6.1.2

Fathers & Sons

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Willy and his Father

The relationship between father and son is the key relationship in Death of a Salesman.

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Generations

  • The play examines how different generations influence one another, particularly through inherited values.
  • We see what the older generation bequeaths to the younger, and how the younger generation deals with its inheritance.
  • In so doing, Miller allows us to see the roots of Willy’s tragedy and the possibility of its continuance in a new generation, with Happy staying in New York to fight for Willy’s dream: “I’m gonna win it for him.”
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Willy's father

  • At the root of Willy’s tragedy is his inheritance from his father - an idealised and fantastical myth of the craftsman and entrepreneur in control of his own destiny.
  • In Willy’s conversations with Ben, their father is remembered in heroic terms as the “great” and “wild-hearted” inventor, pioneer and, crucially for Willy, salesman.
  • Willy’s only real memory of him (“a man with a big beard”) also conjures up a God-like figure.
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Problematic inheritance

  • Willy is, in moments of doubt, aware that has father has bequeathed him a problematic inheritance.
  • He is painfully aware that he “never had the chance to talk to him” and that this leads to Willy feeling “kind of temporary” about himself.
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The hero

  • However, Willy never seriously confronts the heroic image of his father or questions the lessons he has drawn from him.
  • Willy’s father is defined by his absence after abandoning his family for the wilderness in Alaska, but Willy cannot condemn him.

Willy and his Sons

Death of a Salesman is structured around the conflict between Willy and Biff, with its climax, the final confrontation between the two, leading to tragedy.

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The wrong dreams

  • Instead of questioning the lessons he has drawn from his own father, Willy passes on the “wrong dreams” to his sons.
  • Brought up to value popularity (“being liked”) above all else, Biff and Happy learn to bend the rules to suit themselves, for example by stealing lumber from a nearby building site.
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Being a man

  • Willy reprimands them for this but then undermines this attempt at parental guidance and boundary-setting by applauding them as “fearless characters”.
  • Willy is relieved that Ben sees his sons as “outstanding, manly chaps” and his sons come to see themselves in the same way, able to follow a different set of rules from other, less popular, boys.
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Willy's affair

  • Biff eventually comes to question and then condemn his father, shaken to the core by his discovery of Willy’s affair in Boston.
  • Bernard describes Biff on his return from Boston as broken, burning his sneakers and engaging in a half-hour fist-fight with Bernard, both of the boys in tears.
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Giving up

  • Many commentators have applied a Freudian interpretation to these events: on realising that his father is not God-like but instead, a “phony”, Biff subconsciously sets out to ‘destroy’ his father: in Bernard’s words as if he “had given up his life”.
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Willy's guilt

  • Willy is tormented by the fear that he has caused Biff’s stunted life and the guilt eats away at him.
  • He asks Bernard, “was it my fault?” but when Bernard begins to pinpoint Biff’s trip to Boston as the turning-point, Willy backs away from the truth responding “[with a strong edge of resentment in his voice]: Yeah, he came to Boston. What about it?”
  • Again, Willy will not confront the truth.
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Bernard and Charley

  • The relationship between Charley and Bernard seems to be much less intense and, as a result, much healthier.
  • Charley is probably being ironic when he tells Willy that he “never took any interest” in Bernard as he has clearly instilled values such as persistence and modesty in his son.
  • In an echo of Willy’s family, Bernard himself has two sons. However, unlike Willy, we hear nothing more of Bernard’s boys.

Jump to other topics

1Introduction

2Act One

3Act Two

4Extended Passage Analysis

5Character Profiles

6Key Themes

7Writing Techniques

8Historical Context

9Literary Context

10Critical Debates

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