Erasing Saved Memory

Brian Crafton
Mr. Leidner
English, Block D
15 October 2010
Erasing Saved Memory
In life, conscience and morals are built into one’s mind, thus playing a role in life decisions. Through it all, the American dream guides the way American’s live. In Death of a Salesman, written by Arthur Miller, Biff has had morals and an American dream programed into his head through the number one influence in his life, his father Willy. Willy does not understand that he and Biff are two different people and that he cannot mold Biff into the person he wants him to be. He does this all through Biff’s life so Biff cannot grow up because he is erasing what his father had put into his head. Biff’s real American dream is the very opposite of what his father wants it to be, he would like to move out west and manage a farm, while his father wants him to be a successful business man. Miller conveys the message that Biff cannot find himself because Willy has corrupted his morals and dreams by forcing his own aspirations into Biff.
Biff finally finds himself at the end of the novel while having the confused and heated conversation with his father. In this conversation he attempts to tell his father what he had done wrong, he says he cannot be what his father would like him to be, he says “I'm one dollar an hour, Willy! I tried seven states and couldn't raise it ...” (INSERT PAGE #). At this point Biff has completely removed the dreams and morals that Willy had forced into him, he has come to reality and finally realized that he does not have to be what his father has been forcing him to be. A child will do what you tell them to do because they are immature and gullible, but at the age of seventeen the child will start to mature from this gullible state. At age seventeen Biff witnessed his father in the presence of a women that was not his mother, and he then began removing all the things his father had forced him to believe as a younger child. For the next seventeen years of his...