Skip to main content

In what city does Willy Loman live?

Willy Loman lives in New York City. According to the brief paragraph preceding Act One:



The action takes place in Willy Loman's house and yard and in various places he visits in the New York and Boston of today. 



In the opening of Act One, Willy has returned home. He tells his wife that he wasn't able to make it past Yonkers.



I suddenly couldn't drive any more. The car kept going of onto the shoulder, y'know?



Yonkers is a suburb of New York. It is only about two miles north of the northernmost past of Manhattan. Willy was just starting on a business trip to cover his New England territory. The fact that he was still in New York City shows that this is where he lives. He is obviously getting too old to continue covering such and extensive territory as Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island, which make up New England; but when he asks to be transferred to a territory closer to home, it leads to an argument with his boss that results in his getting fired.


Willy's little house has changed in the years he and his wife Linda have lived there and raised their two sons, Biff and Happy. It is surrounded by tall buildings that cut off much of the sunlight. Willy tells Linda:



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. They shouldn't have a law against apartment houses.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more