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Symbolism in Death of a salesman
Family issues in the death of a salesman
Family issues in the death of a salesman
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The scene opens to a fatigued Willy Loman returning home after an unsuccessful business trip. His wife Linda, worried over Willy's state of mind and recent car accident, offers up explanations of his current state, diverting from the thought of his senility and pressures him to rest. Willy grumbles to Linda that their son, Biff, has yet to create a life for himself. Despite Biff's promise as a star athlete in high school, he failed senior year math and never attended college, seeming to wander aimlessly. Biff and his brother Happy, who are temporarily staying with Willy and Linda after Biff's unexpected return from the west, reminisce about their childhood together in their old room; they discuss their father's mental deterioration, which they have witnessed in the form of his constant contradictions and chatting to himself. In Willy’s first featured delusional rant, the time period shifts to the Loman house years before, where Biff and Happy are teenagers. Biff is idolized from Willy’s flashback by the attention being given over Happy. After Willy’s conversation with his wife, giving hint to Willy’s infidelity, the scene cuts to a hotel room with an unknown woman. The scene switches to present; Happy and Willy are talking about his brother Ben’s fortune. Ben interrupts into reality and the scene shifts back in time to Ben being introduced to Biff and Happy. Everyone is alerted to Biff being chased by the watchmen for theft, a foreshadow of Biff’s character that influence future. The next day feeling rejuvenated, Willy goes to ask his boss, Howard, for employment in town while Biff goes to make a business proposition to an old employer, but neither is successful. After his request is rejected, Willy gets irate with Howard and end... ... middle of paper ... ...y to his father that he is not meant for anything great, insisting that both of them are simply ordinary men meant to lead mundane lives. The feud climaxes with Biff hugging Willy and crying as he tries to get him to let go of the impractical expectations that he still carries for Biff and accept him for who he really is. He tells his father he loves him. Rather than listen to what Biff actually says, Willy thinks his son has forgiven him and thinks Biff will now pursue a career as a businessman. Willy carries out his final attempt at suicide, deliberately crashing his car so that Biff can use the life insurance money to start his business. However, at the funeral Biff retains his belief that he does not want to become a businessman; Happy chooses to assume his father’s role in the business world in an attempt to become what his father never saw him as, a great man.
Willy Loman is not the only victim of his tragic flaw. The rest of the Loman family is also affected by Willy's problem. Willy's wife, Linda, is the only one who supports and understands Willy's tragic flaw completely. Linda supports every far-fetched claim her husband makes. She is even described as having “infinite patience” whenever she is conversing with Willy (Miller 99). Willy's two sons, Biff and Happy, are also affected by his flaw. Happy, when in the company of two ladies, claims that Willy is not even his father, and “just a guy” (Miller 91). Later in the play, Biff decides that he does not want to be in his father's life anymore. Biff's problems are simply too much for Willy to handle with his current state of being, even though Willy needs Biff in his life. After both internal and external conflict, Biff reveals to Willy that Willy had been lied to for a number of years, and that the life he lives is essentially a lie (Miller 104).
Both sons live with the same concern for Willy as Linda, especially after she explains to them that Willy’s crashes were not accidents. Biff is particularly affected by Willy’s actions as Biff discovered Willy’s affair with one of his coworkers, an action which enraged Biff and caused Biff to refuse to fix his math grade and finish high school. Additionally, Willy’s affair also caused Biff to grow distant from his father, setting the two up for many future arguments such as one in which Willy tells Biff, “stops him with: May you rot in hell if you leave this house!” (129). Not to forget that Willy’s suicide was originally meant to spite Biff as Willy believed his funeral would be grand, claiming “He’ll see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that boy!” (126)--this being a tragic twist of dramatic irony. This trauma and strife brought upon Biff leads him into a great deal of hardship, never having had a job or settled down. Willy causes Biff to believe himself a failure, and Biff is dragged into Willy’s world of suffering where Biff cannot attain success in the face of his father’s high
The relationship between Biff and Willy is not good. Since Biff found that his father Willy was cheating to her mother he left the home. In the play The Death of a Salesman Willy Loman and Biff seems they don’t like each other. Although Willy love his son Biff. When Biff was young Willy was always there supporting Biff in everything and was very proud of him. And he was the son that Willy had attached him dreams upon. According to the statement “I am not the leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were anything but a hard working drummer who landed in the ash-can like all the rest of them”. Biff’s observation was that he sees his father as a failed to achieve, although he work hard to success. Willy loves Biff his oldest son since he was at school. In his mind he was thinking that Biff will become a successful man in life, but it didn’t happen’. Biff is a man who got the job but fail to keep his job. That makes Willy become frustrated. But Biff he tried to find himself. Here Biff compare his self and Willy’. Willy is the hard worker trying to achieve an American dream, and when he look at Ben his brother who achi...
Willy doesn’t want to accept that he is not successful anymore, he still recognize his son as handsome heroes. Biff as the football star when he was at high school and Happy an...
