<p>Assignment: Is honesty always the best policy?</p>
<p>Answer:</p>
<p>An ancient proverb claims that, "One must be honest in order to attain success." Honesty is always the best policy. A world of deception can only lead to failure. This is evident in the play, Death of a Salesman, and in the life of drug lord Frank Lucas. </p>
<p>Arthur miller's scintillating play, Death of a Salesman, highlights the opinion that honesty is always the best policy. Miller creates the character of Willy Lohman in order to highlight the negative effects of deception. Willy lives vicariously through his sons and thus expects them to be extremely successful. Unfortunately for his sons, they could not cope with admitting to their father that they never would achieve this success. Instead, the sons decieved Willy into believing that they were successful. When Willy eventually finds out, this leads to his dramatic decline as he cannot cope with his son's failures. If in turn the sons had been honest, Willy and the rest of the family would have been better off. </p>
<p>Another example proving the positives of veracity can be found in the life of Frank Lucas. Lucas moves to New York from North Carolina in order to sustain a better life for his family. When Lucas makes it big with New York gangster Clarence Williams III (aka. Bumpy Johnson), he moves his whole family to New York. Instead of being honest about how he makes his living, Lucas keeps a majority of his family members in the dark. This leads to Lucas' dramatic decline as because his plan was so esoteric, he was unable to recieve input from insightful members of his family, and thus made poor decisions which led to his incarceration.</p>
<p>There is the argument present that deception can be positive as without it, Lucas would not have achieved his success. There is some truth to this; however, as outsiders it is clearly evident that because of the eventual decline, the short lived success was not worth it. Through the examples of the play, Death of a Salesman, and the life of Frank Lucas, it can be concluded that when one is honest with himself and others, the benefits outweigh the negatives.</p>