“Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and “True West” by Sam Sheppard

Comparisons of characters Biff and Happy in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and Austin and Lee in the play “True West” by Sam Sheppard.

Biff and Happy in “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller and Austin and Lee in the play “True West” by Sam Sheppard

Summaries

In “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman is the father of two, Biff and Happy, who is at the twilight of his career life as a traveling salesman. He is sixty years old and mulling on retirement but his present career does not permit him. He has been recently demoted to a strictly commissions salesman, a position he holds at the start of his career as a young man.

Due to his predicament, he looks back at his past life to answer the questions which baffled him. How did he come to this? Where did he go wrong? His brains rack back and forth as he searches for answers.

He realized that he has not been exactly the ideal salesman. Willy always thought that being popular is the key to attaining success. It is not what you know but whom you know that matters to him. He shuns hard work and frowns on integrity – things which every morally upright salesman should strive for.

As the end draws near for him, he realizes his errors. He looks back with regret on how he was deaf to the advices his brother Ben once showered on him. Ben is wealthy at the age of twenty-one.

Willy tries to show his sons the how-to’s in attaining success. Early on, he prepares Biff, the eldest, for success and excellence in the business world. In his desire to teach them, he creates a make-believe world where he appears to be respected, admired and successful businessman. Willy wants to earn the love and respect of his family by creating a web of deception. To some extent, Willy is trying to salvage some remnants of respect for himself. He even believes his own deception and is convinced of his own importance just as he convinces his boys. When the stark reality confronts him however and his illusions are contradicted, his life slowly crumbles.

The truth strikes him like a blow and wakes him up to harsh realities. He knows he is a dismal failure. And his greatest failure is turning his sons into copies of him. He taught his sons the wrong way. Biff becomes a bum who cannot stay in a job and ends up as a farmhand in the West. Happy, on the other hand, is the assistant’s assistant who has a blown-up concept of self-importance. Willy knew that he brought them up in the wrong way hence the reason for their mediocre lives.

When Biff was younger, he was close to Willy. Things changed though when growing up Willy felt disappointed in Biff for not coming up to his expectations. Given the situation he was in, it was hard for Biff to achieve anything without the proper guidance. Willy instead encourages Biff to strive for popularity. Biff was taught not to work hard or to take orders from anyone. Willy also encourages his boys to steal. Consequently, Biff fails immensely in his jobs. Worse, he often gets into trouble due to stealing. He jumps from one job to another. When Biff goes home, he realizes that he is not as important as he thinks himself to be. That he is just an ordinary guy who cannot survive the business world.

He further learns that he is at his element when he is honest to himself. This serves as an impetus for Biff to be on the path towards self-discovery. The values which he learns from Willy become useless and he needs to embark on a drastic and painful transition. Biff wants to reveal the lies Willy taught them for years. Willy of course is adamant. His pride is at stake. After several arguments, Biff chooses to leave his father for good. He realizes that he will never come up to his father’s expectations nor will he persuade Willy to face reality.

Willy becomes unemployed and wearied by life’s struggles. He has aged not only in appearance but more so in spirit. He wants to prove to Biff that he was not an utter failure after all. His disillusionment reaches a notch higher when he decides that he will achieve the much sought-after redemption if he kills himself so Biff can use the insurance money to start a business. He likes to believe that because of what he believes as his heroic and unselfish act, Biff will regard him as a hero and learns to appreciate his father. That his success is real and his funeral will be grand, attended by many of his customers in New England.

But things are not meant to work out for Willy in life more so in death. The insurance that he hoped to give to Biff does not include suicide. The grand funeral he wished for is attended only by his family and two neighbors. The legacy Willy left, in the end, is a broken spirit characterized by dismal failure.

“True West” by Sam Sheppard is another tale depicting the sons’ struggles. In the story the father is hardly ever mentioned. But the impact he has on his sons’ lives is where the story revolves.

True West is the captivating tale of two grown brothers who attempt to work out the details of their sibling rivalry while gulping down a ridiculous amount of beer in their mother’s kitchen. It explores intensely a tortured familial relationship.

Austin and Lee are the brothers featured in “True West”. At the start of the story, the brothers are depicted as people totally opposite from each other like day and night. But as the story progresses, their similarities become more pronounce.

Austin, although ten years younger than Lee, is perceived to be the more mature and goal-oriented one. He is driven by his ambition to become a scriptwriter in Hollywood at the same time his ambition confuses him. He wears glasses and works hard to succeed.

That is why their mother did not hesitate to put Austin in charge of her Southern California home while she goes on tour to Alaska. Austin wears neat white clothes. He does not use the slang words Lee uses. Austin takes after his mother who is conservative middle-class person who lives with family. Just like his mother, Austin observes the traditional life of the new West.

Lee is the opposite of his brother when it comes to physical and mental aspects. He is drunk most of the time. He has bad teeth. He looks untidy with his dusty clothes. His accent is slurred by a slang. He does not have a stable job or a family to go home to. He is a drifter. He earns money by taking part in illegal dog fights. He takes after his father who abandons his family and follows the life of a vagabond by going to the Mojave desert. Unlike Austin and mother who loathe his father, Lee worships his father like a hero. Lee chooses a rebel life just like his father and lives at the desert too.

Austin and Lee refer to their father as the Old Man. Both barely know their father as he left them when they were young.

