Saturday, August 30, 2014

The Young Adult: Parental Importance


A bed lay desecrated. Man and woman pervert the holy vow of marriage. Bang. Bang. Bang. The knocker is persistent. Willy lay entangled amongst the deprivation of his own misdoings. As sin slowly encroaches, the seemingly endless rattle of wood against closed fist is acquitted within his own thoughts as nothing more than the wrong door. After contemplation, Willy leads his forbidden mistress behind closed doors. The ominous entryway becomes his center of focus. With a slight turn of the wrist, light emanates forth into the dim hallway in which Biff, Willy’s son, is standing. The light not only illuminates the silhouette of the young man, but also the darkness within Willy’s being. The lies were suddenly put to rout. The charade is soon to disperse. Biff is the first to bear witness to the feeble attempts of his father’s delusion. 

Biff confides in his father, “dad, I flunked math...the term. I haven’t got enough credits to graduate”(Death of a Salesman). With little hesitation, Willy becomes enthralled with his son’s success. He quickly dismisses his son’s angst in saying “you’re on. We’ll drive right back”(Death of a Salesman). His intent is to reprimand Mr. Birnbaum for the failure of his son. Unanticipatedly, a snicker is heeded from behind closed doors. The shapely, blonde discloses her deception within the tangled pipe dream of Mr. Loman. It is at this moment that Biff revokes his father’s dream for his own. Adolescents and young adults often times deviate from their natural course due to flaws lacking in family structure, life altering events, abuse, etc. The staple of the household has the ability to alter the existence of those they guide. With one event, an entire story can become diverted to a new conclusion. Willy altered the life of his boys and wife. Can parental figures change the outcome of a child’s success? Do they hold such a power? If so, what can be done to stop the destruction of our youth?   

4 comments:

  1. Your visual imagery of Willie's sin is amazing. I do feel that the whole play centers on the betrayal Willie and Biff's childish or maybe arrested development to separate his father and from the man Willie Loman was, a big blowhard with a capacity for only recognizing his own ego and desires.

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  2. I think Willy shot himself in the foot as far as keeping Biff's trust. He never let his son ever have to think for himself or ever have to see the world for what t really was. He never even let Biff see him as a real man. Keeping Biff in this ambivalent bubble, all the while not living up to (and not really trying to live up to) any of the legend he'd created for himself - led an emotionally stunted Biff to stumble on his secret. One the truth about this mistress did come out, Biff didn't have any of the tools to handle it because he'd never had to handle any disappointment in his life. He had lived a charmed life with everything handed to him from his teachers to his parents and when one thing fell out of place, he allowed everything else to crumble around it. This was all Willy's doing but he couldn't have the decency to shoulder the blame.

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  3. Wow Katie, this is beautiful. I really enjoyed reading it. To answer your questions though I truly believe that after a certain age life is what you make of it. Despite your advantages, despite your parents I think if you have the desire and the drive you will find success. I use my own experience and that of my husband in examples a lot because I don't usually enjoy arbitrary allegories as opposed to real life experiences. My husband was raised with unfortunate circumstances, his father died for tragic reasons shortly after he would have finished high school and he fell into a downward spiral. A spiral that the world would have deemed him entitled to go. A spiral of drugs and alcohol and depression that I was truly afraid he'd never come out of. But he did come out of it, and he's incredibly bright, incredibly successful and I don't think that can be attributed to anyone but himself. He doesn't make excuses for himself, he never plays the "poor me I had a bad childhood card" and because of him I don't really like to see anyone else do it. You can always pull yourself out of adversity, it won't be easy and if you don't work at it you won't get anywhere but if you really try and you really give it your all I believe it's possible and that has nothing to do with your parents and everything to do with yourself. And that's more gratifying because you did it on your own. For your question of what can be done about our youth, I don't know but I think we need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and start encouraging. Yes you had a rough child hood, so what? Why can't you go to school because of that? If we stop giving free passes to fail because life is hard then who will get anywhere. J.P. Morgan had an incredibly difficult child hood but you didn't hear him crying and asking for a hand up. We need to just encourage youth to understand it doesn't matter who they are or where they come from because they can determine where they do. With hard work and an education they can change their future.

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  4. Or maybe it was this event that ultimately saved Biff, made it impossible for him to live in delusion as Willy has done?

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