Death of a Salesman Lies and Deceit Quotes

When he died – and by the way he died the death of a salesman, in his green velvet slippers in the smoker of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford, going into Boston – when he died, hundreds of salesmen and buyers were at his funeral. Things were sad on a lotta trains for months after that.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy pays homage to mythical salesman Dave Singleman, who he aspires to be like in life and in death. Dave is the epitomy of everything Willy wants to be, liked by everyone, successful, with hundreds of salesman and buyers attending his funeral. Singleman represents Willy’s American dream. Here we witness Willy’s search for identity, as he fantasizes about what will happen when he dies. Ironically only five mourners will turn up at his funeral, for Willy is no Dave Singleman but a mediocre salesman who has only made big sales in his imagination. Willy’s death is foreshadowed here. In his blind admiration for Singleman, we see another example of Willy deceiving himself. There are no family members mentioned being at Singleman’s funeral because he appears to have had none. The name "Singleman" is ironic in that it suggests he was probably a lonely man, not the perfect and fulfilled person Willy imagines him to be.

WILLY: No, wait! Linda, he’s got a proposition for me in Alaska.
LINDA: But you’ve got – (To Ben) He’s got a beautiful job here.
WILLY: But in Alaska, kid, I could – .
LINDA: You’re doing well enough, Willy!
BEN (to linda): Enough for what, my dear?
LINDA (frightened of Ben and angry at him): Don’t say those things to him! Enough to be happy right here, right now.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. When Ben proposes that Willy go to Alaska to look after some timberland for him there, Linda objects. She argues that her husband is already doing well in his current job as a salesman. Linda is in denial about Willy’s failings and his struggles to keep his job, which goes to the theme of self-deception. The theme of nature vs city is also found in this passage.

LINDA (To Willy, while Ben laughs): Why must everybody conquer the world? You’re well liked, and the boys love you and someday – (to Ben) – why, old man Wagner told him just the other day that if he keeps it up he’ll be a member of the firm, didn’t he, Willy?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. In offering these words of encouragement to Willy, Linda shows that she shares the same world of make-believe as her husband. She doesn’t want Willy to take up his brother Ben’s invitation to leave his family and go to work for him in Alaska. Instead she deceives herself into believing that Willy is well liked in the job, his sons love him and he has a promising future with the company he works for.

Without a penny to his name, three great universities are begging for him, and from there the sky’s the limit, because it’s not what you do. It’s who you know and the smile on your face! It’s contacts, Ben, contacts! The whole wealth of Alaska passes over the lunch table at the Commodore Hotel, and that’s the wonder, the wonder of this country, that a man can end with diamonds here on the basis of being liked! (He turns to Biff) And that’s why when you get out on that field today it’s important. Because thousands of people will be rooting for you and loving you. (To Ben, who has again begun to leave) And Ben! When he walks into a business office his name will sound out like a bell and all the doors will open to him! I’ve seen it, Ben. I’ve seen it a thousand times! You can’t feel it with your hand like timber, but it’s there.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. A hallucinating Willy imagines that he is talking to dead brother Ben in this rant about rising star Biff. He deceives himself into believing that a glorious future awaits young Biff, the high school sports hero, because he looks good and is well liked. Willy’s creed is that these, and not hard work, are what bring prosperity and material success. He is unable to distinguish between dreams and reality. In this speech Willy uses diamonds as a metaphor for wealth and success. There are also two examples of similes. Biff’s name being spoken is compared to a bell that will open doors for him in the future. Willy talks of success as something real, even though you cannot grasp it in your hand "like timber." The sad irony is that Biff will not have a successful and prosperous career, but will fail math and won’t graduate from high school.

WILLY: This is the greatest day of his life.
CHARLEY: Willy, when are you going to grow up?
WILLY: Yeah, heh? When this game is over, Charley, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face. They’ll be calling him another Red Grange. Twenty-five thousand a year.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy shows an exaggerated feeling of pride in son Biff, the star of his high school football team. His self-deception and detachment from reality see him compare Biff to Red Grange, a famous American football player. Neighbor Charley tries to bring him back to earth by asking when is he going to grow up. Willy betrays his obsession with financial success by reminding Charley that Biff is on the road to earning big money.

