Trevor Beatty AP English P.1 10/4/10 Summer Reading Essay: Topic #2 An important role for both Adam Trask, in the novel,East of Edenand Willie Loman, in the play Death of a Salesman is delusional.Both characters experience disappointment and failure and are unable to accept it.They are delusional in their ability to see people for who they really are and are in denial about reality.Adam is blind to his father’s corruption, ignorant about his wife Cathy’s scheming and manipulation, and incapable of recognizing the patterns of favoritism in his relationships with his own sons. Likewise, Willie Loman, in the playDeath of a Salesman, is delusional as he puts all of his energy into sustaining an illusion of success.In maintaining this illusion, he is unable to accept his own failure as a salesman or the failure of his sons. Adam Trask is blind to his father, Cyrus’ corruption.It is Charles, Adam’s brother, not Adam who questions Cyrus’s war stories and has a strong hunch that Cyrus stole their $100,000 inheritance. Charles states, “How did he get away with it?How in the hell did he get away with it?Nobody ever questioned it.Did you?Did I? Did my mother? Nobody did.Not even in Washington” (Steinbeck 65).Rather than accepting this truth and discussing it further with Charles, Adam denies it and refuses to believe his father could ever be dishonest. Adam falls madly in love with Cathy, a manipulative, cold-blooded woman; she does not feel the same.She ends up sleeping with Charles on their wedding night and is withdrawn and unhappy in the marriage from the start.After finding out she is pregnant, Cathy unsuccessfully attempts to abort the babies and then tells Adam that she plans to leave him and California after the babies are born.Adam turns a blind eye and tells her, “Don’t talk about it, dear.Everything will change after the baby is born.You’ll see. You’ll see.”(173).A week after the babies are born, Cathy packs her bags, shoots Adam in the shoulder, and moves to the brothel.
