This is a monologue for Linda, from the play ‘Death of a Salesman.’
(Linda enters the kitchen stage right; walking at a fast pace. She places a basket of washing near the fridge and then looks up hopelessly at the ceiling she then lifts her hands up as if questioning someone.)
Linda: Why Willy, Why? Why did you have to go and do this to us all? How do you except me to cope will all the jobs you have left upon me now?
Linda: How am I going to cope without you? You are very selfish Willy, very selfish for doing this to us all but…but you have always done the best for us. Billy and Happy are blaming themselves and I do sometimes, I sometimes do. We haven’t done anything wrong, but then again I feel I have and maybe Biff and Happy could have done more to stop you from becoming so stressed.
(Linda starts to sob quietly and then she places her hands in her lap. Linda sits on the kitchen chair for a moment and seems to look angry and uneasy. She walks towards the front door, looks out of the small window in the door and then walks back to the chair, where she sits down and starts to reminisce about certain actions in the past.)
Linda: If only I had seen this coming, maybe I could have helped you. I could see you weren’t well and that you were suffering with work and not having enough money, but I left it. Is it my fault, is it Willy? I need you here; you see, I think I am actually going mad. I cannot do it all on my own, the house, Biff and Happy. If you had thought about what you was about it do before you did it and thought that maybe it might have an affect on me and the kids then would you have still done it?
(Linda walks over to the kitchen sink and pours herself a glass of water, she then sits down at the kitchen table, whilst looking very tensed and stressed. Death of a salesman monologue Willy)
Linda: (depressed tone) I am trying to keep the family happy, I really am, I am trying my hardest and now look what has happened, and therefore I end up blaming myself, Willy I do. Maybe we should have tried harder to get you a better job, like you said we always deserved better, but like you also said people have changed and they didn’t see you in the same way.
(Linda is starting to get very angry whilst washing her glass in the sink.)
Linda: They didn’t deserve to have such a good employee like you, they didn’t even come to your funeral, terrible just terrible. I should have said something to them; you helped them so much in their business, all the hours and passion you devoted to them and they can’t visit you on your funeral. They should be ashamed of themselves. I can’t understand it all; I can’t understand it at all.
(She begins to calm down at this point, but still looks depressed and sad. Linda then starts to hear shouting and banging from upstairs which is coming from Biff and Happy. She signs in disappoint and then begins to pace up and down the kitchen, whilst raising her hands in the air.)
Linda: Biff, Happy please, please stop it I am trying to think. I don’t feel to well and you aren’t helping with the shouting you are creating. Keep the noise down!
Linda: (looking tensed again and uneasy) Biff and Happy are so different now, they have changed a lot. I don’t know what is going to become of them now, Biff was already…already finding it hard to get a job and finding it hard to even find himself and now he will be stuck in the job he is in for the rest of his life. See Willy you would have s…sorted this out wouldn’t you? How can I sort it all now? Happy never seems to want to speak to me and I feel we are all falling apart. I keep telling myself we need to move away from here, start a new life but I just can’t, I just can’t because of all the memories I have here of us with Biff and Happy; a good family we was, until just recently.
