The clash between reality and illusions in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and All My Sons

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and All My Sons dramatise the destructive consequences of constructing identities around realities that cannot withstand scrutiny. This paper argues that Miller’s treatment of illusion extends beyond a conventional critique of the American Dream: illusion becomes a psychological and ethical mechanism through which individuals protect themselves from failure, guilt, and responsibility. In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman transforms popularity, professional success, and paternal pride into a sustaining mythology that conceals his fear of inadequacy. His memories and fantasies reveal an increasingly unstable boundary between lived experience and desired identity. In All My Sons, Joe Keller's self-deception assumes a darker moral form. He converts an economically motivated decision that causes the deaths of twenty-one pilots into an act supposedly undertaken for his family. Through Biff and Chris, Miller introduces contrasting demands for truth that expose the consequences of their fathers’ illusions. A comparative reading demonstrates a significant movement from self-deception to moral evasion: Willy falsifies who he is, while Joe falsifies what he has done. The paper contends that Miller ultimately presents truth not merely as factual revelation but as the moment when private identity becomes answerable to human responsibility.