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Death Of A Salesman Father Son Relationship Essay

466 Words2 Pages

Arthur Miller was born in 1915 in New York City and he was one of the greatest American playwrights. His most famous work is "Death of a Salesman", a play which tells the story of Willy Loman, a travelling salesman. One of the main themes that can be found in many of his works is the theme of family, especially the father-son relationship. This theme is a key element in "Death of Salesman". The play focuses on the relationship between Willy and his two sons, Biff and Happy. According to Kavita (2017), the father-son relationship can be divided into three developing stages: the childhood stage, the youth stage and the mature stage. The childhood stage is showing us that Biff is Willy's favourite son. Because he is the second-best son, Happy is always trying to get his father's attention and to please him. Willy believed that Biff would be successful in life and that he would achieve what his father couldn't. Biff is also considered to be an alter ego of Willy. …show more content…

Biff even considered Willy to be his "hero". Happy and Biff loved Willy and believed in his success, but everything is going to change on the next stage. The second stage is the youth stage. The father-son relationship is changed completely. Biff will lose his father's trust after he catches him cheating on his mother on a trip. After this event, Biff is starting to lose interest in his career and also his studies. He kept changing jobs because he wasn't happy doing it (Kavita, 2017, p.370). Biff didn't tell his mother about his father cheating but he started arguing and disrespecting his father. Willy never apologized although he was feeling guilty. He knew he was the reason behind Biff's failures but tried to blame Biff's personality instead of accepting the truth. During the stage, the father-son relationship suffered a lot of changes, like the lack of communication compared to the first stage (Kavita, 2017,

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