Willy Narcissistic Behavior Death of a Salesman

In the text, Miller presented Willy Loman as a man who is lost in his past memories, frequent mood swings, denial of himself, and also inconsistencies which makes one question the mental health of Willy in the text. In this essay, I will evaluate Willy's Narcissistic Behavior in the play “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller. After returning from his business trip, Willy starts experiencing flashbacks and is also seen taking to imagined images which are represented as though they are real people (Miller 05). This demonstrates that something is really wrong with Willy’s mental health. The fact that Willy was ranting so loudly that he wakes up his sons shows that something was wrong with him. His self-esteem is low and unstable as he is only confident based on the comments from his sons, his employers and also his mistress.

Even though he tries his best to show his sons that he is strong, Willy has a fragile sense of self which his demonstrates by the frequent hallucinations and flashbacks and therefore, Willy’s narcissistic personality as well as his fragile self-esteem lead to the questioning of his mental health. All through the play, he displays behaviors which seem as suffering from cognitive dissonance and an analysis of his behavior including his cruelty towards his wife leads one to conclude that Willy suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder which highly affects his own family most especially his wife Linda and his son Biff. Willy’s denial of the truth that he was not such a successful father and salesman as he considered himself generally cripples Willy’s life and the life of the rest of the Loman family.

Willy has a very different conception of success and manhood which is what influences his son's sense of self-worth. According to Stanton, in the twentieth century, men were generally viewed as the breadwinners in the family (120). However, this is different in the case of the Loman family. Linda, who is Willy’s wife, is the one struggling to take care of the family. To the Loman men, the truth of masculine failure or inadequacy ought to be kept a secret from women to help the men maintain their pretenses among other men as well as to themselves (Stanton 138). This shows that, even though Linda is the one struggling to feed the family and also maintain the cohesiveness of the family and not Willy, the masculine failure is kept a secret and Willy still maintains his pretenses to other men and to his family as well.

For instance, his arguments with his son Biff demonstrate anger, however, Willy sometimes refers to Biff as a great man. He even argues that Biff is too old to be behaving like a “lazy bum,” and later on contradicts himself when he says “there’s one thing about Biff- he’s not lazy” (Miller 16). He thinks of how Biff was so famous and bright in high school which shows that he is somehow proud of his son Biff. The fact that Willy wants his sons to be just as successful as he views himself could be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy as described by Basu on self-fulfilling prophecies on how we expect our future to unfold (12). In conclusion, the frequent hallucinations, conversations with imaginary people, the mood swings and his talking while sleeping clearly demonstrates that Willy suffered from a mental illness.