CHARLEY: I offered you a job. You can make fifty dollars a week. And I won’t send you on the road.
WILLY: I’ve got a job.
CHARLEY: Without pay? What kind of a job is without pay? (He rises) Now look kid, enough is enough. I’m no genius but I know when I’m being insulted.
WILLY: Insulted!
CHARLEY: Why don’t you want to work for me?
WILLY: What’s the matter with you? I’ve got a job!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. This very important scene between Willy and his more successful and down to earth friend Charley highlights the contrast between the two characters. Willy asks Charley for money to pay for his insurance after he is fired from his job. Charley offers Willy both money and a job. However, an absurdly proud Willy thumbs his nose up to Charley’s generous offer of practical help. He prefers to indulge in the self-deception that he still has a job.

Yeah, big cattle man, my brother, so treat him right. And my father’s coming too…You got a couple of nice lobsters?…I want them with the claws…You remember, Stanley, that recipe I brought you from overseas? With the champagne in it?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Happy lies to the waiter Stanley in Frank’s Chop Shop, where he, Biff and Willy are planning to meet for dinner. Describing Biff as a big cattleman from out West, Happy goes on to tell Stanley to bring out the lobsters and champagne. Foolish with money and as deluded as Willy, Happy is probably the character most similar to his father. His ordering beyond his means expensive lobster food and champagne is all for show and illustrates the theme of pride.

He walked away. I saw him for one minute. I got so mad I could’ve torn the walls down! How the hell did I ever get the idea that I was a salesman there? I even believed myself that I’d been a salesman for him! And then he gave me one look and – I realized what a ridiculous lie my whole life has been. We’ve been talking in a dream for fifteen years. I was a shipping clerk.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. This is a deflated Biff’s moment of realization that his whole life has been a lie, having been influenced by his father’s illusions about success. Biff is meeting Happy and Willy for a dinner to celebrate Biff’s getting a loan from former boss Bill Oliver. The loan was so that the Loman brothers could realize their dream of starting a sporting goods business. Except that the plan fell through when Oliver didn’t even remember Biff ever working for him. Biff had convinced himself that he had been a salesman for Oliver, whereas he was only a lowly shipping clerk. Having lived his life around the ideals of his deluded father, Biff’s American Dream bubble has burst and he is angry at having deceived himself.

You leave the house tomorrow and come back at night and say Oliver is thinking it over. And he thinks it over for a couple of weeks, and gradually it fades away and nobody’s the worse…Dad is never so happy as when he’s looking forward to something!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Happy advises Biff to lie to their father about his disastrous meeting with Bill Oliver, after he failed to secure a loan to go into business. Like with Willy, lying has become second nature to Happy.

BIFF: Who ever said I was a salesman with Oliver?
WILLY: Well, you were.
BIFF: No, Dad, I was a shipping clerk.
WILLY: But you were practically…
BIFF (with determination): Dad, I don’t know who said it first, but I was never a salesman for Bill Oliver.
WILLY: What’re you talking about?
BIFF: Let’s hold on to the facts tonight, Pop.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Biff tries very hard to be truthful with his father about the failed meeting with Oliver. He explains how after waiting six hours to see his former boss, Oliver didn’t even remember him. But a self-deceiving Willy doesn’t want to let go of his delusion that Biff is something other than he is. To Willy his son was a salesman for Oliver and not a lowly shipping clerk.

I was fired, and I’m looking for a little good news to tell your mother, because the woman has waited and the woman has suffered. The gist of it is that I haven’t got a story left in my head, Biff. So don’t give me a lecture about facts and aspects. I am not interested. Now what’ve you got to say to me?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. An emotionally spent, fired-from-his-job Willy wants Biff to lie and put a positive spin on his disastrous meeting with Oliver earlier that day. Willy wants Biff to concoct a success story, so that Willy can give wife Linda some good news.

BIFF: Let’s talk quietly and get down to the facts, huh?
WILLY (as though Biff had been interrupting): Well, what’s happened? It’s great news, Biff. Did he take you into his office or’d you talk in the waiting room?
BIFF: Well he came in, see, and – .
WILLY (with a big smile): What’d he say? Betcha he threw his arm around you.
BIFF: Well, he kinda – .
WILLY: He’s a fine man. (To Happy) Very hard man to see, y’know.
HAPPY (agreeing): Oh, I know.
WILLY (to Biff): Is that where you had the drinks?
BIFF: Yeah, he gave me a couple of – no, no!
HAPPY (cutting in): He told him my Florida idea.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. In this exchange in the restaurant between Willy and Biff and Happy, we see how Willy’s sons are unable to escape the perpetual cycle of lying and deception their father has created. Willy puts words into Biff’s mouth because he only wants to hear a successful outcome from his interview with businessman Bill Oliver. The reality is that Biff’s meeting to secure finance for a business venture was a disaster. But fearful of disappointing their father or bursting his bubble, they lie and say that the encounter went well. Willy’s relationship with his sons, and the way he tries to live his dreams of success through them, is a very unhealthy one.