It surrounds the life of Willy Loman, an aging salesman whose son Biff has just returned from a work stint out in the west. As Biff’s father, Willy desires him to have a good paying job and to settle on one job, two things Biff has been struggling to do. Tensions heighten between the two characters, while the conformist son Happy and Willy’s wife Linda, an optimist to say the least, are stuck in the middle. This is when the reader is really exposed to Willy’s delusion. It is learned that Willy has been suicidal for a very long time, constantly trying to asphyxiate by inhaling gas fumes. On top of this, throughout the play there are flashback scenes of when Biff was younger, and they progress in intensity as the piece moves on. Images of the prosperous Uncle Ben haunt Willy and taunt him of his unsuccess, and scandalous scenes of his cheating affair in Boston haunt him otherwise. Eventually, Willy is fired and Biff does not acquire a job approved by his father. This all ends in the ultimatum of Willy’s suicide by car crash and Biff’s acceptance of the life he wants to live. The last audible words of the play are in a line spoken by Linda while walking away from the grave: “We’re free… we’re free...” (Miller 109). These powerful words, and from this character especially, pound the destructive nature of Willy’s dreams
Biff never kept a steady job during his young adult life, and did not possess a healthy relationship with anyone that was in his life. As the play progresses the reader sees how much Biff becomes more self- aware. An online source states, “Unlike the other members of his family, Biff grows to recognize that he and his family members consistently deceive themselves, and he fights to escape the vicious cycles of lies.” When Biff returns home it becomes a struggle to keep a healthy relationship with his parents. Once Willy and Biff decide together that Biff will go and ask Bill Oliver for a loan is when the differences between the two characters are truly seen. Biff accepts reality for the first time in his life, and realizes how ridiculous it is to ask Bill Oliver for a loan, when he barely knows the man and worked for him about ten years ago. When Biff meets up with Willy after the ‘meeting’ Biff is talking to his Father and says, “Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” This quote reveals that Biff recently has just experienced an epiphany, and realizes that what he was doing was making no sense. Biff is escaping the self- deception he was caught in with the rest of his
Willy Loman’s false pride leads him to believe that he has been successful as a father. He remembers how he was once looked up by his children, especially by his son Biff. However, Willy fails to realize that the relationship he once had with his son Biff has been broken, due to the fact that Biff caught Willy in an affair he was having with another girl; Biff was heartbroken to fin...
As a result, Willy attempts to achieve the same level of success as Dave Singleman, but is unable to because he lacks the necessary skill that one needs regardless of one’s image.... ... middle of paper ... ... This is evident through Willy not being able to achieve his unrealistic dream, the problems Biff faces due to Willy instilling his dream into him, Willy's pride which becomes his hubris, and the illusions of his dream which escalates into his suicide.
Biff discovers who he is and is determined to become true to himself. Happy, unfortunately is destined for living in the same delusion that Willy lived in.
Biff reveals that not just Willy, but all the family has been lying about their success. He begs to his father, asking him to give up on his dream of Biff being a massive success. Biff seems to accept something that Willy never could, he isn’t special. He shouts to Willy that he “is a dime a dozen and so are you”. Willy becomes infuriated at the notion that he is a common man and cries out “ I am not a dime a dozen, I am Willy Loman!” The confrontation ends with Willy weeping, realizing that Biff truly does love him. However, Biff’s efforts were in vain as Willy also exclaims “That boy is going to be magnificent”. Willy is not able to cope with the idea that both he and his son are not destined for greatness. And in his final act, he commits suicide, in an attempt to supply his son with the life insurance money. Or perhaps more importantly, to supply him with an opportunity to achieve the dream he never
Willy still struggles to find out why his son, Biff, has not made anything of himself yet. Instead of a stable job, Biff has been a farmhand across the country earning only $35 a week (Act I. Scene I). Willy does not know where he has gone wrong with raising his kids, with his job, and overall with his life (Krutch, 308-309). To find the solutions to the problems driving him insane, Willy looks to his past. While he is day-dreaming he actually talks to himself and makes his family worried about his health and sanity. He daydreams and feels as if he is actually encountering the past once again in his journey. Willy is desperately trying to find out what has gone wrong in his life, why no one responds to him in the positive way that he used to, and why Biff does not have a stable job or a family. Through his trek to finding his mistakes in life, Willy finds r...
...s personal failure and betrayal of his soul and family through the meticulously constructed artifice of his life. He cannot grasp the true personal, emotional, spiritual understanding of himself as a literal “loman” or “low man.” Willy is too driven by his own “willy”-ness or perverse “willfulness” to recognize the slanted reality that his desperate mind has forged. Still, many critics, focusing on Willy’s entrenchment in a quagmire of lies, delusions, and self-deceptions, ignore the significant accomplishment of his partial self-realization. Willy’s failure to recognize the anguished love offered to him by his family is crucial to the climax of his torturous day, and the play presents this incapacity as the real tragedy. Despite this failure, Willy makes the extreme sacrifice in his attempt to leave an inheritance that will allow Biff to fulfill the American Dream.
Most critics can agree that Biff idolizes his father and enjoys working alongside him. However, Biff finally comes to terms that he has been living a lie his entire life. Even though some critics may or may not believe that Biff Loman is the reason that Willy ends his life, one can assume that Biff plays a significant role in the life of Willy Loman.
Willy constantly battles with living in the past. Throughout the entire play, he seems to wander off into his confused mind. After Willy returns home early from a business trip, Linda, his wife, and he converse about their son Biff as follows:
In conclusion, Biff will not follow in Willy’s footsteps due to the fact that he has no motivation or desire to go into the business world. Willy dies thinking that his life was a success because of the money he is leaving for his son whereas it is not, at least in the way he thinks. Biff breaks free from Willy’s false dream and tells Happy: “He had the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong... He never knew who he was” (111). Happy does end up taking the money to start a business and while that was not Willy’s main aim; it is something rather than nothing.