Virtually all parents have hopes and expectations for their children, but they express them in different ways. It is reasonable for parents to wish success in the form of fame upon their children for example, as financial stability and attention can bring happiness. However, these expectations can be overbearing and have the potential to do more harm than good. The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller and the story “Two Kinds” by Amy Tan explore this age-old conflict. Jing Mei and Biff both struggle with the expectations set forth by their parents.
Although parents usually set expectations because they want the best for their children, these high hopes often backfire. In Death of a Salesman, Biff and Happy’s father, Willy sees success as being well liked by others and a rich businessman. He is distraught when his oldest son, Biff, does not reach this kind of success by the age of 32 because he is not interested in the same lifestyle. Biff explains his dislike to his brother, saying, “to devote your whole life to keeping stock, or making phone calls, or selling or buying. To suffer fifty weeks of the year for the sake of a two-week vacation, when all you really desire is to be outdoors, with your shirt off. And always to have to get ahead of the next fella. And still- that’s how you build a future” (Miller 22). Biff prefers manual labor and being outdoors to more ordinary work because that is when he is at his happiest but his father has pushed his narrower definition of success onto him, leaving him with the idea that farming is not a viable way to build a future. Willy thinks he wants the best for his son, but in reality he wants his son to live the life that Willy failed to achieve. Similarly, Jing Mei from “Two ...
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...job because that is what his father has taught Biff to want through his expectations. Under Willy’s influence, Biff feels like a failure. Both Jing Mei and Biff feel guilty for not pleasing their parents. These expectations only create an atmosphere of shame and regret without good reason. By having high expectations for their children, parents are discouraging them from being their own person and cause them to never feel good enough.
Fueled by their view of success and ideas of the American dream, parents can push their children into small metaphorical boxes and ignore their needs, wants, and preferences. They often accidentally create a toxic environment for development despite sincerely trying to do what is best for their son or daughter. Strict enforcement of parental expectations frequently does harm and rarely turns children into “successful” adults.
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
BANG! Your father is dead. Within a few seconds, although he attempted many times, your father dies. He gave up. All the fights, all the disrespect, and all the struggles are behind you. However, all the hope, all the passion, and all the love is still there. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the main conflict is between Willy Lowman and his son Biff. Most of their struggles are based on disrespect; however, much of the tension throughout the play is also caused by the act of giving up.
From Biff’s perspective, he believes that he might finally have a way to please his father. Although, through High School he was the one he father was proud of, ever
In the play, Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, Biff Loman at a young age, lied, cheated, and stole all because of his father. And he continued to do that as he got older, he stole valuable items because he didn't have the money to afford it. As biff does this, he realizes, that he no longer has any hope. As Biff grew up throughout the story, the reader saw how he valued lying, cheating and stealing as well as he did not value the significance to succeed in school and in life. He just wanted to be, “the guy”. As Biff grows older, he comes to the realization that what he was doing then had a negative impact on his life today. He finally came to a realization that, “I stole myself out of every good job since high school!” (131) As Biff cheated others and himself at a young age, he never
Biff Loman is a young man, 34 years of age, who has spent the majority of his adulthood bouncing from one job to the next. For this reason, his father, Willy, has much displeasure in his son’s lack of financial stability which is a major factor in his own health complications. Although Biff suggest that there are other reasons leading to Willy’s complications, Biff’s brother, Happy, informs him that his father often has conversations with himself that support the claim that Biff is to blame. The relationship between father and son is volatile, yet loving at the same time. Willy has placed high expectations upon Biff for him to succeed in the business world; however Biff has not wanted to be a part of this world, as he has found pleasure working
In Death of a Salesman, a play written by Arthur Miller, Miller reflects the theme that every man needs to be honest with him self and act in accordance with his nature by displaying success and failure in different lights. Miller embodies the theme through characters in the play by explaining how their success and failures in being true to themselves help shapes their fates. Strongest evidence of Miller’s theme is reflected in the characteristics of Biff Loman, Benard, and Willy Loman. Through out the play, these three characters never give way to other’s influence and what other’s view of being successful is.
Happy Loman has grown up to be a well-adjusted man of society. He has developed from a follower to a potentially successful businessman. Throughout his childhood, Happy always had to settle for second fiddle. Willy, his father, always seems to focus all his attention on Happy's older brother Biff. The household conversation would constantly be about how Biff is going to be a phenomenal football star, how Biff will be attending the University of Virginia and be the big man on campus, how Biff is so adulated among his friends and peers, and so on. Young Happy was always in Biff's shadow, always competing for his father's attention but failing each time. Happy would resort to such antics as laying on his back and pedaling his feet backwards to capture his father's attention but to no avail. Willy would continue to not take notice of his younger son and maintain his attention on other matters that he thought were of greater importance. Growing up under these conditions is what motivated Happy to be the man he is today.
