When you write you’re coming, he’s all smiles, and talks about the future, and – he’s just wonderful. And then the closer you seem to come, the more shaky he gets, and, then, by the time you get here, he’s arguing, and he seems angry at you. I think it’s just that maybe he can’t bring himself to – to open up to you. Why are you so hateful to each other? Why is that?
– Arthur Miller
Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Linda is speaking to Biff about how upset Willy gets whenever his son comes home. Willy is bitterly disappointed that Biff hasn’t made more of his life than working at a farmhand in Texas. But there is another reason behind the animosity between father and son, a secret Linda doesn’t know about. During Biff’s senior year in high school he discovered that his father betrayed his mother with a woman in a Boston hotel. He lost faith in his father and dropped his studies. After that their encounters tend to be confrontational and bristling with hostility.