done is to waste my life." (Biff, Act I).
...Aye, there's the rub. Biff Loman is caught in quite the predicament for most of the play: he is enamored with the idea of working with his muscles, and is completely caught up in the simplistic beauty of helping colts deliver their foals and watching them together. At one point, Biff even gets Happy caught up in this idea of working together, just two brothers and their physical abilities. This was his dream. However, Willy completely disapproves: "when he was young, i thought it's good for him to take a lot of different jobs. But it's more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!" (Act I). Willy's dream is monetary and success-driven, associating the worthiness of a being with their job status. Sadly, with Willy's combined disapproval and threats of suicide, Biff feels like his Texas dream is not only taboo, but a serious waste of life-energy. He tries, for his father's sake, to start living the corporate dream and being "successful" by going to Oliver's office and trying to get a job. When that falls through, Biff's momentary delusion evaporates and he sees more clearly than ever the fallacy of chasing after Willy's american dream.
"He walked away. I saw him for one minute. I got so mad I could've torn the walls down! How the hell did I ever get the idea I was a salesman there? I even believed myself that I'd been a salesman for him! And then he gave one look and--I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been! We've been talking in a dream for fifteen years. I was a shipping clerk." (Act I)Biff confronted his father with combined shame and resolution, and at wit's end tells his father "Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing, Pop. Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it anymore. I'm just what I am, that's all...Will you let me go, for Christ's sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?" (Act II). Biff, although still broken over the fact that he feels like a failure in the world that is his father's house and his father's dream, comes to terms with the fact that Willy's dream is not only fruitless, but actually damaging to one's life. In the very end, Biff acknowledges completely that Willy had "all the wrong dreams" (Requiem), and completely embraces his own.
Biff's journey to his dream contains a pretty simple message - the corporate american dream achieved through Willy's methods is flawed, broken, and fruitless. The real american dream, the only reliable dream even in this growing corporate world, and the original american dream, is found through hard, honest labor and being true to your natural abilities. Trying to reach for a wealth and status you cannot attain, or degrading yourself into believing you have attained it, is complete folly. It is better to do what you love and can do well, and break your back doing it, then working a dead-end job just to pay the bills.
My dream is the same - mostly - and actually rather similar to Biff's. In the end, Biff made a decision based on who he finally realized he was. My junior year essay was about establishing who I am in Christ, as opposed to figuring out what I'm going to fill my future doing. With college looming, however, what I'm going to be doing is becoming a much more pressing question. Not a question I'd like to tackle so preemptively, the whole college and scholarship process honestly disgusts me. I hope that, like Biff, I can find something I love to do that fits into who I am. What concerns me the most is how well, or...extremely un-well...my dream will fit into the current secular regime. I really should have been born in like the 1500s or something, where a simple trade was passed down from mentor to apprentice. I feel that'd give me more time to develop my person, while still doing something productive that brings me into contact with other people. I really don't have a forte - I'm just relatively good at a lot of things. So finding a forte, even if I got an apprenticeship somewhere, that I'd like to pursue is near-impossible. I suppose I'll just have to trust that the Lord will take me where I need to be, because I KNOW I need to do something - I want to be active with my life, as opposed to wasteful... but I honestly do not know what that means for me. We'll see, I suppose.
