Biff's attempt to get a loan from Bill Oliver

Biff Loman's attempt to get a loan from Bill Oliver is the central action of Act Two, the event around which the family's hopes and their ultimate collapse revolve. It is the practical expression of the plan Biff and Happy hatched the night before: Biff will ask Oliver, a wealthy sporting-goods magnate for whom he once worked, for ten thousand dollars—or even seven or eight thousand—to buy a ranch out West. The plan is Biff's last attempt to reconcile his own desire for an outdoor life with his father's demand for material success. For Willy, the loan is not merely a business proposition; it is the proof that Biff is still the golden boy who can command the world through personal attractiveness, the proof that Willy's own philosophy of being "well liked" is valid. The entire family's emotional investment in this single meeting is immense, and its failure sets off the chain of revelations that ends in Willy's suicide.

The Setup and the Journey Downtown

Biff leaves the house early Tuesday morning, dressed in his blue suit, and Linda reports to Willy that he "couldn't wait to get downtown to see Oliver." The morning is charged with optimism: Willy, believing Biff is heading for a change, prepares to ask his own boss, Howard Wagner, for a New York job, and the family plans a celebratory dinner at Frank's Chop House that evening. Biff's confidence, however, is built on a shaky foundation. He had quit his job with Oliver nearly ten years earlier after stealing a carton of basketballs, and he was never sure whether Oliver knew about the theft. The memory of that theft haunts him, and he admits to Happy that he wonders "if Oliver still thinks I stole that carton of basketballs." Despite this doubt, he clings to Oliver's parting words—"Biff, if you ever need anything, come to me"—as a promise that will unlock his future.

The Humiliation at Oliver's Office

Biff's account of the meeting, delivered in fragments at the restaurant, is a story of progressive degradation. He waited six hours, sending his name in repeatedly, even trying to date Oliver's secretary to gain access, but nothing worked. When Oliver finally emerged at about five o'clock, he did not recognize Biff at all. "I felt like such an idiot, Hap," Biff tells Happy. The moment of recognition that did come was devastating: Oliver gave him "one look" and Biff realized that his entire self-conception—that he had been a salesman for Oliver, that he was a man of importance—was "a ridiculous lie." He had been a shipping clerk. The fantasy that had sustained him for fifteen years collapsed in an instant. "How the hell did I ever get the idea I was a salesman there?" he asks, stunned by his own self-deception.

The Theft of the Fountain Pen

Left alone in the waiting room after Oliver and his secretary had gone, Biff experienced an impulse he could not explain. He walked into Oliver's paneled office and took his fountain pen. The act was compulsive, irrational, and immediately shameful. He ran down all eleven flights of stairs, fleeing the building. When he tells Happy about it, Happy calls it "an awful dumb" thing to do, but Biff is beyond rational calculation. "I don't know, I just—wanted to take something," he says, agonized. The theft is a repetition of his adolescent pattern—the stolen basketballs, the borrowed football from the locker room—but now it carries the weight of a man who has never grown up. The pen becomes a physical symbol of his failure, the object that clinches his inability to go back to Oliver and pretend the meeting had gone well.

The Confrontation at Frank's Chop House

When Biff arrives at the restaurant, he is determined to tell Willy the truth. He tries repeatedly to explain that he was never a salesman, that Oliver did not remember him, that the loan is impossible. But Willy, who has just been fired by Howard Wagner, refuses to hear it. He is desperate for good news to bring home to Linda, and he bulldozes Biff's account, inventing a story in which Oliver threw his arm around Biff and offered a partnership. The scene becomes a battle over reality itself. Biff finally produces the stolen pen, and Willy, seeing it, explodes: "You stole Bill Oliver's fountain pen!" The confrontation escalates until Willy strikes Biff and calls him a "rotten little louse." Biff, in despair, tells Happy, "I can't talk to him!" and the dinner disintegrates, with Willy wandering off toward a seed store and Biff fleeing into the night.

Consequences and Revelation

The failed loan attempt is the catalyst for the play's final crisis. Biff's humiliation forces him to confront the lie he has been living, and he returns home determined to tell Willy the truth about himself: "I'm a dime a dozen, and so are you!" The confrontation that follows, in the Loman kitchen, is the most honest exchange the two men have ever had. Biff forces Willy to see the rubber hose he has hidden on the gas pipe, exposing his suicidal intentions, and then confesses his own failures—the jail term in Kansas City for stealing a suit, the string of jobs he lost because he could never take orders. In the midst of this brutal honesty, however, a breakthrough occurs. Biff breaks down sobbing, and Willy, astonished, realizes that his son loves him. The moment of reconciliation is genuine, but it comes too late. Willy, now convinced that Biff will be "magnificent" with twenty thousand dollars behind him, seizes on the insurance money as the only way to give his son the start he needs. The failed loan, which should have ended the family's delusions, instead provides the final push toward Willy's suicide.