1/5/2024 0 Comments Biff loman stealing quote![]() ![]() This demonstrates the insufficiencies of Willy's views on success: he attributes success to luck or immorality and cannot see the virtues of hard work and discipline as shown by Charley and Bernard. For Willy, stealing is merely an extension of a capitalist mindset he makes no distinction between the fearless character in jail and the fearless character in the stock exchange. Happy once again brags about losing weight, showing his focus on physical appearance and athleticism, while Biff steals from the nearby construction site. The second appearance of Young Biff and Young Happy reinforces the values that Willy has instilled in his sons. This familial history provides a neat complement to Willy's relationship with Biff just as Biff feels himself a failure in his father's eyes, Willy perceives himself to be inadequate in comparison to his father and brother. Willy even pathetically attempts to justify life in Brooklyn as a life comparable to that in the outdoors. These boasts are exaggerations meant to emphasize Willy's feelings of inadequacy in comparison to his brother and father. Ben, who exists as an extension of Willy's imagination, speaks of their father in similar terms, as a "great man" and an inventor. Ben is a legendary man who, out of pure luck, ended up the owner of a diamond mine. Willy deals almost entirely in superlatives. Once again, Miller shifts the setting of the play to previous years in a seemingly imaginary scene that contrasts Willy's failed aspirations with the supposedly great accomplishments of his brother Ben. Ben repeats that when he walked into the jungle he was seventeen, and when he walked out he was twenty-one and fantastically rich. Willy worries that he's not teaching his sons the right kind of knowledge. Willy says that he will stop by on his way back to Africa, but Willy begs him to stay and talk. ![]() Bernard enters and says that the watchman is chasing Biff, but Willy says that he is not stealing anything. Charley tells him that the jails are full of fearless characters, but Ben says that so is the stock exchange. Willy says that he reprimanded them, but that he has a "couple of fearless characters" as his children. Ben leaves, wishing Willy good luck on whatever he does.Ĭharley returns, and reprimands Willy for letting his kids steal lumber from the nearby building that is being refurbished. Biff and Ben start to spar Ben trips Biff, then tells him never to fight fair with a stranger, because he will never get out of the jungle that way. Willy shows Biff to Ben, and says that he's bringing up Biff to be like their father. Young Biff and Happy enter, and Willy introduces them to Uncle Ben, a "great man." Ben boasts that their father was a very great man, an inventor who could make more money in a week than another man could make in a lifetime. ![]() Willy was only three years, eleven months old when Ben left. Ben claims he had a very faulty view of geography and ended up in Africa instead of Alaska. Willy asks Ben where his father is, but Ben says that he didn't find his father in Alaska, for he never made it there. Happy never realizes this, and at the end of the play he vows to continue in his father's footsteps, pursuing an American Dream that will leave him empty and alone.While Willy talks with Ben, Linda (as a younger woman) enters. Biff realizes, at the play's climax, that only by escaping from the dream that Willy has instilled in him will father and son be free to pursue fulfilling lives. The dream of grand, easy success that Willy passed on to his sons is both barren and overwhelming, and so Biff and Happy are aimless, producing nothing, and it is Willy who is still working, trying to plant seeds in the middle of the night, in order to give his family sustenance. ![]() Willy's other son, Happy, while on a more secure career path, is superficial and seems to have no loyalty to anyone.īy delving into Willy's memories, the play is able to trace how the values Willy instilled in his sons-luck over hard work, likability over expertise-led them to disappoint both him and themselves as adults. The central conflict of the play is between Willy and his elder son Biff, who showed great promise as a young athlete and ladies' man, but in adulthood has become a thief and drifter with no clear direction. ![]()
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