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Character study death of a salesman
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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.
Disrespectfulness is the cause of personal tension in this play. There are many occurrences where a character is being disrespectful, which triggers emotional and physical conflicts. Throughout the movie, Willy is extremely disrespectful to his wife Linda. He loses his patience every time she talks during a conversation that he is having. When he talks to Biff at the table about his new job opportunities, Linda adds some remarks like, “I’ll make breakfast,” (1853) and Willy loses his control. He turns to her quickly and tells her to shut up. Sometimes he even puts his finger angrily to her face, screaming at her to shut her mouth, even though she is just adding relative comments.
Linda does not lose respect for Willy for his actions as much as Biff does. Biff cares about his mother dearly and does not like to see her being yelled at. He grinds his teeth when he sees his father yell at his mother, because he knows that if he argues, there will be that much more tension between him and his father. However, Biff cannot take it much longer because he is losing respect for his father. He knows his father should never get physical with his mother, and he finally takes action before it gets violent. He grabs Willy by the arm and screams at him not to yell at her. Willy gets angry at first, but then goes to bed guilt-ridden.
Loss of respect can ruin a relationship. Biff left town for many reasons, but one important one had to do with Willy cheating on his wife. During a flashback in the play, Willy is in a room with a woman when Biff knocks on the door. The woman was actually in the washroom as Biff came in, but came out before Biff left. Biff saw the woman and knew that his father was not being loyal to his mother.
The consequence being the demolition of his relationship with his beloved son. Throughout the play the playwright mentions a women’s voice being heard by Willy here and there. “From the Darkness is heard the laughter of a woman. Willy doesn’t turn to it” (Miller). For me as soon as I read this stage direction I immediately thought that maybe this woman is someone that Willy had a past relationship with or perhaps an affair. It isn’t until the early end of Act II that we find out that the Women’s voice is indeed of Willy’s mistress. Biff who is Willy’s oldest son knew about his father’s affair and ever since than in a way hated him. When Biff was in his High School days he and Willy had a very close and loving relationship. Biff was a hotshot star football player and was receiving scholarships from several colleges. Willy was very proud of his son’s looks and popularity in his school. Willy and Biff were so close that no matter what Biff did Willy ignored it. For instance, in one of Willy’s Flashbacks for Act 1 there is a conversation between Willy and his sons about the football that Biff got. Biff tells Willy that he borrowed a football from the locker room and Willy tells him to return it back. However, when Happy
Biff loses respect for his father and soon realizes what lie he has been living. Willy is in denial about his involvement with Biff’s failure in life, and when he is confronted about it by Bernard asking, “What happened in Boston, Willy? (141), Willy quickly becomes defensive, saying, “What are you trying to do, blame it on me? Don’t talk to me that way!” (141). After finding out about Biff’s reaction of burning his favorite University of Virginia shoes that symbolize Biff’s hopes and dreams for the future, Willy realizes what impact the affair had on his son. Willy’s lack of acceptance of reality affects his relationship because he never owned up or admitted he had an affair. This weighs heavy on Willy because the hate from his son will always be there. Biff loses all respect for his father and sees not only a failed business man, but in general a failed man. Throughout it all, Willy’s wife still remains supportive of him and constantly reminds him of her love for him. Despite this, Willy still yearns to have what he does not and pursues “the other woman.” It is bright as day that Willy finds some sort of comfort and validation for his affair with a woman who makes him feel wanted, yet his wife does the same thing. This guilt is always carried around with Willy which is just another contributor to the death of Willy
“BIFF [crying, broken]: Will you let me go for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” By saying this Biff tries to address his family on the giant rift between Willy’s dreams for him and reality. He tries to explain that all he wants is for Willy to let go of those dreams and high standards he has set for him so he can create his own reality rather than fulfill his father's dream. Willy's dreams for Biff were very unrealistic for the reality of his situation,which caused him to fill unsuccessful and push himself away from his father. The reason Willy wanted his children to do so well and had such big dreams for them was because he wasn't able to achieve the dream and had a fear he had failed and so he wanted to force his dream to be fulfilled by his children. Therefore, due to Willy’s wildly unrealistic amount of pride, causing him to make poor decisions, betray his family by having a mistress and finally his unrealistic dreams for his sons, he paved his way towards his failure and his deep fear of isolation and
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
One problem Willy has is that he does not take responsibility for his actions; this problem only gets worse because of his lies. Biff looks up to Willy, so when he finds out that Willy has an affair in Boston, Biff is petrified. Biff realizes his hero, dad, the one he wants to impress, is a phony and a liar. Willy destroys Biff's dream of playing football by saying he does not have to study for the math regents, he also Willy telling Bernard to give Biff the answers. When Biff fails the regents, he does not want to retake the test because he is so disgusted with his hero and does not want to succeed. Not only did Willy destroy Biff's dream, he also broke his vows and refused to admit it. Biff is a failure, in Willy's eye, in most part due to Willy and what happened in Boston. Willy refuses to take responsibility for what he did, so he lies about Biff. Willy tells Bernard that Biff has been doing great things out west, but decided to come back home to work on a "big deal". Willy knows that Biff is a bum who has not amounted to anything, but he refuses to take responsibility for what happened in Boston, so he changes the story of Biff's success. Throughout Willy's life he continued to lie. It might have stopped if Linda did not act the way as she did. Linda is afraid to confront Willy, so she goes along with his outlandish lies.
