2003 Prompt, question 3

Arthur Miller uses his classic drama Death of a Salesman to demonstrate the
consequences of delusions, specifically the effects they have on loved ones. The delusional
character is of course the bipolar salesman Willy Loman. Everyone around him has been
affected by his delusions, both the ones caused by his view of his boys, and those caused by
his mild dementia. Most notably, his son Biff was affected the most, but his other family
members Linda and Happy Loman were affected as well, furthermore, Willy’s only friend,
Charlie, was largely affected by Willy’s delusions and perils.
Biff was primarily affected by Willy’s delusions as to Biff’s own grandeur, and a delusion
all of his own. To start at the very beginning, Biff was a highschool football star, he would have
made it to the university of Virginia, as long as he had the appropriate grades; Biff was young,
likable, self confident, and ambitious. Over the course of his life up to that point, he had built his
father up onto a pedestal, as a man who was respected and charismatic, a man who had done
everything for his family. His father was his hero, and the constant compliments from the man
are what gave him his confidence. That is until one day, where he found his father and another
woman having an affair in Boston, 200 miles away from his home in New York. In that moment,
Biff’s delusions of his father crashed down, and with it his ambition and self confidence. Biff’s
own delusion was his initial downfall. Arthur Miller uses this first conflict as the beginning of
Willy’s spiraling decline, and as a warning for young people. A warning to not blind yourself by
building people up on pedestals, because they will crash, and when they do they will turn your
own views on your head, and cause an immeasurable level of self doubt. A while later in the
play, Biff tries to talk to one of his old employers under the encouragement from Willy. While
there, he realises that he had been living a lie, he had never even had the job that Willy told him
he had, he had never worked under the man he was meeting. Then, at the very end of the play,
during the climax of the story, Biff lays out exactly what Willy did to him. He points out that
Willy’s constant and unfounded compliments, combined with his own self doubt, built him into a
man who could not take orders of any kind, nor could he work under another man. Willy’s
compliments were of course, founded on his delusions of how great and successful his children
were. Miller uses all of Biff’s experiences to demonstrate the dangers of delusions of any kind
can have, but mainly how Willy’s delusions hurt Biff and set him up for failure, building a self-
image for Biff that never existed and causing Biff to crumble.
Willy’s misinterpretation of the world around him continuously affected his family,
causing more and more internal conflict and breeding new misconceptions. Linda Loman,
Willy’s loving and devoted wife of at least 30 years, was constantly affected by Willy’s delusions
and mental health issues. It caused conflict and she was often yelled at over things so small as
buying American cheese instead of Swiss cheese. Yet she still loved Willy deeply and tried to
broker peace between him and Biff. However, she one day found a rubber hose on the gas line,
showing that Willy was thinking of committing suicide. This clashed so strongly with the
misconceptions that Willy had given her, that she didn’t know how to react to it, and so she did
nothing about it. Miller used Linda to show how being constantly surrounded by delusions and
misconceptions can cause them to start to morph into a confusing picture of reality, they are
dangerous because you eventually can’t tell what’s real and what's false.
 Happy, Willy’s second son also was deeply affected by Willy’s delusional words. From a
young age, Biff was always given preference over Happy by Willy. This caused Happy to work
hard to become a man that his father would be proud of. So he tried to copy Willy,
misconceptions and all; he became a salesman of mediocre success, promiscuous, and a
pathological liar who would never disagree with a word his father said. This again Miller’s
demonstration of the danger of pedestals, while Biff broke out of it himself, Happy never did.
This caused him to become trapped in the same delusions that Willy had built around himself.
To further exemplify this, Happy, at Willy’s funeral, states that he was planning to stay in New
York, as a salesman, and become the best, just as Willy believed himself to be; he wanted to be
his father.
One more character was affected by Willy’s delusions in a major way, Willy’s friend
Charley. Charley was a rather successful man who owned his own business, he was also
Willy’s only friend. One day, they were playing cards with each other, when Willy went crazy,
and started trying to heatedly argue with him over nothing, before suddenly calming down when
he saw a hallucination of his brother Ben there. Seeing Willy like this would have no doubt
caused Charley to be concerned about him. Later on in the play, Willy goes to Charley to ask for
some money, which he immediately gives him. Then, when he learns that Willy had lost his job,
he argues with him to try and convince him to accept his job offer. Charley’s deep care about
Willy is then demonstrated by his attendance at his funeral. Miller used Charley to demonstrate
the other side of the coin, the perspective of someone unaffected by delusions, who has to
watch a friend or loved one decay, because they won't accept help.
In conclusion, Miller used his play, Death of a Salesman, to demonstrate how extremely
painful delusions can be for both the person experiencing them, and the loved ones affected by
the delusions.