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Get every literary device explanation for Death of a SalesmanPlus so much more...
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Foil
Explanation and Analysis—Like Father, Like Son:
A major conflict in Death of a Salesman is the long-running grudge between Willy and Biff. Miller plays the two off each other to express the frustration of their unmet longings and contrast the trajectories of their struggle. By revealing the parallels and differences between father and son, the character foils complicate the audience’s understanding of both.
Despite their antagonism, the feuding pair shares the same set of anxieties. Like Willy, Biff feels compelled to fill the mold of the successful, self-made man. He tells Happy that “I suddenly get the feeling, my God, I’m not getting’ anywhere!” Biff betrays the same restlessness as his father, who admits an urge to make something of his life. peaking to his brother in his backyard, Willy himself confesses in remarkably similar terms: “a man can’t go out the way he came in, Ben, a man has got to add up to something.” Father and son both long for opportunities that have been denied to them, and they express a deep disappointment in their middling prospects. They are characters who desire but cannot attain, and who are both pressured by the tyranny of aspiration.
Miller’s play leads its characters toward markedly different endings: its conclusion juxtaposes Biff’s moment of clarity with Willy’s ultimate act of self-delusion. By the close of the story, Biff has come to accept his worthlessness in the new American economy. “Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!” he yells to his father in Act 2. After a dismally unsuccessful meeting with his former employer, Bill Oliver, Biff has come to terms with economic hopelessness. But where his son realizes that these economic aspirations are running only on fumes, Willy resolves to cling even harder to it:
WILLY (turning on him now in an uncontrolled outburst): I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!
Willy not only rejects Biff’s declaration but goes so far as to re-inflate himself with newfound hope, convincing himself that “the boy is going to be magnificent!” Hoping to support his son with his future business, Willy even kills himself to earn insurance money. To the play’s bitter end, Willy is still unable to recognize the doomed futility of the American Dream.
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