He seems to believe that having an office job and earning your own money is the best way to be masculine, and he constantly enforces this view onto his sons, especially onto Biff who doesn’t actually want this kind of job at all; he would much rather work on a farm. Enforcing his beliefs onto his sons, especially Biff, like this has a detrimental effect on his relationship with them. Happy has a desk job, but still isn’t happy at all. He doesn’t know what he wants, and perhaps if he had been left to choose his own career path without this input from his father, then he would have been a lot happier. And with Biff not wanting a desk job, his job working on a farm seems like nothing to his father and means that he puts Biff down for it a lot. Willy constantly tells him things such as “You never grew up. Bernard does not whistle in the elevator, I assure you.” And manages to put Biff down a lot of the time. This makes Biff feel bad about his job, and even makes him consider getting a desk job just to make his father happy; even if it means missing out on his own happiness. The fact that Willy wants Biff to have a desk job also emphasises how uncertain he is about masculinity because before this time period most people worked on ranches and it was seen as an incredibly manly job. The way Willy treats him and pressures him affects their already damaged relationship with one another as there is always some kind
By prohibiting Biff from doing what he loves, Willy loses Biff’s love and respect. Willy is never shown making progress in his approach to gain fulfillment. In the end of the novel, he still does not understand that he should be satisfied simply because he has a family that loves him, Linda’s comments earlier are completely ignored. Since Willy believes that the only way to gain happiness is to become wealthy, he continues to pressure Biff so that he could achieve his own dreams through Biff’s materialistic success. Biff, who finally gathers the courage to confront his father, expresses his frustration of having to become someone he is not because of Willy’s high expectations for him. He struggles to receive Willy’s support and acceptance, but has met direct opposition every time. Even though Willy loves Biff beyond anyone else, he fails to properly convey his feelings because he does not realize that Biff’s happiness is more valuable than monetary success. Willy develops the wrong idea that everything will be perfect once Biff becomes a successful businessman, but he does not realize that Biff can only become happy if he is given the chance to pursue his own dreams. Throughout the play, Miller portrays the tragic consequences when a parent’s adherence to money pressures the child into a career against their wish. Due to the lack of love Willy
Also, in the opening sequence of the play, Biff says, “Hap, I’ve had twenty or thirty different kinds of jobs since I left. home before the war, and it always turns out the same. I just realized lately.” This conveys Biffs attitude of how successful he thinks he is. is, and how the past affects his thoughts towards it.
As Willy talks to himself in the kitchen, Biff and his younger brother, Happy, who is also visiting, reminisce about their adolescence and discuss their father's babbling, which often includes criticism of Biff's failure to live up to Willy's expectations. As Biff and Happy, dissatisfied with their lives, fantasize about buying a ranch out West, Willy becomes immersed in a daydream. He praises his sons, now younger, who are washing his car. The young Biff, a high school football star, and the young Happy appear. They interact affectionately with their father, who has just returned from a business trip. Willy confides in Biff and Happy that he is going to open his own business one day, bigger than that owned by his neighbor, Charley. Charley's son, Bernard, enters looking for Biff, who must study for math class in order to avoid failing. Willy points out to his sons that although Bernard is smart, he is not "well liked," which will hurt him in the long run.
The Pulitzer Prize winning play of Arthur Miller Death of a Salesman captures the final days in the life of a lower-middle class salesman Willy Loman, who has forced to face the terrible fact that sixty years of his life have been a failure. Miller has looked into the hearts of some ordinary Americans bewitched by the American Dream. An old man who struggles to keep pace with the expectations of the capitalistic world later succumbs to it by selling his own life and body for a price of twenty five thousand dollars. Miller mingles present, fantasy and dream to make the flow of time fluid.
The Characters of Biff and Happy in Death of a Salesman No one has a perfect life; everyone has conflicts that they must face sooner or later. The ways in which people deal with these personal conflicts can differ as much as the people themselves. Some insist on ignoring the problem for as long as possible, while others face up to the problem immediately to get it out of the way. Biff and Happy Loman are good examples of this, although both start from the same point, they end up going in different directions with Happy still living in his world of lies and Biff, being set free by the truth. Happy Loman is Willy's youngest son and is often over shadowed by his older brother Biff and ignored
Tragedy was a very controversial issue in literature until recent years. Recent figures in literature have set a clear definition for tragedy. Author Miller is one of these figures. Plays and novels have distinguished the definition of tragedy. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary tragedy is a serious piece of literature typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that excites pity or terror. Miller’s explains that a tragic hero does not always have to be a monarch or a man of a higher status. A tragic hero can be a common person. A tragedy does not always have to end pessimistically; it could have an optimistic ending. The play Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, is a tragedy because it’s hero, Willy Loman, is a tragic figure that faces a superior source, being the American dream and the struggle for success. Loman also excites pity in the reader because of his defeat and his inability to become a success or teach his children how to make their lives successful.
He sees some part of himself in his son Biff, and pressures his son to become a successful in the world of business. What he does not count on is Biff not sharing his vision for the future, and instead Biff wants to work on farms in the outdoors. Because Willy tries to force Biff into the world of business despite going against Biff’s dreams, their father-son relationship is all but destroyed. Early on in Biff’s adult life he realized that he could not work in a city for a sales company, and he would not be willing to dedicate his life to a job that he did not enjoy doing. Biff made his dreams in life very clear, but instead of supporting them and encouraging his son, Willy chose to shame his son for not choosing a career that would earn him a lot of money. Willy becomes very angry whenever Biff comes home to visit because he is reminded that his son does not share the same vision for the future that he does. When Biff comes home Willy lectures Linda about their son and says, “Biff Loman is lost. In the greatest country in the world a young man with such-personal attractiveness, gets lost” (16). Willy shows that he is very disappointed in the way that Biff has chosen to live his life, and he feels that Biff is still lost, even though Biff has stated that he is doing what makes him happy. This non recognition of Biff’s life goals severely strains