Comparing A Streetcar Named Desire And Death Of A Salesman

Postmodern American authors share many themes highlighting communal pressures on ill adjusted characters. This is a direct result of the collective American desire to diverge from conformity, a common view shared by many progressive people in the 40s and 50s, including Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Picture white picket fences lining newly mowed green lawns, each house nearly identical, sheltering a providing husband and dainty housewife committed to one man. To break from this archetype would be justification for a person to be treated as a social pariah. America forces people to buy into their ideas of success, and if a character’s goal does not align with these expectations, it may cause them to lead a life that they do not fit into. Human nature is the driving force that every person shares, it is the deepest definition of a character; if this is oppressed by a society, one’s tendencies will emerge in negative forms.