Analysis Of Death Of A Salesman And Tennessee Williams Glass Menagerie

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How can the parents of children who know what they want come to tear this dream from them; tear their families apart? Families are not meant to be split, family is the opposite. A healthy family pushes their kids to success, success in what they love to do; Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Amanda Wingfield in Tennessee Williams Glass Menagerie, what they never want to do. Whether they know it or not, when families push their children to do what they love, they push them to the American Dream. How do Willy and Amanda come to trap their kids in a miserable, misguided world even though they only try to do the best for them?
Both Willy and Amanda push their kids towards what they think the American Dream is, when in reality, …show more content…

To quote an article on US News by Liz Wolgemuth, “The single biggest change seems to be that "financial security" is the No. 1 component of the American dream for respondents” (Wolgemuth 1). American dream is to have money and be secure, have wealth and safety, success and security. Financial security is key to the american dream. The american dream is being secure. Security for kids, is the parents dream. Willy was a great father for pushing his kids to be stable and successful, and even though a sales job may not have been ideal for Biff, its what he needed for financial security. Although some people's ideas of the American dream is financial security, it is clearly not Biff's idea, Tom’s, or Laura’s idea. Happiness, open air, freedom, and working with his hands-- this was Biff’s idea of the American dream. Laura clearly wants a life on her own. We can infer this because of how uncomfortable she is around Jim (awkward, gets ill, can barely function) when he comes over for dinner. Amanda pushed for the dinner because she wanted Laura to have her American dream. We know this is her dream from the first scene when she talks about her gentlemen callers, “One Sunday afternoon in Blue Mountain, your mother received seventeen! gentlemen callers!” (Williams 4). Amanda was ecstatic about how many callers she had back in the day. She loved this attention and …show more content…

We can tell Willy has some sort of delusions in multiple instances, the first appearing when he said, “I coulda sworn I was driving that Chevy today.” (Miller 8). He keeps with his delusions to the point he sees his dead brother. This could be what’s driving Willy to forcing his own son to switch into a better job, to make him more like his brother Ben. At the end of the book, Willy expects his suicide to fix everything and bring the family together. Willy’s idea of bringing his family together As for Amanda, her husband ran off on her with some other women and went to the islands, fleeing just like Tom wants to do. Amanda may worry that Laura will be single her whole life his like her, and Amanda wants to find a nice gentleman caller for

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