Biff and Happy Death of a Salesman
Biff and Happy in Death of A Salesman It is said that the sins of the father are visited upon the sons. In Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman, the shortcomings of the father, Willy Loman, have been transmitted to his two sons in such a damaging way that the two sons are crippled for life -- but in very different ways. This paper will examine those ways by analyzing the young men's relationship with each other, their mother, and most importantly, their father. "The Loman sons - Biff, 34, and the younger Happy - are refraction's of Willy." (Lyons) Biff Loman, the older brother, is his father's golden boy. For Willy Loman, his other son Happy, barely exists except as a backup to Biff, someone to hold Biff's helmet on the way to the big game. Both Biff and Happy, up through high school, absorbed all their dad's platitudes and values: the importance of "personal attractiveness," of being "well-liked," of sweet-talking their way into any situation regardless of the lies they told or the methods they used to get there. They also absorbed a deluded self-aggrandizement, a warped concept of who they are. In Biff's case it was based on who Biff was twenty years before -- a high school football hero -- a boy who "looked like Adonis" and was
destined, simply by virtue of his looks and charisma, to rise straight to the top. However, something happened at the end of Biff's high school career to change his destiny. Biff flunked math by four points, despite having enlisted his friend Bernard to give him the answers to the test. It is doubtful that his teacher, Mr. Birnbaum, knew conclusively that he'd cheated even to get a sixty-one, but because Biff had a cocky attitude and had been somewhat of a class clown throughout the course, he refused to curve Biff's grade, even though that meant Biff would not graduate with his class, and thereby lose his scholarship to the University of Virginia. Biff, as always, turned to his father for help; if anyone could sweet-talk Birnbaum into giving him the extra four points, Biff was convinced it would have been Willy. Willy, was on a business trip in Boston that day, so Biff promptly hopped a train for New England. When he arrives at Willy's hotel, it is the middle of the night. He knocks on Willy's door, and it takes Willy an unconscionably long time to come to the door; when he finally does, Biff sees that there is a scantily clad woman in his father's room. He is crushed. His father has been the center of his life, and the knowledge that this "family man" has been cheating on his wife -- Biff's mother -- causes a severe crisis in Biff's personality. It is literally more than he can handle. Not only will Biff's relationship with his father never be the same, but also Biff will never be the same either. Biff goes away and embarks on a series of dead-end jobs and botched career starts. He takes courses, but never pursues jobs in those fields; he gets an entry-level job but inevitably cuts corners to move him up the ladder more quickly, and winds up getting fired. One of Biff's problems again reinforced by early experiences with his father is that when he gets frustrated he steals. As a boy Biff and his brother Happy stole lumber from a nearby construction project, and rather than punishing them for this, Willy was delighted with their wiliness. This early reinforcement of what
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Approximate Word count = 1407
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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