Good Evening Friends,

I have tried my best to make the case for the idea that Hap is, at the end of Death of a Salesman, the very reincarnation of Willie Loman, his father. In declaring his intention to remain in New York and fulfill the "good dream" that everyone acknowledges eluded Willie, he carries on the perceived legacy of his spiritual grandfather, Dave Singleman. Hap becomes the torch-bearer for Willie.

Willie had tried to pass the torch to Biff. None of this, I want to emphasize, is anything like the normal way parents influence their children. We are really looking at something special and disturbing in the Loman family.

Biff comes to embody the neglected side of Willie. This is a side that Willie indulges only recreationally, a side he must reject even as he is drawn to it because it is the side of him that comes from his biological father - who abandoned Willie. This utilitarian side of himself, from Willie's perspective, is not the side that is fit for the "business world."

Willie never consciously tried to teach his boys any values that might be derived from making or fixing things with one's own hands. He taught them about selling themselves. And for a while there it had looked as if Biff was the perfect acolyte absorbing the holy teachings of the cult of Dave Singleman, as interpreted by the high priest, Willie Loman.

But as we all know and as we have been saying, that was not to be. I have tried to make the case that what we see in Hap and Biff a secular example of a kind of "bipolar" (not in the mood sense) psychological reincarnation.

To be continued.

wingedcentaur