Death of a Salesman

9/14/2022

The age of social media would be a double-edged sword for Willy Loman (Dustin Hoffman) and his prophetic obsession with what we now know as 'likes.' One of his mantras is “Be liked and you will never want.” Today this would mean getting likes, and not just by the hundreds; if possible, by the thousands. “One day I will have my own business and I will never have to leave the house,” says Willy. “Like Uncle Charley [Charles Durning]?” asks his youngest son Hap (Stephen Lang). “Bigger than Uncle Charley. Charley is not liked. He's liked but he's not well liked.” Ironically, Charley is much more successful than Willy — as is Charley’s son Bernard (David S. Chandler) compared to Hap and his older brother Biff (John Malkovich) — despite, or perhaps because of his indifference to whether or