company in Boston with which Willy deals , this nameless character has a continuing affair with Willy when he visits New England . The Woman claims that Willy ruined her and failed in his promises to her . When Biff finds the Woman in Willy's hotel room , he begins his course of self-destructive behavior .[/align]
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