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What is the relationship between willy and biff
Willy and biff the past
What is the relationship between willy and biff
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Every person has a different interpretation of his or hers own morals. In the play Death of a Salesman, father Willy Loman raises his two sons with idea that being well-liked is more important than being hard working. Throughout the lives of Willy’s sons Biff and Happy Loman, they struggled with finding their place in society, due to the fact that they thought of themselves , but in reality they are not successful in the least. It is difficult to identify morally ambiguous characters such as Willy, Biff, and Happy Loman as purely good or purely evil, because each character has the potential for both. Willy Loman wants to be good and do good, but sometimes his good intentions lead him to make bad decisions for not only himself but as a parent also. Willy truly believe he was a good husband, father, and salesman, but in reality he failed at all …show more content…
Happy has relations with the wives of the men he works for and he know that he has just ruined those women but he indulges in it but he also despises himself for it, “[Happy] hates [himself] for it. Because [he] doesn’t want the girl, and, still [he] [takes] it- [he] [loves]” (Miller 25). He is very similar to his father in this way, because his father spent a majority of his life trying to forget his affair, however Happy is continuously pursuing these affairs. Happy so much wants to be a man his father can be proud of “[Happy wants to show] everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. “[Willy] had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have—to come out number one man. [Willy] fought it out here, and this is where [Happy] gonna win it for him” (Miller 139). Happy so much wanted his father’s approval and even after his father’s death he strives for it. He is trying to continue a dream that has been buried along with his father and this will lead him to encounter the same failures as his
Willy Loman which may sound Low Man- man, writers often select the names for a reason, has two personalities one strong and one weak dreamer. The dreamer is optimistic, enterprising, including content and happy and the other is inconsistent, insecure, hypocritical, and unconscious. Both appear in all the advice he gives to his children. He is very contradictory, he is a person with excellent manual dexterity that insists on getting into sales business. He does contrary to what he wants. He is a country man, likes nature but lives in the city.
The life of Mr. Loman is one of loneliness, and lies. An online source emphasizes about Willy, “Willy convinces himself that he is successful, well- liked, and that his sons are destined for greatness.” Willy’s mind is consumed with being popular, and having material wealth. The results of Willy’s internal problems resulted with his children that could not be stable in any aspect of their lives, his failing marriage, and him struggling throughout all of his adulthood. Edward states (an online source), “Willy spent his life pursuing the wrong dreams for him. The wrong dream slowly possessed his life.” And also states, “Willy appears to have been obsessed with his goal of being known as a great salesman rather than with actually being a great salesman.” Willy is constantly under attack with thoughts of his past, to the point he has such vivid flashbacks that he will openly be talking to him, but thinking is he talking to people of the past. An online source states, “Unable to cope with reality, he entirely abandons it through his vivid fantasies and ultimately through suicide.” Willy is aware of his mistakes, but spends his time looking forward to the ‘perfect’ future he has planned, but never changes his ways to achieve his goals. Mr. and Mrs. Loman realize how different and happy Willy is when he is working outside with his hands. Both characters recognize
The play, “Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller, presents Willy Loman, as a salesman, who fails to earn a living and slowly loses his mind. Willy continuously seeks the past to find out where he went wrong. During his years in life, Willy wanted his two sons, Biff and Happy to become someone they’re not; Willy wanted them to become a salesman like him. However, because of his obsession in the American Dream of easy success and wealth, he created a life full of lies for himself and his sons. In the end because of “his misconception of himself as someone capable of greatness” leads to his downfall and the end of his life (Death of a Salesman).”
Willy Loman’s character is capable of making errors. He believes he is a very successful salesman and well liked. He also thinks that the company likes what he is doing. He once said, “I’m the New England man. I am vital in New England” (Miller pg. 32) Because of his false belief about his success Howard fired him. After he got fired charley offered him a job, but he refuses to accept, because he is too proud and jealous to work for Charley. His actions were wrong because at no time was a successful salesman. He is not a powerful character. Willy lives in his fantasies where he is the man. Who goes out to another place and comes out rich, he is love by everyone and admired by his family. In real life, he is lazy and does not live up to his own ideals. “As Aristotle explains, a tragic hero must be one of noble character and must fall from power and happiness.”(Www.ccd.rightchoice.org/lit115/poetics.html) but Willy neither has a noble characteristic nor does he fall from power because he does not have a position of power.
Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman follows protagonist Willy Loman in his search to better his and his family’s lives. Throughout Willy Loman’s career, his mind starts to wear down, causing predicaments between his wife, two sons and close friends. Willy’s descent into insanity is slowly but surely is taking its toll on him, his job and his family. They cannot understand why the man they have trusted for support all these years is suddenly losing his mind. Along with his slope into insanity, Willy’s actions become more aggressive and odd as the play goes on. Despite Willy and Biff’s “family feud”, his two sons Happy and Biff truly worry about their father’s transformation, Happy saying: “He just wants you to make good, that’s all. I wanted to talk to you about dad for a long time, Biff. Something’s – happening to him. He – talks to himself” (Miller 21). Willy, as a father, cares about his children but he wishes they would do better. He believes Biff should have been an athlete. According to Harrington, “Even figuratively, Willy is haunted, and particularly in Biff’s failure to achieve success as a sports figure” (108). This haunting is part of what led to Willy’s slow plunge into madness. As Willy’s career in sales fails, he also fails, even failing his family. Heyen adds: “He didn’t have anything of real value to give to his family, or if he did, he didn’t know what it was” (48). His debilitating flashbacks and delusional hallucinations with Uncle Ben cement his horrifying realizations that he has let down his family. Willy Loman blames the economy for his downfall in his career. In one of his more extreme outbursts he exclaims, “There’s more people! That’s what’s ruining this country! Population is getting out of control. ...