At the start of the story, Austin is found in his mother’s kitchen attempting to write a screenplay and housesitting for his mother at the same time when his older brother decides to drop by from his frequent wanderings from the desert. Lee constantly disrupts his brother’s Austin writing. Austin is an aspiring writer who dreams of clinching a Hollywood movie deal later. It is easy to see how troubled the relationship is between the two brothers. Despite their mutual dislike, it is easy to see that deep down they really admire each other’s dissimilarities. And what appeared to be their differences actually stems from their fundamental similarities.

Tension builds as Lee insists on helping Austin with his screenplay, but reaches epic proportions after a schmoozing round of golf during which the straight-laced Austin scores fewer points with the schmooze target than Lee does. Just as Austin is on the verge of exploding, Lee stares him down and taps the frames of his glasses threateningly with one of his golf clubs.

Both brothers despite their obvious dissimilarities are actually seeking for appreciation and a better life. Their methods of pursuing their goals may differ. Austin tries to cope by keeping his desires hidden and being reserved. Lee, on the other hand, is more loud and expressive.

As the play unfolds later, both realize that their lives are not exactly what they want it to be. Lee wants to become a writer just like Austin and land a movie deal. He realizes the endless possibilities if he could sell his ideas to Kimmer. The bigger surprise though is when Austin realizes that he wants to be like Lee. He even begs his brother to take him to the desert. Each influences the other to become the opposite of who they are.

When their mother arrives from her trip earlier than schedule because she misses all her plants, she is aghast to find her kitchen and alcove all messed up, her plants all dead, a number of stolen toasters on her table and a typewriter shattered on the floor. She finds Austin on the floor fighting with Lee. He almost kills him. Mom does not seem to find the whole situation terrifying until Austin declares his intention to leave his family and goes off to the desert. Another surprise awaits her though when Lee also announces that his script is sold and he clinches a deal. The role reversal seems to have taken mom more off-guard than the plight of her kitchen that she mumbles “this is worse than being homeless”.

Mom is certain that the “disease” that once afflicted their father has now passed on to them. It was simply beyond her grasps that Lee, whom she thought would amount to nothing just like his father, would sell a script to Hollywood in just a matter of few days. The ever-reliable Austin, whom she sees as mentally and emotionally stable, wants to give up family and career to be able to live with his brother in the desert. Mom believes that the curse of the father is now in his sons. The role reversal is proof to that. This sudden change destroys the stability of the identity mom cherishes.

The role reversal though is seen by the brothers as liberation of their true self and the attainment of their dreams. Due to the reversal of their roles, the brothers need each other for support as they now become strangers to their own worlds.

At the start, Austin believes that his world is the true world and not Lee’s. As he convinces Saul to choose his script as the one that depicts the truth he explains: “I swallow the smog. I watch the news in color. I shop in the Safeway. I’m the one who’s in touch.” Later on, Austin realizes that he desires the life Lee leads. The struggle of the brothers continues as they tackle their new-found dreams. The play comes to an abrupt end in the middle of the brothers’ fight.

 

Similarities

In both stories, the influence of fathers is markedly present and is manifested even to the point of duplicated in the way of life of their sons.

In the case of Biff and Happy in the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, the sons’orientation to an easy and lazy sort of existence early on in life teaches them to dislike hard work as a means of attaining success. Being popular and well-liked are the more important traits than hard work needed to get ahead in life as their father, Willy Loman, taught them. This proves to be false, of course. Willy unfortunately also taught them to steal which further aggravates their problems later on in their career life.

As expected, Biff and Happy do not attain the success their father Willy hoped from them which was frustrating on their sides because they were not actually equipped with the right attitude and skills for success due to their own father’s erroneous way of bringing them up.

Austin and Lee in the play “True West” by Sam Sheppard barely know their father because he abandoned them when they were little. Austin being the more mature yet younger brother was able to attain a respectable level of success through hard work and his conservative ways. He has a wife and kids. From the way the play is told, we can safely assume that Austin is a good father and provider too. He does not rest on his laurels and strives to do better by writing scripts and hoping to clinch a movie deal.

Lee, on the other hand, is a free-spirit who likes his father wanders to the desert and live there most of the time and pays his mother a visit every now and then. Lee lives by participating in illegal dog fights.

The negative influences of their fathers seem to result in mediocre achievements in their lives except perhaps for Austin who has managed to break from the mold at the start of the story. Later though, as the roles reversed Lee manages to clinch the Hollywood deal Austin strongly desires at first. And Austin decides to give up family and career to live with his brother in the desert.

The bad examples the sons see from their fathers serve as the impetus for change later such as in the case of Biff who openly criticizes his father’s unscrupulous ways. It also enables Lee to find better use of his and his experiences by coming up with a realistic script that enables him to land a movie deal.

 

Differences

The main difference I see between the two plays is that Biff and Happy in the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller were consciously and deliberately taught by their father to attain success in twisted sort of way. Austin and Lee in “True West” by Sam Shepard, on the other hand, learn everything on their own without the guidance of a father since they were abandoned at an early age. Of course, the absence of a paternal figure denies them a role model that could have influenced them in a positive way hence the errors they consequently committed. Austin and Lee’s father though does not deliberately lead them astray the way Biff and Happy’s dad did.

Another difference is that while Biff and Happy become typical examples of maladjusted individuals of society, Austin and Lee somehow lead normal lives although quite deviant for Lee. Austin and Lee lead lives that are more morally upright and at least, acceptable in society than Biff and Happy.

The negative influence of Bill and Happy’s father reduce them to scoundrels and undesirables in society. Austin and Lee may not really exhibit the perfect examples of respectability but they do not have issues of morality either unlike the other two.