Rising Up Poverty is something that has been described as something where the people lack the resources to survive. Generally, that resource is considered to be money. While money may be one of the big indicators of poverty. There are other indicators as well. These indicators can be seen in the two plays A Raisin in the Sun and Death of a Salesman. In those plays, two of the characters are attempting to rise up out of poverty. One of those characters though has more resources to rise up than the other. The character, Beantham, in Raisin in the Sun, is more prepared to rise to the middle class than Biff from Death of a Salesman. That is because of Beneatha having more resources at her grasp and more of a mental as well as emotional stability compared to Biff.
Biff
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He is constantly trying to find his place in the world. He jumps around from job to job until he ends up back at his family home. There he attempts to get back up on his feet and achieve a fresh start. He has a problem though. That is his resources. According to Ruby Paine, “Emotional resources are the most important of all resources because, when present, they allow the individual not to return to old habit patterns” (17). Biff shows signs of maniac behavior stemming from a past emotional trauma. “Quote” This has caused reoccurring problems for Biff throughout his life. He has never been able to hold the same job for long and eventually leads to him stealing. The past trauma affected two of his resources: emotional and role models. Biff always looked up to his dad, but one day that all changed. “Quote” This is a defining moment in Biff’s life that forever impacted him, so that he could never reach his true potential. These resources were the major factors that lead to Biff being stuck in a rut of abject poverty for most of his
While Biff is in some ways desperate to impress his father, he is also conscious about the fact that Willy has failed his attempt to be successful in his career. He considers his dad’s dreams materialistic and unreachable. As a matter of fact, in the Requiem, even after his father’s death, Biff says: “He had the wrong dreams. All, all wrong.” Unlike Happy and Willy, Biff is self-aware and values facts; Willy never was a successful salesman and he never wanted to face the truth. On the other hand, Biff is conscious about his failures and the weaknesses of his personality. During an argument with his father, Biff admits that his dad made him “so arrogant as a boy” that now he just can’t handle taking
The fight for justice is not always unequivocal or favorable, sometimes justice is given by means that do not seem fair at all. William Styron says in a novel that life “is a search for justice.” It is blatant that throughout Khaled Hosseini's novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, female characters are continuously battered with injustices. Hosseini hones into the oppression of women and the fight for women empowerment through the life of one of his main characters, Mariam. Her journey is shown throughout the novel where she struggles to search for and understand justice.
Biff’s trouble with seeking the truth about himself is a development that is seen from the past and present parts of the play. This adversity was due to the fact he assumed no values of his own, but accepted those of Willys personal attractiveness and being well liked. This concept of himself is discouraged when he went to visit Billy Oliver for a business proposition and had failed. Biff had said, “I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been”. Here Biff is coming to terms with who he is, developing a different and mature mindset. The lie wasn't only about how he perceived himself, but of how others perceived him; an idea of what he aspired to be influenced by his father.
Biff Loman is oldest of the Loman brothers and had always been told he was better than everyone else. Biff believed this and acts as if he were an Adonis for the entirety of his childhood. Biff has fed into all of the compliments that his father gave him as a child, and now at the age of 34 is realizing that everything that his life has been one big lie, “BIFF: He walked away. I saw him for one minute. I got so mad I could’ve torn the walls down! How the hell did I ever get the idea I was a salesman there? I even believed myself that I’d been a
Lazy — Biff Does not like to study or do anything related to hard work other than farming. This is because he grew up being taught you only need to be popular to be successful. Things might have worked out for him even with believing this illusion, however he flunks math and loses all his scholarships.
Willy’s biggest issue with his son is that he let him down by not being any more successful than him. He feels like Biff is failing on purpose just to make him look bad. Although, he has no decent job and is single; Biff has become disoriented about life. Earlier in the play Biff tells Happy, “I tell ya Hap, I don't know what the future is. I don't know - what I'm supposed to want” (Miller266). Biff once looked up to his father as a role model, but lost all faith in him once finding out that he was having an affair. Ever since he has rejected Willy’s commitment of being a husband and also a father. To add to his ruins are Willy’s ideas of how Biff should get ahead in life. Willy taught Biff that popularity was the right way to get to the top, rather than hard-work and dedication. Trying to live by his dad’s standards caused Biff to fail high school and become unable to put forth the effort to become
1. In "Battle Royal," why do his grandfather's last words cause so much anxiety in the family? What does his grandfather mean when he says,"I want you to overcome 'em with yeses, undermine 'em with grins, agree 'em to death." (Pg. 2)?