Willy's affair with The Woman is a crucial turning point in his relationship with Biff, his oldest son. When Biff catches Willy and his mistress, Willy first attempts to distract his son and then be rid of him. However, his attempted cover-up fails and forever shatters the idolatrous relationship between father and son.
Willy also has very poor parenting skills. He has two children Biff and Happy. Willy excuses Biff for a lot of events when he was younger. If Biff stole something, Willy just brushes it off and says that is was no big deal. He didn’t even care when Biff failed math and did not graduate from high school. He measured success in how many people you knew not what your grades are. In one breath Willy would say that Biff is lazy and then in the next say he’s not.
Growing up, Willy doted on Biff the most, which reflects the way his own father doted on his older brother Ben. Their father-son relationship was strong until the incident with The Woman caused a rift to grow between them. Willy feared seeing his son due to the chance of being exposed, and Biff did not want to be reminded of his father’s betrayal. However, near the end of the play, Biff and Willy had a heart to heart which seemingly did some repair work on their relationship. Biff grew to forgive his father and confessed that he loved him despite their past. He experienced growth through the events of the story, making him another candidate for the
Biff is home for a visit and is talking with his brother, Happy in their room just as they did when they were young boys. Willy has come home prematurely from a business trip and is downstairs when the boys overhear him talking to himself in a sort of quasi-reality. In the meantime, the two boys discuss the past. It is interesting here that the roles of the two boys with respect to each other seem to have reversed. Happy was the shy one growing up and Biff had all the courage and self-confidence. Now, Biff appears to have been beaten down by life and is on the brink of the se...
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
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a tragic play about an aging and struggling salesman, Willy Loman, and his family’s misguided perception of success. In Willy’s mind, being well-liked is more important than anything else, and is the means to achieving success. He teaches this flawed idea to his sons, Biff and Happy, and is faithfully supported by his wife Linda. Linda sympathizes with Willy’s situation, knowing that his time as an important salesman has passed. Biff and Happy hold their father to impossibly high standards, and he tries his best to live up to them.
A major part of the reader's animosity towards Willy stems from his responsibility for the ruin of his sons. Willy's affair ends up being the reason that Biff ends up a high-school failure and a football has-been. This blunder both disheartens and destroys his eldest son. It becomes the reason Biff refuses to go to summer school; it becomes the reason that Biff leaves home. Yet, this is all a result of Willy's need to be likeable. He cheats on his doting wife simply because it makes him feel special, because it gives him proof that women other that Linda are interested in him, because it makes him feel well liked. A woman "picked [him]"; a woman laughs when he makes jokes about keeping pores open; a woman pays him some attention (38).
“Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller in 1948 attempts to give the audience an unusual glimpse into the mind of a Willy Loman, a mercurial 60-year-old salesman, who through his endeavor to be “worth something”, finds himself struggling to endure the competitive capitalist world in which he is engulfed. Arthur Miller uses various theatrical techniques to gradually strip the protagonist down one layer at a time, each layer revealing another truth about his distorted past. By doing this, Miller succeeds in finally exposing a reasonable justification for Willy’s current state of mind. These techniques are essential to the play, as it is only through this development that Willy can realistically be driven to motives of suicide.
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is a play that follows the troubles of a salesman named William “Willy” Loman, whose overzealous definition of true success inevitably leads to his suicide. I feel that a few of Willy’s unique characteristics contribute to his downfall, but that his unstable point of view and completely misconstrued concept of reality make the greatest contributions.
One important event that caused friction between Biff and his father Willy was about college. Since Biff did not pass math, he had to attend summer school. However, Biff refuses to do so. This made him realize he is going nowhere in life, which prompted him to return home. On opposing ends, his father Willy only sees Biff as lazy. “Biff is a lazy bum!” (Miller 859). Biff wants a simpler life, he knows the