Hope you would be doing fine. I feel at home with Loman family. Aunt Linda is caring and has provided every comfort possible. I had no chance to meet Uncle Willy for five days after my arrival here as he was too absorbed in his sales work and was out of home. Biff and Happy are occupied with thoughts of their own. Whole family seems to me a little disillusioned. Aunt Linda loves and respects her husband. She has great concerns for him. I have a feeling that she does not understand uncle Wily fully but she is there to support him blindly.
She is not an adventurous soul like his two sons. For him, social security is everything in the world. Uncle Willy is very old, weak and tired but he loves his work. Though he cares too much for his sons but his sons despise him for his worthlessness. I wondered on this indifferent earlier but now I have realized that Uncle Willy is a day-dreamer. His refusal to accept reality is a tragic and it frustrate Biff with whom he had a troubled relationship. I too think that Uncle Willy is living a life full of false expectations as his aspirations are not unreal or fantastic.
He likes being commercially successful by having a good house, a good car, and a job which fetches a lot of money. It is a dream of business success. He is concerned about his sons but his concern is the concern of every parent for his sons. I agree with Biff that he is a man who cherishes false dreams. He is disillusioned too. He thinks that he has countless friends that everything will be alright, that he is a success, and his boys will be successes too. He has cared too much for his sons. He has more than ruined his sons.
His misconceived and disillusioned ideas have made his sons revolt against him. Biff has a life of his own. He is talented but it seems to me that he feels lost and bewildered in this wide world, where he has no one and nothing to belong to: he feels alienated in this world of material existence. He wants to belong to somewhere, somebody, but cannot. Uncle Willy thinks that Biff is just one of the common ruts. He blames him, for not settling down as late as the age of thirty-four. He has not launched his career successfully.
I think that he has potential but he lacks courage and determination. Sometimes, Uncle Willy feels the same and is of the view that Biff is not lazy but is simply lost. He is only misdirecting his energies toward things that had nothing to do with his talents, abilities and habitual formations. I think he is wasting his vigor in exasperating competition and hankered after fictitious idealism. Happy too is lost but in a different way. I will explain this to you later. He is happy going-lucky sort of person. But I don’t have a feeling for him.
Unlike Biff, he is not only carrying the burden dreams. He is Uncle Willy’s son-a chip of the same block. I am most concerned about Aunt Linda as she seems to me a silent sufferer. Being a good house-wife, she feels the agonies of Uncle Willy and is grief-stricken about the failures of Biff too. Linda can do better than living from moment to moment and making Uncle Willy survive through his problems. Whole family is suffering from fictitious idealism and false dreams. Furthermore, Uncle Willy is unable to acknowledge the tormented love given to him by his family.
They all must shed these false notions otherwise; as it seems to me, this family will be disjointed one. Biff will lose his talents and Aunt Linda will suffer the most. One thing is helping them survive till now and that is their mutual love. That is the only positive thing that they possess. I am quite optimistic about them and hope that they all will overcome their inner frailties and pray that they do this at the earliest. I am also sending you a golden picture that contains all Loman family members. I will write you soon again.