Hank Morgan, Willy Loman, and Henry David Thoreau, are all characterized versions of a capitalistic social order whose only difining characteristic is a debate over balanced mathmatical equations and how they relate to morality. That is, the characters and the context they are set in, embody common American ideals, and are tied together in terms of underlying themes and morality.
For example, if Hank Morgan is "practical", "barren of sentiment", and able to "make anything a body wanted", then he is generally thought of as the typical self-reliant American dreamer who is proud of his self-sufficiency. Opposite of Morgan is Thoreau, who's ideals are as much of a stereotype as Morgan's. Thoreau held commonly accepted American ideals up against the basic needs of human survival, and decided that Americans were in fact living a Dream of freeding, but also they were denying the fact that they were becoming less free in the process. Willy's story differs still, from the stories of Morgan or Thoreau. Death of a Salesman applies the social macronomics of the American dream to the tangible micronomics of the typical American family that was found during the 1940's.
The tangibility described here in conjuction with themes of dishonesty, cause and effect, and failure found in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as well as in Economy, break down the futility and superfluity that occasion's white European men on power trips. In other words, the three books together describe the differences between black and white and what can and does happen, in one form or another to people who live their whole life in a dream.
If Hank Morgan represents stereotypical American ideals in action, then his exploitation of t...
... middle of paper ...
...y Willy had bought a new care to get around faster instead of being away for so long and retreating to adultery. He would still have to commit adultery in order to cope from life away from home because he we have to work just as long to pay off the new car.
The ideals illustrated throughout all three texts are works that were simply created by an awareness and relating of one cultural microchasm to another. Likewise, we can relate the same ideals logically to virtually any cultural time period that is within the birth of Christian Capitalism. However, by the systematic denial of our evolution outside of a finite morality, we take some essence of our ability to make these cultural associations. This denies a balance to life, resulting in the homogeniztion of the American way of life, the speed of which is determined by our ability to live with ourselves.