Introduction

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is consistently referred to as an American classic of drama, and what is most noteworthy in this assessment is the “American” aspect. No other culture could have produced the Loman family, as no other society or era beyond twentieth-century America could present the same landscape. The play endures because it presents, not so much a lost age of innocence, but a perfectly preserved few pages of purely American ideology within a framework of a vanished ideal of family.

Reinforcing the inherent American element is the size and character of the Loman family itself: father, mother, and two sons, aged two years apart. It is virtually a template for the middle class dream of a family, which makes the collapse of Willy Loman’s dream all the more striking. Moreover, the ages of the two boys seems to define them in a way as marked by destiny as any characters in Greek tragedy. Biff, the eldest, is his father’s ideal child and an extremely troubled young man, burdened by the legacy of “heir to the throne” in so fraudulent and dismal a setting; Happy, pivotally removed by those two years, is seemingly set forever on a course of pointless ambition, and ironically is nearer to his father in his echoing of that man’s insatiable, and usually fruitless, desire to please other men. The sons of Miller’s Death of a Salesman represent how the powerful effects of birth placement may identity and doom such sons, as much in modern drama as in classic tragedy.

Biff as Heir

If any single component identifies the character of Biff Loman, it is sadness. The sadness is composed of other elements, including a frantic desperation of denial at times, but the pain of his life is the overwhelming trait.

By virtue of his place as eldest son, Biff is cursed in nearly a literal fashion, for he is nearest to the more fraternal relationship a boy can have with a father. He is a “pal” to Willy in a sense, as he is expected to step into full manhood immediately in Willy’s footsteps chronologically, if not in actual career terms. Then, Biff is Willy’s pride and joy, despite some questionable activities and signs of bad character. Biff steals a ball at school, for instance, and Willy applauds his initiative.

It is in all of this, then, that Biff’s sadness develops. Much has been made of the traumatic moment of the play when it is learned that Biff walked in on his father and another woman in a hotel room, and that certainly would shatter any illusions an oldest son would have about his father. The greater sadness, however, and the legacy of Biff’s doomed role as first-born, stems from all the other, small and large lies and deceptions his father unsuccessfully tries to hide. Most of all, and built into the scenario of being the first child on the scene and consequently the first with the opportunity to witness the reality, Biff must face the inescapable failure of his father as a man of business. He must also find a way to reconcile this with Willy’s desperation to both refute it, and rise above it. The conflict is both daily and painful for Biff.

Ironically, what Willy cannot grasp is that his oldest son, in having seen so much, is enabled to make better decisions about living. Biff will not be trapped as his father is, as he cannot make himself want the life his father tries so hard to do well in: “Shipping clerk, salesman, business of one kind or another…and it’s a measly manner of existence….To suffer fifty weeks of the year for a two-week vacation…” (Miller 14). The sadness of Biff is, ultimately, founded on the sadness inherent in the relationship between any father and an eldest son, in that there must be an inevitable replacement. In this case, however, it is powerfully altered: Biff will not replace, but reject. “Miller clearly intended to show that Biff gains independence from, rather than perpetuates, his father’s life of illusion” (Bloom 111). Every scene in the play is tinged with this eventual rejection, and Biff’s sadness is evidence of his awareness of it.

Happy

On one level, Happy is a stereotype of a second child, eager to be noticed. Miller weaves a great deal more substance into him, however, and in a starkly realistic and ironic way: “Happy is a young Willy, seeking his father’s attention and approval…Willy never acknowledges Happy’s efforts to gain his attention. In fact, Willy calls Biff, but never Happy, by name” (Sterling 89). That is to say, if Willy Loman truly believed in the pursuits he so vocally promotes, Happy should be his favorite child. He is not, and this is because Willy cannot possibly love a reflection of his own, incessant failures, even as he himself is the deciding factor in Happy’s failing. As the “other” son and the one who commits the unforgivable crime of asking for love, Happy is doomed to pale beside Biff, who is the desired object by virtue of his disinterest.

More interestingly, Miller gives to Happy something of a classically feminine component, as made evident in the stage directions of the play: “Happy, two years younger, tall, powerfully made. Sexuality is like a visible color on him, or a scent that many women have discovered” (Miller iv). The audience learns, and early in the drama, that Happy uses sex to attempt to satisfy an emptiness within himself, and one clearly created by the dismissed role he plays in his father’s eyes. Sex for Happy is a tool he has seized upon as soon as he was able to, as he viscerally requires something to give his life meaning.

It is not, however, just about sexual gratification. For this ignored second son, in fact, that is the least of it. It is about a manner of pleasing those whom he needs to impress; namely, his older brother and his father: “Happy competes using women in order to gain some relationship with  the other man involved in each instance…He offers ‘any babe you want’ to Biff in order to gain Biff’s approval” (Austin 49). As women in drama have long been portrayed as employing sex to make their way in a world wherein nothing else is valued from them, Happy follows the same, “unhappy” path. This is also strongly indicative of his birth order; coming second, as it were, he is forced to scramble for whatever space within the family he can find, because his older brother occupies the center arena with their father.

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