Death of a Latex Salesman

In “the Subway” Jerry tells George not to “whistle on the elevator,” explaining that “that's what Willie Loman told Biff before his interview, in Death of a Salesman.”  This makes certain sense, that George, of late struggling with employment, receives the advice that American literature’s Salesman gave to American literature’s Unemployed Son—except that Jerry’s life may be symbolized by this image of an outsider whistling in an elevator full of businessmen, and that Willy’s advice is contradicted later when his boss relishes in the whistling abilities of his family, a moment when the audience begins to seriously doubt Willy Loman.  All the same, George resents being compared to the “biggest loser of American literature.”  To me Biff is the hero of the play, and his father is the bigger loser, and I think many people would agree.  It is Biff’s passion for sincerity and authenticity—a direct reaction against his father’s delusions and dishonesty—that forces his family to own up to their tragic condition, and it his father’s dishonesty that destroys Biff’s chances at a successful life.  He is the Greek prophet in 1950s Brooklyn warning an oblivious Oedipus that, continuing as he is, without questioning his abundant pride, he is doomed to fall.  And of course Willy Loman never sheds this pride nor owns up to the fallibility of his delusions.  He loses his grasp on reality through his failing memory and sight, and dies.  

            George does not go to the interview as Biff does, and wait around all day like a putz, and then steal a pen to assert his independence—though he might have in a different context—he decides instead to flirt with an attractive well-dressed woman and pretend, with the help of the suit he put on for the interview, that he is a successful investor.   Suddenly he is Willy Loman, climbing toward the American dream on a mountain of bullshit, and seducing a woman—and himself—with the false notion that he is a successful businessman.  However with one final turn of irony it seems he is bullshitting a bullshitter: her con is to flirt with successful-looking men on the subway, convince them she is overtaken by their charm, take them to a room, and let them think the handcuffs she’s using to affix them to the bed are a sexual prop before taking all of their money and leaving them handcuffed.  But of course George is full of shit, not money, leading her to explain the true state of affairs to our poor hero who has been handcuffed in his underwear: “I wasted my whole morning with you for eight dollars?”  So, in restitution, she takes his suit, and George is back to the naked sincerity of Biff Loman, once again given a rotten hand, to which he is painfully honest in owning up: “No wait, you can't just leave me here! Will I see you again?”

            Jerry, on the other hand/subway, awakes to find a man next to him who is naked, skipping all the nonsense that George went through, and they end up going to Coney Island together and having a grand ol’ time. 

            The other casting of George as Biff comes in one of my favorite episodes: “The Boyfriend,” the merits of which could never be adequately described, and the first part of which I paraphrased in June 2003 as what I considered to be an incredibly important avant-garde short story, a consideration I rethought in July 2003.  George needs to prove he has been searching for a job, though he hasn’t, in order to continue receiving unemployment checks.  This is why we love George Costanza: he invents “Vadaley Industries,” a company that manufactures and sells latex, says that they are considering him as a latex salesman, and gives Jerry’s phone number so that he can corroborate the existence of this enterprise; Willy Loman lied about being demoted to a salesman only paid by commission—George Costanza lied about being interviewed about the possibility of being a salesman. When the always-honest Kramer answers the phone, and ruins the lie, George tumbles, literally, to the honesty of Biff for a moment (again exposed with his pants around his ankles).  

            He still does not actually try to get a job interview, because, like Willy he has too much pride to be under the thumb of someone he doesn’t respect, and, like Biff, is too much of a dreamer to be stuck in the rat race: this time (Part two of “The Boyfriend”) he notices a photo of his caseworker’s markedly unattractive daughter and finagles a date with her, thus flattering the mother into extending his benefits.  He is not being paid for nothing, as is the case with the typically unemployed, he is being paid for concocting Costanzian schemes to avoid doing real work, one of the show’s many metaphors for its own production.

            Now, however, he finds himself in the situation of dating a girl he does not like in the least—which is bad enough—but who, in the end, breaks up with him because he’s “like Biff Loman”—“no job” and “no prospects.”  George has failed horribly again and has lost his unemployment in the process, in addition to his already pilfered suit—not to mention the eight dollars.  He is by no means whistling in the elevator. On the contrary he tries to convince the businessmen that he seriously wants to make it in the world, he is withholding the whistle, diverting it with his tongue into his cheek, and the result is hilarious to everyone except him, because every time, in the end, the high-talking salesman dies tragically leaving only Biff Loman, ruined by the bullshit of his dishonest counterpart and exposed as the low man that he is.