Death of a Salesman Lies and Deceit Quotes

I’m getting married, Pop, don’t forget it. I’m changing everything. I’m gonna run that department before the year is up. You’ll see, Mom.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. Happy says this to Willy and Linda at the end of the play just after the final argument between Biff and Willy. Happy blows out hot air and talks a lot of nonsense, this is evident when nobody responds or offers congratulations – they don’t take him seriously. Happy is not marrying anybody, he is just seeking his parents’ attention.

Loves me…Always loved me. Isn’t that a remarkable thing? Ben, he’ll worship me for it!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Act 2. There is tragic irony in Willy’s realization that Biff really does love him and this provides him with another reason to commit suicide. Having already decided to take his life, Willy believes that Biff will love him even more when he shares in the twenty thousand dollar life insurance payout to the Lomans. Willy, blinded by a distorted view of reality and clinging to the materialistic values of capitalism, manages to transforms a moment of happiness at his estranged son loving him into something tragic. He is a deluded man who never learns from his actions. Willy remains misguided and deceives himself to the end, even in his final act of love. Biff is not interested in his father’s money, he simply wants to to enjoy an honest relationship with Willy that is based on the truth of who each of them really is. Willy’s immiment suicide is foreshadowed here.

LINDA: Why didn’t anybody come?
CHARLEY: It was a very nice funeral.
LINDA: But where are all the people he knew? Maybe they blame him.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Willy Loman was the great deceiver, but most of all he deceived himself. He believed that his funeral would be massive with large numbers of friends, other salesman and customers turning up on account of him being so well liked. Yet the only people present apart from family were neighbors Charley and Bernard. Willy wasn’t anything as popular as he made himself out to be. He lived in a world of illusion and his final and one of his biggest illusions was the spectacular funeral he predicted after his death by suicide.

He never knew who he was.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Biff says that his father didn’t know who he really was in the way that Biff now knows who he is. Willy’s self-deception blinded him to the reality that he chose the wrong dreams and career. Willy dreamed of making it rich as a successful salesman, but he didn’t have the personality and skills to go with that role. Willy should have pursued a career that suited him better, Biff believes. For example, we learn in the play that Willy had a love of nature and the outdoors, and he was also good at working with his hands.

I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have – to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Happy is determined to follow in his late father’s footsteps of self-deception and make-believe. He declares himself to be the inheritor of Willy’s flawed American Dream, and is fully invested in it. He vows to achieve what their father set out to do but failed: make his fortune by being the number-one salesman. Happy is reacting angrily to brother Biff’s claim that Willy never knew who he was and had the wrong dreams. He strongly defends his father’s dream and his struggle for it to succeed. Speaking at Willy’s graveside, Happy sees Willy as a kind of hero.

I’m not licked that easily. I’m staying right in this city, and I’m gonna beat this racket! (He looks at Biff, his chin set.) The Loman Brothers!

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. After Willy Loman’s suicide, Biff invites Happy to travel with him to the West to find a job. But Happy is a clone of his father and suffers from the same self-delusions. He vows to remain in New York, believing he can make his father’s unachievable American Dream a reality for him. He will "beat this racket" and make his fortune as a successful businessman. While the "Loman Brothers" sporting goods business dream died when Biff couldn’t get a loan from Bill Oliver, Happy still believes he can make it big in business. Like his father, he is simply deceiving himself, suffering from the same over-confidence and tendency to avoid reality.

I know who I am, kid.

– Arthur Miller

Death of a Salesman, Requiem. Unlike his father, Biff has acquired self knowledge and is completely sure of who he is by the end of the play. He speaks this to brother Happy at the graveside of their father Willy. Willy’s pursuit of a distorted American Dream of wealth and success has led him to commit suicide. Biff doesn’t want to live the lie of his father and rejects the false allure of his dream. Instead he plans to return to the West to find another job. In the play’s closing scene, Biff is responding to brother Happy’s defiant outburst defending their father’s dream and promising to fulfill it for him.
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