Characters+&+Costumes.DS

Miller employs expressionistic technique when he allows his characters to split into younger versions of themselves to represent Willy's memories. Young Biff's letter sweater and football signal his age reversion, yet they also move in the direction of social type. The Woman also is an expressionistic type, the play's only generic character other than the marvelously individualized salesman.

Miller's greatest expressionistic creations, however, are Ben and Willy Loman. In his // Paris Review // interview, Miller acknowledged that he purposely refused to give Ben any character, "because for Willy he has no character - which is, psychologically, expressionist because so many memories come back with a simple tag on them: somebody represents a threat to you, or a promise" (// Theater Essays // 272). Clearly Ben represents a promise to Willy Loman. It is the promise of material success, but it is also the promise of death. 6  We might consider Uncle Ben to be the ghost of Ben, for we learn that Ben has recently died in Africa. Since Miller never discloses the cause of Ben's death, he may be a suicide himself. His idyllic melody, as I have noted, becomes finally a death march. In Willy's last moments, the contrapuntal voices of Linda and Ben vie with each other, but Willy moves inexorably toward Ben. Alluding to Africa, and perhaps also to the River Styx, Ben looks at his watch and says, "The boat. We'll be late" as he moves slowly into the darkness (135).