Biff's the opposite of Happy and Willy. Biff doesn't care about the amount of money he earns, all he really cares about is that he enjoys his work. All he really wants is to be outside working with his hands. Biff rejects the American dream and makes one up for himself. Biff defines his own idea of success and takes control of his life.
Happy however takes the American dream and eats it all up. He becomes just like his father but is more greedy and cynical. He wants everything for himself and wouldn't spare a dime to anyone else. In the end Happy will probably take a road similar to that of his father and perhaps killing himself as well.
The death of Willy at the end of the play is a death caused by the flaws of the American dream, the one that killed Willy is the one that says that some people will work hard all their life and end up with nothing, this is what happened to Willy. The American dream sucks people in and doesn't let them leave. The American dream becomes the American cult. This cult will sucker people in by promising riches and success and then won't let them leave simply because it states that if you quit a job you become a quitter and, according to the American dream, quitters are failures. Willy's demise was one of a common man. It was not anything special.
Biff's character is one of a popular nature. When he was at school he was always popular, athletic and full of potential. All this changed however when he went to see his father in Boston. This is when Biff found out about Willy's affair as is shown in willies flashbacks. Finding this out crushed Biff and destroyed his image about his father, he discovered that his father was a phony he says, "You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!” This shows how devastated Biff was when he found out about his father's affair. Before Biff discovered about his father's affair Biff believed in the American dream as can be seen in the flashback showing the family going to the football game, but when he discovered that his father, who relied so heavily on the American dream, had deceived him and his whole family, he realized that the American dream was just as phony as his own father. This is where Biff starts to rejects his father's dream and his relationship with his father begins to deteriorate to the constant bickering we see throughout the play.
Willy’s belief that he is a failure is when he starts to look around and notice that he has little brand name goods, thus little money and thus he is a failure. The fact that he is then fired compounds this feeling and increases his downward spiral.
Willy wants dearly for Biff to become a business success, although Biff has an internal struggle between pleasing his father and doing what he feels is right. Biff wants to be outside on a cattle ranch, and Willy wants him behind a corporate desk. Through the illusions that Willy believes, he cannot see that Biff is a nobody and not bound to be successful as defined by Willy. Though Biff’s failure does come to the surface in the beginning of act 2 when Biff recounts his day trying to get a job and how he realized himself that he can never be what his father hoped he would be.
