“Father....Who Are You?” is a very powerful and thoughtful poem. This poem can be very closely related and compared to the novel Death of a Salesman. Of course, however, the writing is not the same, the meaning inside the two texts are equivalent. They are both about a father and child relationship. Inside these two texts shows one thing, that the sons of the father always took advantage of them, and later regretted it in life.
Death of a Salesman is a novel in which the main character, Wily, is portrayed as a very hard worker. He only wishes to bring his family happiness, especially his sons Biff and Happy. However, Biff and Happy never acknowledged this. They never opened their eyes and saw the true colors of their father. They believed their father only brought them misery and they did not acknowledge the way Wily worked so hard for his sons. They did not appreciate him at all. As they grew older, they realized that all they did was a mistake. They tried to make their father proud but nothing worked. They began to regret the way they treated their father. Instead, they tried to fix the present. Yet again, nothing worked.
The poem is very similar to the novel in many different ways. To begin, the daughter explains how she greatly misses her father, and even wishes she knew who he truly was. Clearly, this is a way of the author telling the reader that she never took the time to appreciate her father for who he really is. She simply set him aside. In the end, she regretted all that she had done.
Biff took everything for granted until he finished high school and realized he will not be anything without his father’s help and guidance. He realized since he took him for granted he got nothing in return. This led him to regret all that he done. The girl in the poem felt the same way. She did not appreciate him, she felt guilty for not remembering anything.