Compare And Contrast The American Dream And Death Of A Salesman

Sydney Turnbull
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Success, Comfort, Happiness, and Prosperity: The American Dream The ideology of the American Dream can be traced back to the flood of immigration in the early twentieth century. Families from European Countries sailed on boats from months to read the great promise America held. They left their home countries and everything they had to lead successful and prosperous lives in the US. Another form of the American Dream arose in the 1950s after the US successfully win World War II. Young men came back to their young wives and had many children, hence the name “baby-boom generation.” Soon Levittowns sprung up around the country, cookie-cutter houses divided by pristine white picket fences, to handle
He tries to live vicariously through his grown sons, Happy and Biff, but realizes his life is empty and all of his work he’d done for his company is worthless. He believes that if a man is well liked and attractive then he will inevitably be successful and get all the material comforts offered in America. With early signs of schizophrenia, Willy is enclosing himself in his social world and onlookers, including friends and family, are pushed away from him. His American Dream of success is fleeting, as he is getting older and senile. While he is failing, he pushes his sons to be everything he wasn’t. They have gone through life just like their father, big dreamers of success but they aren’t proactive. But even worse, Willy dies before he can see one of his most important dreams come true, to see his sons settle down and have a family. When his sons aren’t up to par, he becomes infuriated. Slowly but surely, his American Dream in his psyche and his lack of his American Dream in reality slowly combine. His infatuation with the dream of success blinds him from other more important things in his life, such as his family, his mental health, and simple living costs for his home. Though this can be considered a character flaw, his yearning for success and making a comfortable home for his family is selfless. He never becomes the dream he
I believe self-made wealth is more attractive then inheriting a large amount of money or marrying a man based on the size of his wallet. I will marry for love and raise a family in an apartment in the heart of a cosmopolitan area. The norm of Levittowns and white picket fences are long gone and the working father and stay at home mother will not pertain to my family. I would raise a family in the city because it teacher independence and social awareness. It had so much more to offer than the country. I don’t wish my family would conform to the social norm of a daughter and a son, a husband that goes to an office, and little old me who cooks and cleans. I believe that in America today, men and women still aren’t peers, but I would want my husband and I to be on the same playing field. When it comes to success and financial prosperity, I don’t believe that money will bring happiness, but it will lessen the stress of paying bills. I would loathe ending up like the over wealthy that throw away their money on frivolous items to make their life better, to fill that void in their life with materialistic