As people get older, they often abandon goals and relationships they once planned to keep. In the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller, it is demonstrated that disconnection in family leads to self-destruction. Willy and Biff demonstrate this disconnection; Biff’s loss of faith in his father as a result of Willy’s affair, Biff’s loss of interest in the American Dream and the mutual feeling of betrayal between father and son. This loss of faith and betrayal will be the death of the salesman. Firstly Biffs loss of interest in “The American Dream” causes his father Willy and him to clash, as Willy’s only hope for life was to secure “The American Dream." Biff came to realize that all he knew, all his father Willy had taught him about being well liked leading to being successful was a lie, this led Biff to give up all on his goal for future of him being a salesman. “I saw things that I love in this world. The work and the food and the time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and I thought, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am” (Act II, Miller). Biff is in the office of a successful businessman stealing a pen, the pen symbolizes everything he is not, here Biff has an epiphany and later confronts his family about his true feelings about being a salesman. “He had the wrongs dreams. All, all wrong he never knew who he really was” ( Act II. Miller). Biff is telling his brother Happy about Willy’s dreams being all wrong and that he chose the wrong pathway. Here Biff is loosing faith in Willy, distancing the two; this will eventually lead to the destruction of Willy as the people around him loose their faith in him.
Additionally, Willy still is determined to fulfill his dreams and live “The American Dream” despite the fact that it is tearing his relationships apart by the se...