WILLY: How can he find himself on a farm? Is that a life? A farmhand? In the beginning, when he was young, I thought, well, a young man, it’s good for him to tramp around, take a lot of different jobs. But it’s more than ten years now and he has yet to make thirty-five dollars a week!
LINDA: He’s finding himself, Willy.
WILLY: Not finding yourself at the age of thirty-four is a disgrace!
– Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Willy is bitterly disappointed at son Biff when he returns home from the West after working as a farmhand for a few dollars a week. He views Biff’s failure to achieve financial success as a kind of betrayal of his own expectations for his 34-year-old elder and favorite son. He feels Biff is wasting away his life working on a Texas farm. The irony is that Willy himself often yearns for the simpler life away from the city and close to nature, the one his son has been living. Linda defends Biff saying he is still trying to find himself.