Effects Of Lies In Death Of A Salesman

Ryan Jones
Ms. Dye
AP Literature
2 February 2011
Devastation, Lies, Death of a Salesman
The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is about the events leading up to the death of a man, this man is Willy Loman. Willy may have been a father to two men but these two men were not sons to this man. They were once proper sons but a fateful event changed it all. This family's history has been shrouded in the darkness of lies. Some of these lies are denial and others are deception, a common situation for families everywhere. Arthur Miller exposes the effect that dishonesty, with one's self and others, can have on any family through the lies that surround and ultimately engulf the Loman family in Death of a Salesman.
The most prevalent
form of lying lurking around in Death of a Salesman is denial or lying to one's self. The first victim of this subconscious occurrence would be Happy, his ironic name leads to the first example. He is not a satisfied man, he wants more but leads others to believe that he has a shot at a position of authority within his grasp; this is shown when Happy says, “...when he walks into the store the waves part in front of him. That’s fifty-two thousand dollars a year coming through the revolving door, and I got more in my pinky finger than he’s got in his head.” (18; act :1) In this instance he is describing his boss, a man who is probably much better than himself, but Willy has been stating that Happy is the best that any man could hope to be for so long that he now feels that he is somehow being oppressed by the corporate world. The situation is quite the contrary however; it is later implied that he is just a clerk at his place of employment nowhere closer to the top than any other average man. He lies and is lied to so much that he ultimately concludes that it is truth. His refusal to believe reality was seeded early in his life with his father's denial towards his work and his sons. When Willy would come home from a business trip he would make wild claims about his fantastic sales numbers and he would praise himself for his boys to see. However, when Willy is speaking with his boss, Howard, they exchange these words, “I’m talking about your father! There were promises made across this desk! You mustn’t tell me you’ve got people to see — I put thirty-four years into this firm, Howard, and now I can’t pay my insurance! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away — a man is not a piece of fruit! Now pay attention. Your father — in 1928 I had a big year. I averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions.” (64; act :2) This scene not only shows Willy's weakness and desperation but also exposes his falseness. During this scene Willy starts out confident and sure of himself, but as the conversation with Harold goes on Willy eventually states that he had averaged the very high commission in 1928. Harold then comes back and says that Willy never averaged anything near that. Harold promptly leaves and Willy begins to give himself advice; the same advice that he was giving his sons. That short scene alone demonstrates that Willy has been lying to himself for so long; long enough for him to believe it as truth, or at least long enough that he feels he needs to still defend that lie. Biff is the final man to exhibit denial in the play. We first learn of his denial during one of the early flashbacks that Willy has. Young Bernard comes on and says, “Biff! Listen, Biff, I heard Mr. Birnbaum say that if you don't start studyin' math, he's gonna flunk you, and you won't graduate. I heard him!” (25; act :1) Willy responds by casually recommending that Biff should go study. Biff then (not paying attention to Bernard) goes on to show Willy his new sneakers on which he has drawn a University of Virginia emblem. Bernard states that the sneakers don’t mean Biff will graduate and Willy angrily responds, “With scholarships to three universities they're gonna flunk him?” (25; act :1) It is never revealed whether or not Biff really had those scholarship offers. However, Willy and Biff both show denial in the fact that they are not taking Bernard's warning seriously, Biff ignores Bernard and Willy accuses Bernard of being a “pest” for telling Biff to study so he can pass math and graduate. This motif is stressed throughout the play, to demonstrate how it can affect someone dealing with a life of denial when they are at the end of their life.
Willy, during the play, repeatedly lied about his job.
He lied about satisfaction, success, and reasons for failure. As Biff and Happy were growing up they saw Willy coming home from trips claiming to have had amazing sales; amongst these claims he told his sons that they were the perfect sons and that all they needed in life was to be well liked and that this would lead to ultimate success. During one of Willy's flashbacks he states, “The man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead. Be liked and you will never want.” (25; act :1) Willy stresses this because his sons are well liked during their high school careers but they don't have much else going for them. Biff and Happy are both stereotypical athletes: good at sports, good with women, and not very intellectual. Willy saw himself as a failure of a salesman; he saw himself this way because he felt that he was not well liked. Willy felt as if people laughed at him because he was short and disliked him because he made too many jokes. Therefore, he felt as though he needed to make his sons as well liked as possible to make them successful; because in his eyes that is all he was missing as a salesman. Some people who fit Happy and Biff's description become successful farmers or carpenters; but many (like Biff and Happy), are strongly encouraged to work in the city by their parents. The only discrepancy is that many of these people do not fit city jobs well. Willy lies to his sons to attempt to persuade them to work in the city, where he worked throughout his life. He believed that the only real jobs that a man could have existed in the cities. Willy ignored his own longing for a hands-on job and pushed himself and his sons into the city. His family was filled with manual laborers; his father made flutes and his brother explored the wilderness, yet he decided that both the city and an office job were right for him. Willy's
persistence in dishonesty led to the ultimate failure of Biff and Happy in the professional world.
The ultimate demise of the Loman family came from Willy's disloyalty to his marriage. Willy's affair was a fairly well kept secret until Biff came to see Willy and tell him about failing math. When Biff finds out he starts crying and whenever Willy would tell Biff to do something Biff would just simply say “no” or “never mind”. When Willy promises to go to the school and get the teacher to pass Biff, Biff then says, “He wouldn't listen to you.” With this it is safe to assume that if Willy did not have the affair, Biff would have likely finished high school if not graduated from college, and he also would have been more supportive of Willy when Willy needed it. Additionally Biff would have thought higher of his father and stayed closer to home, and he probably would have been happier. Towards the middle of the play Linda asks Biff why he and Willy fight so much, Biff replies, “Because I know he’s a fake and he doesn’t like anybody around who knows!” (45; act :1) Once the affair has been revealed it is obvious that Biff was implying that Willy does not like to be around him because Willy knows that Biff knows that Willy has been unfaithful. When Biff discovers the affair he immediately questions his father's wisdom, which becomes another reason for the crumbling of the family . This questioning led Biff to discover that Willy was not totally honest with the boys about how life works. To spite his father Biff then does not go to summer school and runs away to the cattle farms of the west. Willy's relationship with Biff is shattered and Willy believes that it cannot be repaired. This belief causes Willy to always go on the defensive when around Biff; because Willy assumes that Biff does and always will do things just to contradict his father. Willy's affair really did destroy the family not because everyone found out, but because Biff did and Willy then felt that he would do everything in his power to get back at him.
Once the affair is exposed to Biff the dominoes begin to fall and the family crumbled due to the loss of Biff. Biff was driven away due to the connection the rest of the family still shared with Willy. Happy, the younger brother, then became like his father and changed into a self inflated balloon. Since there were so many different dysfunctional personalities clashing under one roof the failure of one of the members was inevitable, that member just happened to be Willy Loman.