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abstract: Linda Loman's statement in Arthur Millers Death of A Salesman that "Life is a casting off" adds meaning to the play in several senses, especially when considered in the context of her needlework. This term means to finish off a completed, knitted item and thus conveys an affirmative sense of accomplishment as well as a more somber recognition of loss. It expresses Linda's effort to unify her family through her domestic duties and frugality. She has also overcome being "cast off" by Willy's infidelities and continually hopes that Willy might, like Ben, "cast off" on new voyages of success. The aphorism expresses the Lomans' upwardly mobile striving in a statement typical of the play's mixed diction that mingles their lower-class origins and lofty social expectations.
keywords: Linda Loman, knitting, character, sense of time, language
Though not as tragic a figure as her husband Willy, Linda Loman is given two of the most memorable statements in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The play's signature quote, "Attention must be paid" (56), has become a familiar tagline for writers and editorialists, but "Life is a casting off" (15) carries that "aphoristic authority" that Miller said Willy sometimes needs to hear ("Salesman at Fifty" 272) and, as he said of a different scene, lends to the play "shadings of veracity" to which more attention should be paid.1 Like most of the play's insights, Linda's comment is rooted in the realistic routines of the Lomans' life. It is directly linked to the recurring motif of her needlework-her repairing of the lining in Willy's jacket and especially the mending of her stockings-which captures her frugality and sense of domestic responsibility. As Susan Abbotson notes, sewing conveys Linda's persistent desire to unify the family; "she is the main reason why this family has managed to stay together; hence her depiction as a mender who tries to mend everything from stockings to people" (53). Bert Cardullo includes Linda's "casting off" remark among his examples of the play's best diction, "first-generation Brooklyn Jewish-the kind of English that not only is spoken with a muscular, guttural, sing-songy Brooklyn accent, but that also retains the poetic imagery, forceful expression, and ritualistic repetition of Yiddish" (584)^ For Walter Albert Davis, her comment also serves...