The Unreliable Protagonist

Throughout the Death of a Salesman the protagonist, whose name is Willy, relives the past in a way that seems to good to be true.  In one of Willy’s visions he returns home to an exceptionally happy family,

WILLY: Lonesome, heh?

BIFF: Missed you every minute.

WILLY: Don’t say?  Tell you a secret, boys.  Don’t breathe it to a soul.  Someday I’ll have my own business, and I’ll never have to leave home any more.

It’s hard to believe Willy’s memory as he is sixty-three years old and has already had trouble remembering key things earlier in the play.  He couldn’t drive to where he needed to work because he kept falling asleep and getting sidetracked.  In addition, he also was in multiple car accidents where he claimed that he was just falling asleep when a woman claimed she saw him drive off a bridge into a body of water. 

                Another problem with Willy’s vision is he remembers Biff loving him and looking up to him.  His relationship in the present with Biff is anything like that and it is accurately portrayed when Biff and Happy are talking about their father,

BIFF: Why does Dad mock me all the time?

HAPPY: He’s not mocking you, he…

BIFF: Everything I say there’s a twist of mockery on his face.  I can’t get near him.

Although it’s possible that Biff and Willy had a genuine bond how can we trust anything Willy says when he is attempting to commit suicide, lies about how much money he makes and forgets where he was even going.

                The most concrete evidence found in the play to back up Willy’s unreliability is his funeral.  Willy had made all these claims about how people loved him in certain towns and how he had friends everywhere.  At Willy’s funeral the truth about his life comes into the open,

LINDA: Why didn’t anybody come?

CHARLEY: It was a very nice funeral.

LINDA: But where were all the people he knew?  Maybe they blame him.

CHARLEY: Naa.  It’s a rough world, Linda.  They wouldn’t blame him.

When Willy dies it is evident that all the relationships he had with people in other states were fake.  One of his biggest tips on how to be a salesman and live life was by creating relationships.  He either failed miserably or he lied about the ones he had.  How can the reader believe anything that Willy remembers or states when he was proven a liar and the entire play is attempting to commit suicide while acting more and more crazy?  The truth is Willy and his viewpoint cannot be trusted which makes him the unreliable protagonist that the author created him to be.

Comments

  1. Ty TyFebruary 13, 2018 at 3:32 PM

    Zac, you had a really good presentation about your view of the deconstruction lense and how it applies to Willy. I especially love how you pointed out the many times Willy contradicted himself and how his actions in the present are much different than his past self. I totally agree that Willy is an unreliable source and we should treat his words with a grain of salt. I am surprised you did not include the woman he was having an affair with and he tried to ignore that fact. Nevertheless, great job with your lense!

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  2. Mrs. DisherFebruary 18, 2018 at 4:26 AM

    Excellent identification of places where Willy's account of himself breaks down--those places between image and truth are a core of the deconstructionist goal to find the gaps in a text and exploit them. In this case, we're finding the gaps in Willy's portrayal of himself. Remember that an argument must always go to the meaning of the work as a whole. You have the text-meaning layer with your quotes and the technique-meaning layer with unreliable narrator; now you need what does Willy's unreliability say about the unreliability of all relationships or our own memories? (Careful also in commentary after quotes that you comment rather than summarize additional evidence.) thanks!

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