Lies And Deceitful In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

Lies and deceitfulness can be found in everyday life, especially in many books and plays. Characters can lie and be deceitful about many things. The reasons why someone may lie or be deceitful can vary, it may be a constant struggle for some characters to be honest with others or even to themselves about their life or an issue. Being true can be difficult in certain situations, especially when the truth can be damaging or harmful. Also, many can justify not being genuine by saying that they are sparring someone from the harsh reality that life is. Lying and being deceitful has been a theme in many works of literature and one thing that readers can take away from most of these works, is that the end result will not be good. Not being honest …show more content…
A small family goes on about their lives believing that they are successful, happy, and overall content with their lives. The truth is that they are unsatisfied with how their lives are going. The husband, Willy, is under the notion that he is a great salesman, when he does not even make enough money to support his entire family. He has two sons who have made him much less than proud. Biff, one of the sons, continues to lie about his progress with landing a job, and Happy will not settle down with a woman or settle down in general. Willy and his wife make up their own world where they are happy. They all lie to each other and to themselves. The feeling of having to put up a facade takes a toll on everyone in the family. The two sons and the father do not get along and the mother feels like she has to choose between her husband or her sons. She does stick by her husband, showing that she is on his side, but she does not do much to help him get out of his own head. He has made up his own happiness and she plays along with him. She realizes he is sick but does not do anything to help. The constant lying and deceiving harms Willy so greatly that he eventually perishes. “Willy is much more emphatically a representative figure, an American Everyman, than any of Miller's other characters; accordingly, his problems are much less personal dilemmas than they are public issues. Willy is a …show more content…
In The Great Gatsby we see a love triangle that does not really go anywhere. The participants all end up dissatisfied with the outcome. Gatsby does lose his life, Daisy loses the love of her life, and Tom loses his mistress. We can see how lying and being deceitful can harm different types of relationships. Granted that none of these relationships seemed healthy to begin with, we can still see how the characters were affected. Death of a Salesman shows us the internal struggle a character might have with telling the truth. Sometimes it is harder to tell yourself the truth than it is to tell someone else. Battling through your life, not being able to be true can be taxing. We see this happen to Willy in this play, he takes his own life as a result of the contrast charade that he has played all those years. His two sons lie about how well they are doing for themselves which causes more stress for Willy. He only wants the best for his family, so he ends up believing they have it, he lies to himself along with his wife. This is a sad reality, many people choose to pretend that they are happy instead of facing real life. Willy took what seemed to be the easy way out and just pretend, when really all this did was exhaust him even more. In A Doll’s House we see another relationship that is affected by deceit and lying. Nora realizes