Arthur Miller’s DEATH OF A SALESMAN
February 20
“Pop, I'm nothing! I'm nothing! Can't you understand that? There's no spite in it any more. I'm just what I am, that's all.”
Biff in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman
As he delivers this line, the stage directions state: “Biff’s fury has spent itself and he breaks down sobbing, holding onto Willy, who dumbly fumbles for Biff’s face.” The Loman household in Death of a Salesman is a fairly miserable one, full of blustering and delusion, deception and broken dreams. “Biff” actually means to strike someone sharply with the fist, and Loman means “low man,” or, as Willy is always called, “the common man.” Willy sees his son Biff as a failure and a loser. Biff, who doesn’t quite know how to envision himself, is driven to find his own truth. In this scene, taken down to level zero, he admits his lack of achievement, no longer feeling enmity toward his father. He is desperately groping to retrieve his identity and rescue what is left of his life.
Once when a student of mine dropped four-year old Seth on his head in the theatre lobby, my son sustained a concussion. On doctor’s orders, that night we waked him on the hour to ask him pertinent questions. “Make sure he can tell you his name,” the doctor said. At 1:00 a.m. when I woke him and asked, he replied, “I don’t know my name, but my sister is Elin Keith Olson,” and he promptly fell back to sleep. Knowing our name, knowing the basics about who we are, is fundamental in life.
“I’m just what I am, that’s all,” says Biff. In some ways, that is the only thing any of us can say. One of my childhood demigods summed it all up, that crazy spinach-eating seafarer Popeye who sang about his name, and how he was who he was, and that was all that he was! In his theme song, he boasts that he is tough and dislikes dumb oafs who he is likely to fight and win. He says he biffs them so hard, they never get anywhere!
I wonder if Biff Loman stole his line from Popeye, since his name is embedded in the cartoon character’s lines. “I’m just what I am, that’s all.” In Exodus 3:14, God says to Moses, “I am who I am.” Following God’s lead, Jesus, according to John, picks up on the theme and declares: “I am the Bread of Life.” “I am the Light of the World.” “I am the Good Shepherd.” “I am the True Vine.”
In some configurations of spiritual development, at the ninth and highest stage, we finally say, “I am who I am.” At last, we can remove the masks and armor we have used all our lives. At this junction, naked and revealed, we finally admit that we have nothing up our sleeves (we have no sleeves), nothing to prove, nothing to project. Like the Wizard of Oz, the curtain is pulled down. The Emperor recognizes he has no clothes. We have disconnected our self-image machine and we are free to cast only God’s original version of ourselves, our authentic and essential soul child.
Like Biff, at this point, we have been taken down to nothing, and we realize we are nothing. But this is the point at which, if we can comprehend it, we clearly recognize that we are also everything. We don’t see it in the play, but maybe that is just where Biff is headed.