What Are Willy's Emotions At The End Of The Play?

City/Frontier Throughout the play there is a contrast between the fantasies and desires of the characters and their current circumstances. Most central to the meaning of the play is Willy and his sons’ desires to get out of the busy, polluted, and claustrophobic city, and out to the frontier to pursue their dreams and careers. Early on in the play, Willy expresses his disdain for the city life when he rants “The way they boxed us in here. Bricks and windows, windows and bricks… The street is lined with cars. There’s not a breath of fresh air in the neighborhood. The grass don’t grow any more, you can’t raise a carrot in the back yard” (17). Willy longs for the time when they had two beautiful elm trees in the back yard that he had hung a swing between with Biff. He longs …show more content…
This desire is also one that has become present in Biff, who, unable to find a ‘real’ job in New York, moved out West and became a drifter working on ranches. After moving back home temporarily, Biff expresses his ideas of moving back out West with his brother. “Sure, maybe we could buy a ranch,” he suggests to Happy. “Raise cattle, use our muscles. Men built like us should be working out in the open” (23). They feel confined by the materialistic and career-restricting lifestyle of the city. WIlly’s most obvious exhibition of this desire, however is shown through his hallucinogenic visions of his brother Ben, who made a fortune in the goldmines of Alaska and Africa. He states his regrets early on about not joining his brother on his expeditions, and idolizes and envies Ben for being the brave and successful man that he could not be. Most of the visions of Ben are merely figments of WIlly’s imagination and therefore represent Willy’s subconscious ambitions. This is best represented when Ben says “You’ve got a new continent at your doorstep, William. Get out of these cities, they’re full of talk and time payments and courts of law. Screw on your fists and you can fight for a