Biff Loman
Arthur
Miller, the writer of Death of a Salesman, based his character Biff on
his own relatives. His own cousin, Buddy Newman, was also
an extremely popular sports star during high school and similar to Happy in Death
of a Saleman, a ladies man. Parallel to Biff in the play, Buddy also never
went to college as he failed high school. His own relationship with his cousins
was not unlike Bernard’s relationship with Biff and Happy. He was considered
the ‘gangly and unhandsome’ one with nowhere near the talent his cousins had in
sport. Everytime Miller visited his cousins, he felt almost an ‘insinuation of
failure’ even before he became sixteen.
Biff
in Death of a Saleman is first introduced as 34 year old man who has not
yet found his purpose or a stable occupation, and is wandering back home after
10 years of searching after he failed high school. He is seen as always been
criticised by his father, Willy Loman as well as constantly taunted and berated
by him for ‘not finding yourself
at the age of 34’ and for being a ‘disgrace’.
Biff’s situation is that his life is continually going in a cycle, in which he
realises that whenever spring comes to his current job, he will ‘get the feeling, my God, I’m not getting’
anywhere’ and start ‘running home’. But
when he gets to home, he doesn’t know ‘what
to do with myself’. This shows that Biff believes that he has wasted his
life and that he is ‘just like a boy’. This
is shown in the quote ‘I’ve always made a
point of not wasting my life, and every time I’ve come back here I know that
all I’ve done is to waste my life.'
Biff
doesn’t wish to work in the office or as a salesman but as a worker in the
fields but however is always pushed by his father towards his firm and unrealistic
ideals. Therefore, after he left high school, he spent the next part of his life
constantly changing and quitting jobs that only suited his father’s dream for
Biff to be a salesman. However, towards the end of the book, Biff realises that
his life has been a persistent repetition of the same mistakes, which is seen
when Biff steals a pen from a salesman, Bill Oliver’s office, which was a
repeat of when Biff was in high school and stole a ball from the gym. At the time, Willy encouraged Biff’s actions, even saying ‘Coach’ll probably congratulate
your initiative!’. This shows that Biff’s actions were due to Willy’s
teachings which concluded that popularity was the most important factor in
being successful in the real world. In
the end of the novel, Biff breaks down and attempts to tell his father that he wasn’t born to be a salesman and that he is better with his hands and for being
a worker on a farm or ranch rather than a worker in an office.