WILLY: What happened? He took you into his office and what?
BIFF: Well – I talked. And – and he listened, see.
WILLY: Famous for the way he listens, y’know. What was his answer?
BIFF: His answer was – (He breaks off, suddenly angry). Dad, you’re not letting me tell you what I want to tell you!
WILLY, (accusing, angered): You didn’t see him, did you?
BIFF: I did see him!
WILLY: What’d you insult him or something? You insulted him, didn’t you?
BIFF: Listen, will you let me out of it, will you just let me out of it!…(to Happy) I can’t talk to him!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy’s dysfunctional relationship with Biff is on vivid display in this restaurant conversation with Biff about his failed meeting with Bill Oliver. Willy only wants to hear the lie and never the truth, and certainly not anything that contradicts his false reality and dreams of success. Unable to have a proper father-son conversation, an exasperated Biff finally tells Happy that he just can’t talk to Willy.

Pop, listen! Listen to me! I’m telling you something good. Oliver talked to his partner about the Florida idea. You listening? He – he talked to his partner, and he came to me…I’m going to be all right, you hear? Dad, listen to me, he said it was just a question of the amount!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. When Willy announces at a dinner with his sons that he has been fired, Biff fabricates a success story to offer his father false hope and avert his anger. He lies that the meeting with Bill Oliver to seek funding for a business venture went well. Lying comes as second nature to the Loman men.

No, that’s not my father. He’s just a guy. Come on, we’ll catch Biff, and, honey, we’re going to paint this town! Stanley, where’s the check! Hey, Stanley!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. In a shocking betrayal of Willy, Happy disowns his father and lies to a woman he has picked up in the restaurant about Willy being family. He is embarrassed by Willy’s irrational behavior. This has echoes of Peter’s denial of Jesus as told in the Bible. In Matthew 26:75 we are told – "And Peter remembered the saying of the Lord, how he had said to him, ‘Before the rooster crows today, you will deny me three times.’ And he went out and wept bitterly." Happy and Biff run from the restaurant with two girls they meet there and leave Willy in a distressed and confused state.

THE WOMAN (enters, laughing; she lisps this): Can I come in? There’s something in the bathtub, Willy, and it’s moving! (Willy looks at Biff, who is staring open-mouthed and horrified at The Woman.)
WILLY: Ah – you better go back to your room. They must be finished painting by now. They’re painting her room so I let her take a shower here. Go back, go back…(He pushes her.)
THE WOMAN: (resisting) But I’ve got to get dressed, Willy, I can’t – .
WILLY: Get out of here! Go back…(suddenly striving for the ordinary) This is Miss Francis, Biff, she’s a buyer. They’re painting her room. Go back Miss Francis, go back…
THE WOMAN: But my clothes, I can’t go out naked in the hall!
WILLY (pushing her offstage): Get outa here! Go back, go back!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. High school student Biff takes a train to Boston and surprises his father while he is shacked up in a hotel room with another woman. Willy predictably goes straight into lying mode. He pretends that The Woman is a buyer who has had to temporarily leave her room because it is being painted. He then displays another example of his inappropriate treatment of women when he pushes her offstage.

