However, something happened at the end of Biff s high school career to change his destiny. In Biff’s case it was based on who Biff was twenty years before - a high school football hero - a boy who “looked like Adonis’ and was destined, simply by virtue of his looks and charisma, to rise straight to the top. They also absorbed a deluded self-aggrandizement, a warped concept of who they are. For Willy Loman, his other son Happy, barely exists except as a backup to Biff, someone to hold Biff s helmet on the way to the big game.īoth Biff and Happy, up through high school, absorbed all their dad’s platitudes and values: the importance of “personal attractiveness,’ of being “well-liked,’ of sweet-talking their way into any situation regardless of the lies they told or the methods they used to get there. (Lyons) Biff Loman, the older brother, is his father’s golden boy. The Loman sons – Biff, 34, and the younger Happy – are refraction s of Willy. This paper will examine those ways by analyzing the young men’s relationship with each other, their mother, and most importantly, their father. In Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, the shortcomings of the father, Willy Loman, have been transmitted to his two sons in such a damaging way that the two sons are crippled for life - but in very different ways. Biff and Happy in Death of A Salesman It is said that the sins of the father are visited upon the sons.

Happy and biff death of a salesman