Father Son Relationships

Being a good parent is something that is extremely difficult, and takes lots of work and dedication. When guiding a child through life and into the future parenting becomes a balance of encouragement and pressure. As motivational speaker Denis Waitley once said, “Listen to the desires of your children. Encourage them and then give them the autonomy to make their own decisions.” In the play Death Of A Salesman By Arthur Miller, the the main character, Willy Loman confronts the challenges of raising successful children. While raising his first son Biff Loman, Willy puts a lot of pressure on him to be extremely successful. Thought his Life Willy strives to gain as much wealth and notoriety as he possibly can. In his mind he will accomplish that

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

He always put pressure on Biff to be the very best, and never settled for anything less. Ultimately the high expectations and pressure Willy put on Biff destroyed their relationship. Willy would often tell Biff how special he was and that he was destined for great things in life. This was very toxic for their relationship because anything short of exceptional was not accepted in their household. Later in the story when Biff became to realize that he was just an ordinary person all he wanted was to do something that made him happy. Willy was extremely disappointed in Biffs decision and even said that Biff was doing it purley out of spite. When discussing his choices in life Biff tells Willy, “I never got anywhere because you blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody! Thats whos fault is is! (131). Because Willy told Biff that he was some larger than life person, it set him up for failure later in life because he had no idea how to deal with failure. This made it so that the only thing that Biff could enjoy doing was working alone on a farm. Even though this play is about seventy years old, the message of the proper way to raise kids still applies today. By putting extreme amounts of pressure on your children to be rich one day, it is setting them up to fail miserably. This is because only the child knows what will make them happy one day, and by forcing them to be something