Death of a Salesman-Part 4

This blog post covers the fourth and final section (approximately from page 80 to page 112) of Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman. In this section, the Girl's name is revealed to be Miss Forsythe. One final, small character is introduced: Letta (Miss Forsythe's call girl friend).
At the beginning of this section, Willy enters the bar. Biff, Willy, and Happy all continue in their usual patterns. Willy and Happy are unwilling to see the truth and Biff is unwilling to lie to himself or either of them. This leads to a fight in which Willy tells his sons that he was fired and Biff yells at his father and lets him know that the loan fell through. Simultaneously, Willy experiences another hallucination in which Bernard brings the news that Biff failed math and won't be graduating. It is apparent that Willy is being pushed over the edge because he is living one of the worst moments of his life while re-living another. Because of the stress of the situation, Biff does deny the truth once. When his father begins to mutter to himself and hallucinate, Biff lies and says that he may still get the loan just to get his father quiet. However, moments later he yells at Willy again. This change in character shows that Biff's resolve is crumbling as his father's sanity does the same.
Willy goes to the restroom and relives the moment when Biff discovered that his father was having an affair, shortly after failing math. Biff is crushed by his father's infidelity and confronts him about his lies. This incident is the reason that Biff stopped trying to please his father and decided not to make up the math credit and go to college. He felt so betrayed by his father that he had no desire to make his father or himself happy.
While Willy is in the restroom, his sons leave with the girls. When Willy discovers that he has been abandoned, he goes out to buy seeds. The seeds, to Willy and to readers, seem to symbolize the desire to start life over and have a new beginning.  When Biff and Happy arrive at home, Linda is angry and Willy is out planting the seeds. Linda is a static character and maintains her desire to defend Willy and protect him from the world. She recognizes that he may not be the greatest man in the world but holds that he has worked hard for them and deserves respect. Being abandoned in the bar by his sons seems to have been the last straw for Willy. He has a hallucination in which Ben suggests that if Willy died, his family would gain $20,000 of insurance money. Throughout all their fighting, Willy still favors Biff and sees a bright future for him with that money. When Biff tells Willy his plan to leave, it is clear that he doesn't want to hurt his father but that he doesn't want to continue lying to himself. Willy, in his last stroke of insanity, decides to go for the "$20,000 proposition" and speeds off in his car to his death.
Willy, throughout the book, went through a downward spiral of insanity and self denial. Linda, after Willy's death, feels some relief. By killing himself, he fulfilled his own "prophesy" of being worth more dead than alive. Linda was able to play off the house and was finally free. She truly cared for Willy but was unable to be sad for him. Biff shows that he cared for his father as well and shared his tendency to dream big but decides that Willy had the "wrong dreams." Happy, static in his desire to please his father, even post-mortem, decides to stay in New York.