Death of a Salesman

"Two pairs of brothers feature in Death of a Salesman . There’s the main protagonist, Willy Loman, and his dead brother Ben who went into the African jungle at the age of 17 and came out at the age of 21 very rich. Then there are Biff and Happy, Willy’s two sons. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter This is a story, on the one hand, of distorted idealism. Willy idealises his brother Ben, who represents everything he might have been, and everything his two sons – whom he considers losers – might have been. His obsession with his lost opportunity to go into business with his successful brother torments him, as does the fate of his two sons, who both appear to be in a state of arrested development. Even though they are in their thirties, Biff and Happy still try and get girls together, and talk of going into business together – but at first, at least, they are just as much fantasists as their father. They have failed to mature and in a sense held one another back, just as Ben, in a different way, holds Willy back. Brothers are an appealing fantasy, but in the real world and in the long run they need to be transcended. Willy, Biff and Happy have failed on this front. Death of a Salesman is more about the relationship between fathers and sons than brothers, but the motif of maimed brother relationships runs in all directions. Just as Willy idealised Ben, Happy clearly thinks more of Biff than he ought to. We are taken into a world where brothers project their fantasies onto one another – a course that can only end badly."