Rachelle Asfaw

English 11B
2.3.8 Practice
4/23/14
Character Study

In the novel Death of A Salesman, the author, Arthur Miller creates multiple dynamic
characters to diversify the personalities within it. Although Willy Loman is the main character,
Biff Loman, Willys thirty-four-year-old elder son demonstrates an important role in the
development of Willy throughout the book by representing Willys vulnerable, poetic, tragic side.
Unlike Willy and Happy, Biff feels compelled to seek the truth about himself. While his
father and brother are unable to accept the miserable reality of their respective lives, Biff
acknowledges his failure and eventually manages to confront it. Even the difference between
his name and theirs reflects this polarity: whereas Willy and Happy willfully and happily delude
themselves, Biff bristles stiffly at self-deception. Biffs discovery that Willy has a mistress strips
him of his faith in Willy and Willys ambitions for him. Consequently, Willy sees Biff as an
underachiever, while Biff sees himself as trapped in Willys grandiose fantasies. After his
epiphany in Bill Olivers office, Biff determines to break through the lies surrounding the Loman
family in order to come to realistic terms with his own life. Intent on revealing the simple and
humble truth behind Willys fantasy, Biff longs for the territory (the symbolically free West)
obscured by his fathers blind faith in a skewed, materialist version of the American Dream.
Biffs identity crisis is a function of his and his fathers disillusionment, which, in order to reclaim
his identity, he must expose.
In the novel Death of A Salesman by Arthur Miller, Biff is important to the development of
Willy because he cannot ignore his instincts, which tell him to abandon Willys paralyzing
dreams and move out West to work with his hands, ultimately failing to reconcile his life with
Willys expectations of him.