In brief, it is apparent that Willy’s own actions led to not only his own demise, but his children’s as well. The salesman tragically misinterpreted the American Dream for only the superficial qualities of beauty, likeability and prosperity. Perhaps if Willy had been more focused on the truth of a person’s character, rather than purely physical aspects, his family’s struggles and his own suicide could have been avoided. On the whole, Arthur Miller’s play is evidence that the search for any dream or goal is not as easy and the end result may seem. The only way to realize the objective without any despair is the opposite of Willy Loman’s methods: genuineness, perseverance and humility.
Like countless characters in a play, Willy struggles to find who he is. Willy’s expectations for his sons and The Woman become too high for him to handle. Under the pressure to succeed in business, the appearance of things is always more important than the reality, including Willy’s death. The internal and external conflicts aid in developing the character Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
In the play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller,Willy Loman, an unsuccessful businessman struggling to support his family is completely out of touch with reality throughout the plot line. Many characters throughout this play and their interactions with Willy have shown the audience his true colors and what he thinks is important in life. His constant lying and overwhelming ego certainly does not portray his life in factual terms, but rather in the false reality that he has convinced himself he lives in. Being raised by Willy, Biff and Happy are becoming failures and have no motivation to work hard to achieve anything in life. Throughout this novel, Biff has a few recurrences with stealing.
Due to his being over shadowed by his elder brother Happy has grown up to be a stunted version of Willy's vision of the American Dream. Because of this it is difficult to identify with him; throughout the play he is presented as a one-dimensional character.
Willy Loman stands in, so to speak, for every American male who defined himself as a man, husband and father with respect to his success in the workplace and his capacity for grabbing a share of the material American dream. Willy Loman is a man who has deluded himself and has judged himself more harshly than his wife or his son. His tragedy is that he comes to an understanding of this delusion too late to make any changes in his life. Whether or not we as readers or as members of the audience agree with his judgment is irrelevant. It is Willy's own failure that is important in this play.
Willy Loman will bring his downfall upon himself as he entices his own disillusions and the bedrock of his values pertaining to success and how one can achieve it. His failure to recognize the fruitless outcome of his own idealism will seal his fated suicide and have a determining effect on the failures of his two sons that when adolescent, idolized their father as a guid...
The only way to become a truly happy person is to surround yourself with the things that make you happy. Setting logical goals and pursuing dreams is going to lead to a successful life. In the play, Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy, Linda, Biff, and Happy use self-deception as a means to mentally escape the reality of their lives. Biff is the only character who becomes self-aware by the end of the play. He realizes that his whole life has been a lie and that Willy’s standards for Biff’s achievements in life are simply unreachable. Happy is too caught up in himself throughout the play to realize that his father is in need of an escape from his dysfunctional life. Willy has lived his whole life setting these goals for himself that he simply can’t attain. Happy makes it known at the end of the play that he is planning to follow in his father’s footsteps. This foreshadows the downfall of Happy’s life to come. Linda is constantly reassuring Willy that the decisions he has made are the right choices. She finds out about his possible suicide attempts and she refuses to seek help for him. She constantly tells his that he is doing great when in reality his career is going nowhere and his relationship with his sons gets worse as the days go on. Willy was a man who claimed to have a good sense of pride. He believes that he thrived in his times of struggle. He lost the battle for his life and ended his life due to the constant disappointments and failures that he had to live with every day. Willy refused to see the truth in his life and continued to feed off the lies. He got so caught up in his lies that he lost what the truth really was.
Moreover, the psychological view of Willy Loman is shown as a person who works as a traveling salesman and decides to commit suicide because the “American Dream” overwhelms him. As Charley says in the story: “the only thing you got in this world is what you can sell”. He is a normal person “who embodies traditional American values of success.”(Hansberry) In fact, Willy Loman wants to a great extent believe that he is one of the finest salesmen, a winner in life and a great father. For Mr. Loman, the accomplish...
Throughout his life, Willy Loman thinks of himself as well-liked in the play "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller. It is the most important attribute to him. Willy lived his life thinking he had thousands of friends all over the New England territory and that he would be recognized anywhere he would go. He boasts this to his sons and they think he is the greatest man on Earth. He raises his two sons, Biff and Happy, to be well-liked and Willy does not care about their grades. He believes they will be better prepared for the business world if they are well-liked, and does not think education matters as much as personality, appearance, and physical skill. Although he has set high standards for sons, his morals are being well-liked, he thinks he is the best salesman in his firm, and he claims to be extremely loyal to his family; despite this, he is none of these.
Willy Loman’s tragic flow leads him to purse the idea that reputation in society has more relevancies in life than knowledge and education to survive in the business. His grand error of wanting recognition drove him crazy and insane and lead to his tragic death. Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris , and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distend for him the beginning.