While Biff was still married to Alice he was lonesome and dreamed for children, after Alice’s death, Biff began to fantasize that Mick and his niece Baby were his children and he imagined how he would raise them. Also, following the death of his wife, Biff began to wear her perfume and he took up sewing. Biff is a very confused character and he is not sure were he fits in society, he tried to live the all-American life but it backfired on him. The death of Alice was the turning point for Biff because he realized that he had wasted fifteen years on a loveless marriage. Biff is a puzzle with all the pieces mixed up; he wants to fix a problem but he doesn’t know how.
Willy’s clear-cut expectations of his son can be evidently seen even in the early stages Biff’s life, which end up creating a lot of tension between Willy and Biff when Biff doesn’t meet his father’s expectations. Even when Biff is an adult and still hasn’t become successful in his father’s eyes, Willy’s expectations persist, as in a heated argument between the two Willy tells grown-up Biff that “the door of [Biff’s] life is wide open!” (132). Even though Biff will clearly never become successful in his father’s eyes, Willy still forces his unreasonable expectations on Biff, creating hostility between the two. Although Biff initially attempts to fulfill his father’s definition of success by working as a shipping clerk, Biff realizes that he will never fulfill his father’s unrealistic expectations: “Pop, I’m nothing!
Biff and Happy idolized their father when they were young. The stories they were told made them picture their father as a popular, successful, well-known salesman. As Biff grew up, he found himself being told things about his father like "A salesman has to dream, it comes with the territory." At the end of the story when Linda says they we free, Biff is free to realize
In many ways Biff is similar to his father. In the beginning of the play we see that Biff shares many of the same ideas as Willy. He values being well-liked above everything else and sees little value in being smart or honest. One of Biff's main flaws is his tendency to steal. Early in the play we learn that he has stolen a football from the school locker. When Willy finds out about this, instead of disciplining Biff, he says that the coach will probably congratulate him on his initiative. We also learn that Biff once stole a box of basketballs from Bill Oliver. This foreshadows the scene in which Biff steals Bill
In “Miss Brill,” Katherine Mansfield utilizes Miss Brill’s thoughts and actions and the surroundings to characterize Miss Brill as a lonely character. Mansfield immediately introduces Miss Brill with a very odd scene that shows her conversation with the fur coat. This quickly and effectively establishes the type of person Miss Brill is. As a result, Mansfield suggests that Miss Brill is a lonely and an “abnormal” person to illustrate to the audience how society treats those who are not considered “normal” through the later actions of a young couple.
Biff is one of the main characters in the play "Death of a Salesman" by Arthur Miller. Biff is Willy's and Linda's son. He was the star of the football team and had scholarships to 3 college's, but he flunked math and couldn't graduate, so he tried to work at many different jobs, and failed at each. Finally, he decided to head out west, and work on farms.
Biff is the apple of his father’s eye. Young, handsome, strong, intelligent, and full of ambition, Biff is going to take the world by storm, and Willy intends to living vicariously through him. This is not to be however. After Biff’s disastrous attempt to get his father to discuss grades with his math teacher, Biff gives up. Entirely. At one point, he wanted to work and to succeed in order to please his father, but after he discovers Willy cavorting with another woman, Biff does not want to give his father the satisfaction of a flourishing son. Suddenly, Willy is a liar in his eyes, and later in life, this causes Biff to have an almost violent relationship with him. (1268) What makes the strain worse is Willy’s guilt, because he knows whose fault the tension is, yet he cannot bring himself to admit it.
Ever since Biff was a child, his father, Willy, had created a perception of Biff being successful and far beyond any person or boy who worked hard, like Bernard, simply because he was popular and well liked. In school, Biff was popular- he was a star player on the football team and was on the track to receive multiple college scholarships. However, Biff had been constantly behind in his school work and was slowly failing math. Bernard was always chasing Biff around, trying to get him to do homework, trying to prove that “just because he printed the University of Virginia on his sneakers doesn’t mean they’ve got to graduate him” (Miller, 33). Willy, however, is so caught up in this lie that he disregards the warning signs,