BEN: It’s called a cowardly thing, William.
WILLY: Why? Does it take more guts to stand here the rest of my life ringing up a zero?
BEN (yielding): That’s a point, William. (He moves, thinking, turns.) And twenty thousand – that is something one can feel with the hand, it is there.
WILLY (now assured, with rising power): Oh, Ben, that’s the whole beauty of it! I see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard and rough, that I can pick up and touch in my hand. Not like – like an appointment! This would not be another damned fool appointment, Ben, and it changes all the aspects. Because he thinks I’m nothing, see, and so he spites me. But the funeral – (Straightening up) Ben, that funeral will be massive! They’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire! All the oldtimers with the strange license plates – that boy will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he never realized – I am known! Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey – I am known, Ben, and he’ll see it with his eyes once and for all.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy, talking to his hallucination of Ben, fantasizes that he will achieve the success in death that he failed to reach in life. He has fallen short of his American Dream of acquiring material success while alive. But he believes that the twenty thousand dollars life insurance money his family will receive after his suicide will make up for that. In a simile Willy compares this money to a diamond, diamonds being the symbol of wealth used throughout the play and associated with brother Ben. Willy deceives himself into believing that his funeral will be massive and attended by many of the people who knew and worked with him. His estranged son Biff will realize how wrong he was wrong about his dad by the size of the funeral, he believes. Willy’s words turn to be ironic, since nobody outside the family apart from two neighbors turns up for the funeral. Willy’s suicide is foreshadowed here.

BIFF: You big blow, are you the assistant buyer? You’re one of the two assistants to the assistant, aren’t you?
HAPPY: Well, I’m practically – .
BIFF: You’re practically full of it.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Happy Loman is a chip off the old block and a young version of his father. He exaggerates his job position in order to give the impression that he has a very successful career. Here brother Biff reveals that Happy has been telling everyone he is the assistant buyer, when in fact he is assistant to the assistant.

I stopped in the middle of that building and I saw – the sky. I saw the things that I love in this world. The work and the food and time to sit and smoke. And I looked at the pen and said to myself, what the hell am I grabbing this for? Why am I trying to become what I don’t want to be? What am I doing in an office, making a contemptuous, begging fool of myself, when all I want is out there, waiting for me the minute I say I know who I am!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. In Biff’s epiphany at Bill Oliver’s office, he rejects his father’s version of the American Dream and Willy’s attempt to live vicariously through him. Biff realizes that life as a salesman and working in an office is not for him. In his final confrontation with Willy, he tells him that after his failed interview with Oliver he ran down eleven flights of stairs with Oliver’s stolen fountain pen in his hand. The pen symbolizes Willy’s American Dream of material success. Biff tells how he looked out at the expanse of the sky and the great outdoors and saw the things he loves in this world. In that moment he dismissed his father’s false values as represented by Oliver’s pen. This is Biff’s moment of catharsis and transfiguration, his moment of clarity, a declaration of independence from city living and the world of business. Biff refuses to live a lie to please his father and wants to be true to who he is.

BIFF: Pop! I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you!
WILLY (turning on him now in an uncontrolled outburst): I am not a dime a dozen! I am Willy Loman, and you are Biff Loman!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Willy’s sudden outburst of rage when son Biff says they are "a dime a dozen" may stem from his narcissistic personality. Willy with his foolish pride has a need to feel that he and his sons are special. He refuses to believe Biff’s characterization of the Lomans as being no better than the next guy. It is yet another example of Willy deceiving himself.

I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them! I’m one dollar an hour, Willy I tried seven states and couldn’t raise it. A buck an hour! Do you gather my meaning? I’m not bringing home any prizes any more, and you’re going to stop waiting for me to bring them home!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 1. Biff gets involved in a final confrontation with Willy near the end of the play. According to stage directions he appears to be on the verge of attacking his father. Biff tries to put an end to the cycle of self-deception and take Willy down to earth and reality. He wants his father to stop deluding himself and trying to fulfill his own failed dreams through Biff. Neither of them are leaders of men as Willy believes, but just ordinary workers, he declares.

Will you let me go, for Christ’s sake? Will you take that phony dream and burn it before something happens?

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Biff’s desperation is apparent as he confronts Willy about his "phony" American Dream of material success. The stage directions describe him as crying and broken when he makes this anguished plea to his father in his attempt to be honest with him. It is an important moment of self-discovery for Biff. He signals that he wants to stop deceiving himself in his efforts to fulfill his father’s false dreams. He begs to be released from them, so that he can follow his own more reality-based dreams.

WILLY: Oh, Biff! (Staring wildly.) He cried! Cried to me. (He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise.) That boy – that boy is going to be magnificent!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. This is Willy’s reaction when Biff breaks down in tears and holds on to his father, pleading with him to let him go and see him for who he really is. Biff wants to opt out of Willy’s grandiose and deluded dreams of success he is trying to achieve through his son. Biff wants to follow his own different path in life. But Willy completely misunderstands his son and continues to deceive himself about him. He still views Biff as the young football hero he once was, who is destined for great success and is "going to be magnificent."
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