Father/Son Relationship in Death of a Salesman

This study will explore the relationship between the father Willy Loman and his son Biff in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. Specifically, the study will argue that Willy and Biff stand diametrically opposed to one another with respect to their views of the American Dream. Willy is a broken man who refuses to see that his blind seeking of that Dream has broken him, and Biff is the realist who accepts his own and his father's failure to bring that Dream to fruition.

There is friction between Biff and Willy from the beginning of the play to the end. Talking with his younger brother Happy, Biff says, "Why does Dad mock me all the time? . . . Everything I say there's a twist of mockery on his face. I can't get near him."

Willy both loves and hates Biff because Biff was Willy's hope for a vicarious success in life, but Biff has let him down. Biff is Willy's son in that Willy has taught him the values of the salesman in the kingdom of capitalism, but Biff is a traitor to Willy's values because he does not really believe in them. He is not dedicated to the American Dream as Willy is. Biff tries to live up to his father's requirements for success, but his heart is never really in it. Biff finally sees that he pities his father, even hates him in a sense, because Willy's life is so thoroughly false. Willy, on the other hand, hates Biff because he sees in his son a reflection of his own failure.

Biff and Willy's relationship was also torn by Biff's discovery of Willy's infi

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mpty dream to disaster. He also hates Willy because of the abuse that he has heaped on those he supposedly loved, such as Linda, Willy's wife. Biff says to Linda: "Stop making excuses for him! He always, always wiped the floor with you. Never had an ounce of respect for you." Miller himself sees the relationship between father and son as marked by a disaster on one hand and an awakening on the other hand: "I am sorry the self-realization of the older son, Biff, is not a weightier counterbalance to Willy's disaster in the audience mind." As William Hawkins writes in his essay "Death of a Salesman: Powerful Tragedy" in the ~Criticism" section of the Viking edition of the play, Through most of [Willy's] career runs the insistent legacy of "amounting to something" on his adopted terms, which he forces on his favorite son [Biff]. With indulgent adoration he unbalances the boy, demanding a mutual idolatry which he himself inevitably fails. . . . in the end, after repeated failure, Biff sees the truth, too late to really penetrate his father's mind. The boy's tortured efforts to explain his own true little destiny can only crack open the years-long rift, and the salesman, with all his dream's lost shadows, has no alternative to d

Category: Literature - F