Tuesday, August 26, 2014

The Apple and the Tree

Parents invest a great deal of their identity in the success of their children. You see and hear it often, a proud parent bragging of their child's achievements. But for some parents that's all they talk about. Willy was fixated on his son Biff, his attention was hardly on anything else. When his son wasn't in the room he spent all his time reminiscing on a football game that brought Biff so much attention and himself so much pride. He recalled the moments in the beginning of the play, speaking to his wife in their bedroom wondering at what point did his son lose his way, what changed things for Biff to send him down the wrong path. On page 11 of the text Biff's brother Happy talks about him being lost, losing his confidence and his humor. Just being a different person all together. But as a family they live in this delusion of success that they create for themselves. Biff had success in football but after that we gave up. At first Biff makes this realization in the restaurant while talking to Happy. He can't recall who built up this delusion that he was ever a "top salesman" for Bill Oliver when in fact all along he was only a stock boy and a thief. But his family built up this idea that he was such a phenomenal employee that not only would Oliver remember him but would be willing to invest thousands of dollars in his proposal. Willy needed to believe his sons would be successful, he needed it so badly that he made up the success and distorted the truth in order to see them in a better light. Because of the Great Depression parents like Willy weren't able to follow their dreams but instead invested themselves into their children, their hopes and dreams were in their children and seeing his children as bums was too much for Willy to handle so instead he created an image of them that he could better stand. I see parents do this often. They ignore the flaws of their children but celebrate their achievements to such a degree that it's seems almost as if they themselves are taking credit for their degrees, for their awards and nominations.  Parents often define themselves by the success of their children and for Willy seeing his children lead such minimal lives without a work ethic or drive to achieve was too much for him to handle. But should parents do that? Should a parent take credit or feel they are due any type of commendation for the achievements of their child? What about the other side, should parents then feel responsible for the mistakes of their child? Should they bear some type of shame for raising an unsuccessful individual? 

8 comments:

  1. I think you bring up an excellent point! I feel this is an all too common occurrence. Many parents define their own happiness on that of their children, but there comes a time when the children flourish into adulthood. The parents no long hold reign over the once adolescent minds. A new way of thinking emerges. A sense of freedom arises. Success has various meanings as exploration of adulthood begins. In no way should the parents bear shame. Acceptance and love is the key to happiness. Living in the past and holding Biff to unattainable standards of success was Willy's biggest flaw. He had a happy, healthy son with a career that he thoroughly enjoyed. Happiness should be the root of success in a parents' eyes.

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    1. Thank you for your comment Katie, I couldn't agree more with you. Willy's main flaw was most certainly his disillusionment, with himself and certainly his children, particularly Biff. I also don't truly believe a parent should bare shame for a child's lack of accomplishments or even bad behavior in adult life. Also I don't believe a parent should take too many liberties in celebrating their child's accomplishments. I do think having pride in your child's success is normal but only to a certain degree, once your identity becomes intwined with that pride it seems it's less about what the child had achieved and more about the fact that they are the parent of the child. Which is great but they have not personally became responsible or apart of those achievements through association, despite the love and support they might have bestowed. I love my spouse and he certainly financially and emotionally supports me as a student but my GPA is my own and I would be slightly offended if I heard him bragging to a degree that I felt he were taking credit. Similarly I don't feel responsible for any of his promotions or awards that's he's earned in the Navy. I'm incredibly proud but those accomplishments are his own. And have no bearing on my identity, just like if he were to become dishonorably discharged for his own actions, that has no direct correlation to my own behavior or achievements. It would certainly effect me, similar to his promotions. But something in our society tends to deem this okay, you see it often as I said when a child makes great achievements where the parent take credit for more than their upbringing but you see society place credit on parents when a child makes a great mistake. Perhaps in an extreme example like mass murder. Often during school shootings or youth crime, blame is placed on the parents for their young adult's actions. Young adult being a term up into the mid-twenties when obviously the actions of the individuals are theirs alone and can hardly be explained, or blamed on anyone else. But we do, parents of these children receive hate mail and so much blame it's actually shocking. It seems people want to give credit for bad actions, and take credit for great ones whenever they are closely associated to the person behaving accordingly.

