The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

Although Willy Loman has spent most of his life working and striving to become a successful, well liked man, in the end, his legacy is a $20,000 life insurance policy and the lies he tells himself and everyone around him. It is not that these are the lies of a bad person intent on deceiving, it is what he needs to do in order to try to live up to the expectations he sets for himself. Unfortunately for Willy, he’s not particularly talented at either selling or simply making people like him, but he still thinks he needs to act like he is for the sake of his sons’ as much as his own. The lies he tells create a self-perpetuating cycle of deception that ends with the lies becoming so ingrained in his mind and those of his family that not only are they practically instinct, they become confused with reality as Willy slips farther and farther into his dementia.

"Reality"

Growing and crawling over everything in its path, the lies Willy tells are like a creeping vine expanding uninhibited in a foreign wilderness. Everything that is too slow to escape it eventually is overcome as all light is blocked out by the sheer density of Willy’s illusory dream life. In the course of his life, Willy’s deceit grows from exaggerating his own success and skills to always trying to hide Biff’s and Happy’s failures. Linda and the boys loved him so fully for his character and devotion to him in their early days that everything he told them––how he is a “well liked man,” his great aptitude for salesmanship, and even the compliments he gave them––took hold like that vine, ultimately deciding their fates. Willy pays the price for creating these untruths and manipulating reality through giving his life in a final delusional act of sacrifice; he kills himself at least partially thinking that the money from his life insurance policy could leave a greater legacy than he ever could.

"Fantasy"

The two worlds of Willy Loman, those of reality and the fantasy world of the past, are at first highly separate entities. The former is characterized by the oppressive vines of Willy’s lies streaking the stage and beginning to take over. The world at these times of the present are cooler with Willy’s age and increasing inability to function; its blues filling the deep corners of the stage. Contrasting these scenes are those of the past Willy inexorably falls into. It is not consumed by heat, rather it is simply distinctly warmer than the Lomans’ real world, back before he started losing hold of his life. This world is hazed over and does not have the distinct lines of the other. Gradually, as the stories Willy tells completely take over his life, the two worlds come closer together until they are almost indiscernible. This is marked by a general darkening of the stage. Finally, with his death, darkness finally consumes the stage as the good intentioned but misguided salesman succumbs to his weaknesses and the lies he has told all his life.