#Biff loman character traits full#

She believes that debt is the opponent of freedom, which goes against Willy’s ideals of acquisition. She has retained her emotional sanity despite the years of living with her husband’s infidelity and materialism. Willy’s long-suffering wife is in many ways the strongest among the Death of a Salesman characters. It is this contradiction within Biff – not just towards his father but also, by extension, towards everything that his dad stood for that has, in large part, kept Biff trapped right where he is – unwilling to push forward to make his own goals. Nothing that had seemed so valuable before this discovery does much for him afterward – even though he still wants to please his disapproving father. In other words, Biff stops believing in much of the American Dream after he catches his father in his affair.

#Biff loman character traits full#

Biff cannot achieve his own autonomy until he realizes the full extent of the flaws of his father’s philosophy and develops his own belief system. Biff believes that Willy’s American Dream focuses on the tangible and the negotiable, neglecting the ideas of self-reliance and integrity. That disillusionment destroys all of the belief that Biff felt in his father.Īfter this confrontation, Biff feels trapped inside his father’s dreams for him, and Willy feels like he has raised a slacker. Willy has always had grand dreams for Biff, which Biff was headed toward fulfilling, until Biff discovered Willy having an affair in Boston. He hates the way that the other two create illusions for themselves and live inside those instead of reality. Of the three Loman men among the Death of a Salesman characters, Biff is the only one who bothers to spend time with introspection. Unfortunately, Willy is beyond the help of reason. He has done well for himself with hard work, and he offers Willy that opportunity too. Charley has succeeded with regard to the American Dream, but has not deluded himself about any magic associated with it. Throughout the play, Charley is the voice of logic and reason. Charley has been paying Willy’s bills for some time, and he even offers him a job to come and work for him, but for some reason, Willy is too proud to come work for him – but not to take loans from him that he has no way to repay. Willy is jealous of his neighbor’s success – and that of his son, who has done much better for himself than Willy’s son Biff has. Charley has owned his own successful business for years, and his own son Bernard is a successful attorney. CharleyĬharley lives next door to the Lomans and, among all of the Death of a Salesman characters, appears to be Willy’s closest friend.

Because he can’t, he doesn’t see his self-worth in any terms other than money. The primary tragedy in this play is not Willy’s death in itself – it’s that he can’t see the love that Linda, Biff and Happy feel for him. And so that payout becomes the diamonds that his brother Ben had left home for, decades ago. He has not saved enough during his prosperous years to be prepared for the days when he no longer can sell, and the desperation associated with this knowledge convinces him that “after all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive” (Act II). He knows that there is a payout attached to his life insurance policy that will do what he cannot – provide for his family and give Biff a nest egg. The fact that Willy’s final act is to end his own life shows that he never comes to terms with his own flaws. Now that the generations of buyers with whom he had relationships have passed into retirement, no one knows him, and he’s having a hard time even getting appointments, let alone making sales.

He believes he has been selling products his entire life, but he has really been marketing himself. He has spent his entire life selling, but not in the way he thinks. Willy is indeed the protagonist among the Death of a Salesman characters, but it would be difficult to say that he is a hero.