Willy A Hero

While Biff was in Boston, his discoveries manipulated the course of his life. Willy’s affair damaged the trust Biff had for him. Boys look up to their father. Once Biff saw The Woman, he no longer knew how to act. He had the intention of getting help to pass math. Willy’s affair shattered it all. Bernard explains to Willy that once Biff returned from Boston, things weren’t the same. “…I knew he’d given up his life. What happened in Boston, Willy?”

He molded Biff to act, think, and make choices the way that he would have wanted him to. When Biff was 17 years old he discovered that his father was having an affair with a woman. This changes how Biff viewed his father. This causes Biff to be completely the opposite to what Willy wanted him to become. In the process, he realizes that his own life has been nothing but a lie; a product of Willy's own imagination.

Moreover, Bernard reminds Willy that what happened in the past caused Biff to become nothing by now by asking “…he came to Boston. What about it?” (Miller, 94). Bernard still cares about an old friend Biff who “disappeared from the block for almost a month” after he flunked math (95). He would like to know what was happen to keep Biff from not going to college, but he did not get the answer.

Biff really loves his mother, and it really hurt him when she kicked him out of the house. He hates it when Willy yells at her to shut up, because he loves her. He doesn't want his mom to worried about Willy, because he knows of Willy's affair.

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

Ultimately, Biff had a break through moment when he saw his highly admired father mentally break down from being placed on a pedestal for so long. “…[Willy] blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody!” (131) He also continued on to

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

Throughout the drama, Willy, for some unknown reason, fills Biff with abhorrence. Biff looks up to his father as if he is God and is driven to get into the University of Virginia for football. However, as soon as Biff left for Boston to talk to his dad about his failing math grade, his demeanor changes. Biff more or less gives up on his life. The reader learns that Biff catching Willy cheating on his beloved mother is the cause.

Willy’s perseverance to direct Biff into success has resulted to Biff’s desperate acts to earn praise from his father. However, Biff’s dishonest acts of stealing are often justified by Willy through disregard and excuse, even expressing that the “Coach will probably congratulate [Biff] for [his] initiative”. Instead of correcting his mistakes, Willy continuously expresses his belief of Biff’s predetermined success as a result of being attractive and well-liked. These acts effectively exemplifies Biff’s adherence to self-deception as he imagines himself as an important figure in other people’s lives. It can be seen that his belief of being destined for success prevents him from allowing himself recognize the destruction it brings. As a result, Biff has allowed how Willy views him become how he perceives himself. This self-deception has not only affected the actions in his childhood but as well as his decisions when finding his role in the workplace. As stated above, Willy’s consistent beliefs of his son’s predestined success results to Biff’s immense confidence in himself. However, this confidence have provided him a false perception of himself as he struggle to keep a stable job and even faces imprisonment. It can be seen that Biff’s lack of self-perception and compliance to ideals of Willy has only allowed him to restrain and prevent him from recognizing the difference between illusion and reality resulting in the lack of his

As a result of these lies, as the months past, his debt grew bigger because he had to get loans to cover up his lie. To the damage of his son’s moral, Biff knew about his father’s deceit to his mother and therefore saw dishonesty as a good thing. In the footsteps of his father, Biff went ahead to lie to his mother that he was ready to sire a family with a woman. He only lied to please Linda, his mother just as his father did. Willy should have taught his sons that dishonesty was against social norms and ethically incorrect and unacceptable.

Biff and Happy once deeply respected and looked to their father for advice and encouragement, as in the past Linda says “few men are idolized by their children the way you are”⁶, but as they realise his advice was false and he had been living a lie throughout life. As soon as Biff finds out about his father’s affair he no longer respects him and Willy remains unable to win back his trust. “You fake! You phony little fake”⁷. Willy feels that by his suicide, it will prove to Biff that he was truly committed to providing for his family. He still believes that Biff will become successful by having the money from his life insurance showing how he never learnt from his mistakes. “Can you imagine that magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket? ...When the mail comes he’ll be ahead of Bernard once more”⁵. It is more tragic that Biff is the one who realises that “he had the wrong dreams”⁴ at his funeral. Rather than feeling proud, Biff he pities his father. Ironically it is

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!

Willy’s conflict with Biff also plays a massive role in Miller’s writing. Biff’s life is forever changed for the worst by Willy, and that is why he resents his father. Expecting too much from his son, Willy was setting himself up for disappointment. He thought that Biff was too big to worry about school or the law, and this reasoning played a large part in the ruination of Biff’s life. Willy never encouraged Biff to study, and was fine with bad grades, as long as they weren’t failing. However, when Biff does fail algebra, he goes to visit his father, but finds him with another woman. Willy encourages his son to go to summer school, but Biff was too put off by Willy’s woman. Seeing Willy’s mistress started Biff’s downward spiral, and because

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.

The relationship existing between Willy and biff is filled with tension. The father and the sons in the story have different views concerning life. Biff started his life while keeping the American dream vision adopted from his father. Willy was a football star and he believed that was enough to be an American dream (Miller). When the respect biff had for his father was shattered, the vision of the American dream is also shattered along. Biff stumbles severally and this disappointed Willy always. This shows that the relationship existing between the father and the son is not good enough.