Biff Loman

• Biff, Willy and Linda’s oldest son, is now 34 years-old but he is still “lost”.
• Biff's character

  • Biff is a troubled young man, unable to live up to the hopes and dreams of the past and is, instead, drifting through life.
  • Biff is a brooding presence in the play, described as having a “worn air”.
  • He knows he must make a decision about his future soon but his complex relationship with his father makes this decision all the harder.
• Biff's early life

  • We can piece together Biff’s ‘career’ from what we learn at different stages of the play.
  • A star quarterback as a schoolboy, Biff look set to take up a scholarship at the University of Virginia.
• Biff's career

  • However, Biff fails academically and instead works as a shipping clerk for Bill Oliver before leaving and taking up ranch-work out West.
  • We know Biff’s last employment was on a ranch in Texas and later learn that he has spent three months in prison after stealing a suit in Kansas City.
• Biff's Theft

  Biff's meeting with Bill Oliver in Act Two illuminates the full extent of Biff's fraudulent behaviour and delusions but is also what triggers his self-awareness.
• Meeting Bill Oliver

  • In Act 2, the final day of Willy’s life, Biff is to meet with Bill Oliver, his old employer, and ask for a ten-thousand dollar loan to start up the Loman Brothers business venture.
  • However, the meeting is a disaster.
• Biff's theft

  • Biff is uncomfortable about an incident during his previous employment with Oliver in which a carton of basketballs has been stolen (it is strongly suggested Biff stole them).
• Biff's delusions

  • Biff is also ‘thrown’ by his realisation that he was never a salesman for Bill Oliver as he and his father had convinced themselves, but was merely a clerk.
  • Flummoxed, Biff leaves Oliver’s office with his gold fountain pen and cannot bring himself to return there.
• Willy's parenting

  • Through Biff’s petty thefts we see the influence of Willy’s parenting.
  • Although Willy tells the younger Biff not to steal, he undermines this message by applauding his daring: “Coach’ll probably congratulate you on your initiative”.
  • Biff’s propensity for stealing, overlooked by Willy, will eventually lead to the two mishaps with Bill Oliver and his three months in a Kansas prison.
• Biff's relationship with Willy:

  The damaged relationship between Biff and Willy is at the heart of the play.
• The affair

  • At the core of Biff and Willy's damaged relationship is Biff’s discovery of Willy’s affair in Boston.
  • Biff accuses his father of being a “phoney little fake”: for the first time, Biff sees through Willy’s lies, the word “little”, often overlooked, telling us how diminished Willy is in his eyes.
  • Bernard later tells us that this is the turning-point in Biff’s life, the moment where Bernard felt “he’d given up his life”.
• Responsibility

  • From that moment, Willy and Biff’s relationship is blighted by guilt and resentment, with Willy accusing Biff of cutting down his own life “for spite!”
  • Although absent for months at a stretch from the Loman household, it is Biff who must carry Willy’s fate on his shoulders, his mother telling him, “his life is in your hands”.
• Resolution

  • Biff has returned home to say goodbye to his father, to break off with him for good, but on hearing of Willy’s previous suicide attempts, has to make one last effort to ‘make it’, for Willy’s sake.
• Inner conflict

  • Biff, like his father, has had to wrestle with the conflicting urges inside him: between “makin’ my fortune” in the city and working in the great outdoors (“the things that I love in this world”).
  • Biff resolves this identity crisis at the end of the play by deciding to leave the Loman home and head out West again.
• The Tragic Hero: Willy or Biff?

  Some commentators have argued that Biff, not Willy, is the true tragic hero of the play since Biff, unlike his father, gains self-knowledge.
• Self-knowledge

  • Biff, unlike his father, gains self-knowledge.
  • He develops throughout the play, gradually coming to the realisation once and for all that he does not need to live up to Willy’s idealised image of him.
  • As Biff says to Happy in the closing scene, “I know who I am, kid”.
• True tragic hero

  • For many commentators, Biff’s hard-won insights into himself make him the moral focus or the true tragic hero of the play: he alone has had the courage to question himself and his father’s dreams.
• Resolution?

  • The play offers some resolution of Biff’s dilemma: he chooses to return West.
  • However, this does not guarantee a ‘happy ending’ for Biff.
  • Audiences will remember Biff’s comments on the economic hardships involved in ranch-work and, even with his share of Willy’s life insurance money, success and fulfilment are not guaranteed.
• The Misfits

  • Miller later wrote the script for the 1961 movie, The Misfits, in which two Biff-like figures, played by Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, struggle with the harsh realities of the ‘cowboy’ lifestyle in an America that was rapidly leaving it behind.