English — Essay Gabriela Dvoracek 3M2

Biff says of his father: "He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong... He never knew who he was."

This quite severe statement of Biff’s appears at the very end of the book, in the Requiem, where the main characters of Death of a Salesman express their opinions, feelings and also questions about Willy’s suicide.

As Linda wonders why her husband committed suicide, why he wasn’t satisfied with what they had achieved during their life, and as Happy considers his father’s death as totally unnecessary, seeing his dreams as good dreams, and believing that they would have been able to help him somehow, Biff’s point of view is totally different :"He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong... He never knew who he was."

Biff probably is the only member of the Loman family to understand the situation, the reason why his father chose to commit suicide, why he suddenly felt that life wasn’t worth living anymore, and in what desperate state of mind Willy must have been just before he died. Charley understands that too, in a certain way : "No man only needs a little salary. (...) A salesman is got to dream, boy." (pp. 101-102)

So Charley understands Willy’s unsatisfaction and his desillusion, but Biff knows much more about his father : he recognizes Willy’s insignificance and limitations, he knows his father’s incapacity to fulfill his dreams. He is aware that these dreams actually were totally crazy, strong and unachievable for a man such as Willy Loman. A low man with great dreams: that’s what Willy was.

Biff sees his father as a man who spent his entire life chasing a false dream, both pathetic and tragic. This may be in relation with the second part of the quotation : "He never knew who he was." That is, Willy never knew his limits, he never realized that he wasn’t the well-known, well-liked and successful salesman he longed to be. Even in his sixties he didn’t recognize that he wasn’t at the top of his job anymore... In fact, he didn’t want to face the fact that he was an old, broken and bitter man who hadn’t managed to achieve the American Dream. So he kept bragging about himself until the very end, until his very end.

Like a child : idealistic, stubborn, living in fantasies. Willy Loman was dreaming of being a great salesman, always on the road, and eventually dying rich and successful. So he might have felt that he could approach this dream through his own death : taking his own life, he would leave his family the insurance money and make them "rich" in a way. Without taking his responsibilities, without facing his failure as a salesman, a husband and a father. Never letting go of his fantasy. Like a child trapped in a man’s body, dreaming of becoming an astronaut or a millionaire!

Moreover it can’t be mere chance that the rather cruel sentence ("He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong... He never knew who he was.") is pronounced by Biff. Maybe he was the only one to have the opportunity to see his father as a real fake, as a real low man; during the Boston episode, when he discovered that Willy had a mistress. From then on, we can suppose that Biff is the only Loman who doesn’t feel like he must have an infinite respect towards his father : as a little boy, he probably was as deceived as a child can be by a parent that he adores. That is undoubtedly why Biff has the tendency to be more severe than the others; he knows, they don’t.

For Biff, Willy certainly was that lost man whose acquaintance we, readers, make in Death of a Salesman, not that impressive father figure that he should have been. As Miller himself wrote in his Introduction to CP : "And when asked, what Willy was selling, what was in his bags, I could only reply, Himself."

Reading books such as Death of a Salesman, really makes you realize that there is much more in life than the American Dream, a "dream factory" that can even lead you to sell your own identity.