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  2. Well said! I love your correlation between youth/young adult crimes and displaced blame. I feel this is very relevant in today's society. Parents are scrutinized over the actions of their adult children's (or even adolescent children's) actions although most actions stem from a deep-rooted cause such as mental instability, depression, etc. You presented a very pertinent, insightful thought!

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  3. I like how you brought up how some parents ignore the flaws in the kids and only recognize their achievements. I had a close friend be treated like that, and I currently have a family member being treated like that. My friends parents were riding the kids success like it was their own, but ignoring what he was doing off the field or court.

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  4. I wrote a paper on this topic, using this play as an example, a couple years back. It's a great talking point from this play. The idea that parents boast about their children so much is sickening to me. If you allow yourself to feel nothing but pride towards your child, it's like being a horse with blinders on. Sure, you see the good, but you completely ignore any of the negatives. I have to disagree at one part, though. You mention blaming the parents of mass murderers, which, while we cannot "blame" the parents, we do have to put some responsibility on them. Same with Willy (although Biff doesn't kill anyone). Whether we like it or not, our parents shape who we are. We pick up on actions of theirs, habits, how we deal with things emotionally. We are all individuals, but we're individuals who are sculpted by the world around us. Now, saying Biff and Happy are bums, cannot solely be blamed on them. A father who is delusional makes the world out to seem delusional. They saw their father work hard for nothing, never reaching success, and unable to cope with that. If these were real people, they would probably share an inability to cope with things.
    Overall I really enjoyed this post, you have an excellent way of saying things. It makes reading your posts very enjoyable.

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    1. I agree with you but I have a difficult time saying what a parent should and shouldn't do since I'm not a parent myself. There's an emotional connection there that while I can empathize it's difficult for me to go beyond that. I can understand the pride in someone for their achievements but I don't understand the shame from their fault. However, I do see what you are saying and I do agree that to a certain point in our lives our parents do play a role in shaping who we become as adults. But often this is seen when parent's have multiple children despite there upbringing, a child can and will act completely on their own accord and exhibit behaviors and traits that have little to no correlation to their parent. I think that's mostly true for adult, younger adolescents especially those still living at home are still greatly influenced by their parent whether or not they want to admit that. I actually have a distant cousin that committed murder while he was still in high school. He murdered another one of our class mates and left his body in a ditch. When you meet his mother she's the kindest sweetest woman and you wouldn't see how she raised a son like this, until you meet her daughter. I believe in stereotypes because I think they exist for a reason, members of a certain group can always live outside of these patterns but the stereotype exist because the mass majority relate to them, that being said, my cousin and his sister were both Juggalos. And they were covered in violent, blood and gore tattoos. Now I have tattoos, large ones and my husband has sleeves so I have no negative connotations to tattoos, but I do believe your ink is a reflection of yourself. And to be covered in dead bodies, blood and guts just kind of gave you the sense of violence and their mom supported all of this. She's a "friend-mom" so she didn't teach her children to be violent and to murder someone they didn't like but she didn't tell them no. She didn't give them boundaries, she let them freely express themselves without any guidance and clearly that might not have been the best idea. But instead of shaming her, of course our family stood behind her. Saying he acted alone and it had nothing to say about her as a parent but then why would someone so young think that this was an okay way to express their anger toward someone. I don't think my family should have scolded her but you can't be your child's best friend, and she has two small children and no one thinks to say something because they don't want to be rude but if your parenting skills didn't work out so hot the first time then maybe you shouldn't stick to that same plan. Again I'm not a parent, I don't know the first thing about being a parent because despite being married I don't want kids for years but it seems to me that when your child is successful you don't mind taking the credit but when your child isn't successful or does something terrible you have no problem pretending like that has nothing to do with you when in fact both scenarios are PARTIALLY do to you and mostly do to the child.

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    2. And sincerely, thank you for your comment and your compliment to my writing, I enjoy writing these posts and just hope others enjoy reading them.

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  5. Kayla,
    I think it was interesting when you said, "Parents often define themselves by the success of their children and for Willy seeing his children lead such minimal lives without a work ethic or drive to achieve was too much for him to handle." Do you think it was actually his relationship with his sons more so that led to his breakdown and suicide? This is an interesting claim, and one that you might consider exploring more in one of our essays. I'll have to hunt down the quote, but I believe Miller said something along the lines of "This is a play about the father-son relationship," so I don't think this original approach would be too off-base...

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