Biff Flashcards
“Biff, his life is…
in your hands!” - Linda Act1, pg.47
AO2: Metaphor
Willy: “Why? Why? Bernard, that question has been trailing me like…
a ghost for the last fifteen years. He flunked the subject, and laid down and died like a hammer hit him!”
Act 2, pg. 73
AO2: Simile and metaphor. It haunts Willy because he knows that he is the reason. The ‘hammer’ that hits Biff is metaphorically Willy’s affair.
“I realized what a ridiculous lie my…
whole life has been. We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years.” - Biff to Happy act 2, pg. 82
AO2: Metaphor emphasises how unrealistic they’ve been about life. Dream alludes to the American dream.
AO3: The American dream can be distorted. It created false hope. The American Dream is a social issue because it over-emphasizes the role of the individual in their pursuit towards success without acknowledging social constraints; such as socioeconomic, racial or gender inequality, which can inhibit certain groups of people from achieving that same dream. Biff is realizing this.
AO4: Biff’s anagnorisis - also what Miller wants to audience to realize.
Biff’s moment of anagnorisis
Act 2, p.g.105
Biff: “I ran down eleven flights with a pen in my hand today. And suddenly I stopped, you hear me? “ (Miller getting the audience to listen)
“I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw - the sky”
AO2: The fountain pen that Biff steals from Oliver is symbolic for business/capitalism and signing contrast. In contrast, the Sky is symbolising freedom, and in this moment Biff realises business and the American Dream isn’t what he wants, he wants to be free. And so he breaks free.
“What am I doing in an office, making a…
contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is right out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!” Act 2, p.g. 105
AO2: Rhetorical questions
AO4: Biff’s anagnorisis
AO3: A reflection of how the system has made him feel (a fool)
biff: Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you! Act2, p.g.105
Biff: “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you”
AO2: Idiom: Something that is common and easily obtainable. The phrase “a dime a dozen” refers to a thing that has little value and is cheap.
AO4: Links to status, Biff’s anagnorisis and Willy’s myopia.
Biff: “And I never got anywhere because you…
blew me so full of hot air I could never stand taking orders from anybody!”
Biff: “He had all the wrong dreams. All, all, wrong.” Requiem
Juxtaposes Happy’s outcome. Biff has broken free from the cycle, providing a sense of hope.
Willy: “Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!” Act 1 p.g. 11
Ironic as Willy is loosing himself
Willy: “A star like that…
,magnificent, can never really fade away!”
ACT1 p.g.54
AO2: Metaphor, Willy reminiscing Biff’s greatness.
Raymond Reno
The action of the play lies in Willy’s efforts to regain the worship Biff once gave him
What was Biff’s highest moment, before his peripeteia>
The Ebbets Field game (episode in act 2, section 4)
Willy: “This is the greatest day of his life.” pg.70 (during his episode)
Willy: “His life ended after that Ebbets Field game.” pg 72 (to Bernard in present time)
What was significant about Biff’s sneakers?
ACt 2, section 4, pg74
Bernard talking to Willy about the change in Biff when he returned from visiting Willy in Boston
Bernard: “remember those sneakers with ‘University if Virginia’ printed on them? He was so proud of those, wore them every day. And then he took them down in the cellar, and burned them up in the furnace.”
Biff metaphorically burning his dream
