The Hotel

Will Landschulz
Am Lit Per. 2
Mrs. LaMagdeleine

Willy is holed up in a hotel with his mistress, the Woman.  They've evidently emerged from a, um, stimulating evening.  Someone knocks on the door.  Willy, terrified of his secret being blown, ignores the knock.  More knocks come, then a call, then a page, then more knocks.  For Willy, it must be like a nightmare, scared witless by his secret, knowing someone is calling your name, relentlessly circling you in the forms of the door, the phone, and the pager, while all the while you cannot move a muscle.  He holes the Woman up in the bathroom and tells her to keep quiet.  He opens the door to find - Biff.  Willy is surprised by the object of all his hopes and desires standing shamefacedly in front of his door, but quickly recovers himself as best he can given the circumstances.  Biff has just flunked math, and he hopes that Willy can talk his teacher into giving him the points he needs to pass.  Biff then makes a joke about his math teacher on his way to the door.  Here, Willy's secret betrays him, by laughing out loud in response to what is said by Biff and Willy.  This marks the end of all respect Biff had for Willy as a person, as an embodiment of an ideal, and as someone to be emulated.  There are several betrayals in this scene, both in its time and in the present.  One is Willy's betrayal of Linda, underlined in Biff's anguished line "You - you gave her Mama's stockings!"  Another is Willy's betrayal of Biff's image of the popular, honest salesman who can fix anything with a smile, forever marred by the lies meant to save Willy's skin.  Betrayed also is the invincible ideal of the American Dream, as Willy's search for that ideal has made him "lonely," tired, and isolated.  Willy also sees Biff's actions afterward, where he vanishes across the west and drifts from job to job to job, as a betrayal of the lofty goals he inherited.