Deception of Family in Death of a Salesman and A Doll’s House

Arthur Miller's classic American play, Death of a Salesman and Henrik Ibsen’s classic

play A Doll’s House, expose dysfunctional families and behaviors. In these plays, the themes

of innocence, guilt and of truth and are considered through the eyes of deception. Both

plays tell us that most of us choose to play roles and deceive, not only those immediately,

but distantly around us. In Death of a Salesman the father passes deception to his boys the next

generation. A Doll’s House Shows deception in a whole different way. We are shown a women’s

role with lack of power in a mans society.

In Death of a Salesman Willy Loman is a self deluded, insecure traveling salesman.

Willy truly believes in the American Dream of easy wealth and success. Willy always

tells his boys people he has known that have gotten rich. Willy’s tells them ”The man knew what

he wanted and went out and got it! Walked into a jungle, and comes out, the age of twenty one,

and he’s rich!”(1254) Linda is Willy’s loving, loyal wife. Linda suffers through Willy’s big

dreams. Once in a while, she seems to be taken in by Willy’s false hopes for future glory and

success. Biff is Willy’s thirty-four-year old elder son. Biff led a popular life in high school as a

football player, good male friends, and fawning female admirers. He failed classes, however, and

did not have enough credits to graduate. He really messed things up they even had a scholarship

waiting for him.

In The play Death of a Salesman the Lomans are all extremely self-deceptive, and in their

respective delusions and blindness to reality, they fuel and feed off of one another. Biff and

Willy Loman have been deceiving themselves and one another for years. Biff and happy both...

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help him keep his job. The lies keep digging her deeper and deeper in the ground.

In the end both stories have family members consistently deceiving themselves. The

familes have fallen apart and in result some are dead. The fight to escape the consent cycle of

lying did not appeal to some family members. Other family members got caught up in the

massive secrets and lies. In both stories the characters learned a lesson of a life time.

Works Cited

Gioia, Dana and Kennedy, X., J. “Death of a Salesman.” Literature: an introduction of fiction,

poerty,drama, and writing. 6th ed. Bosten: Pearson/Longman, 2010. 1239-1301

Gioia, Dana and Kennedy, X., J. “A Doll’s House.” Literature: an introduction of fiction, poerty,

drama, and writing. 6th ed. Bosten: Pearson/Longman, 2010. 1032-1084