One Size Does Not Fit All: Biff Lomas and the American Dream

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size does not fit all: Biff Loman and The American Dream The traditional American Dream glorifies wealth and success, often at the expense of individuality and self-expression. Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, explores this dangerous concept of a cookie cutter dream. The protagonist, Willy Loman, has a dream that he idolizes. This dream involves being well liked, popular, attractive, and rich. These attributes are seen as the keys to happiness and bypassing hard work. He impresses this shallow dream onto his son, Biff. Although Biff is both well liked and attractive, he cannot achieve Willy’s dream and, therefore, becomes disillusioned. This discrepancy between Willy’s dream and reality manifested through Biff enables readers to see its dangerous futility. Although the dream results in Willy’s demise, Biff is able to escape and develop his own dream that is realistically based on true individual happiness instead of superficial qualities. The tangible qualities of attractiveness and popularity are central to Willy’s dream. Biff as a young man exemplifies Willy’s idea of success. Biff is physically attractive, an “Adonis” (869) or “Hercules” (887). He is the apple of Willy’s eye: popular, well liked, happy, and loving to his parents. He is a high school football star and a “crowd of girls” (868) follows him around all day at school. He even has a group of friends who hang out at his house like fans. Biff has them do chores for him, causing Linda to marvel at “The way they obey him!” (869) Biff gives Willy childlike adoration and Willy feeds off of it. Willy is not living his dream, so he seeks to fulfill it through Biff. To him, the only success that is viable is a business job: high profile, high salary. He hammers this idea into Biff, without questioning what Biff may want. Biff has whatattain the dream: “The man who makes an appearance in the business

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