Friends, we know how a child reacts when his father abandons him at a very early age, especially when he has no intervening maternal presence to ease his self-doubt. This is Willie Loman's case history.

What happens when a child is emotionally but not physically abandoned by his father, and he too has no access to an intervening maternal presence to ease his self-doubt. This is Hap Loman's case history.

If we are to judge from Hap's reactions, we can say that the pain must be very similar. Like his father, Willie, Hap became a salesman - a bad one - and a womanizer, again, just like his father. And like his father Hap seeks out the maternal love he didn't get from his own mother.

The play gives us no evidence that Linda, the mother, ever took an independent interest in Hap, or even Biff, except to the extent that they have pleased or displeased Willie, to whom she gave her whole devotion. Clearly, then, she was not aware of Hap's feeling of emotional abandonment by Willie, and did not, therefore, do anything to console him.

Let me close with this. Hap is a bad salesman just like his father. Like, Willie, Hap often gets professionally frustrated. He speaks to Biff about wanting to rip off his shirt and "... outbox that goddamned sales manager (at the retail establishment where he works)." Hap goes on to say that "I got more ability in my little finger than he's got in his whole body."

Well, this sounds so much like Willie's empty claims that one suspects that the exact opposite is true. The sales manager probably has more ability in his little finger than Hap Loman has in his whole body - in the selling field. Hap, like his father, is not right for selling.

Hap shoehorns himself into a field that is all wrong for him, as well as womanize, because, like his father, he must prove that he is "well liked."

wingedcentaur