Glass Menagerie and D.O.S

             Dreams and aspirations help to keep alive, a sense of hope, something to live for. Yet if one does not make their dreams flexible they may fall short and thereby feel their life is unfulfilled. Both Tom Wingfield and Willy Loman in The Glass Menagerie and Death of a Salesman, respectively, live every day with a hope that soon they will be able to achieve these goals that they have set forth for themselves. Yet due to obstinacy of Willy's dream it has become impalpable, while Tom has the ability to realize that a man can change his reveries based upon his current conditions.
             The American Dream is a fabrication in which a man finds happiness with a house, a successful job, a nice car and a perfect family consisting of a wife and 2.5 children. Willy has geared his ambitions towards this dream. He can not accept the fact that he is just another salesman trying to convince his buyers of why his product is important. Willy feels that the only way to succeed in the business world is to be "well-liked," yet he can not even do that. He creates illusions of his prosperity in order to cater to his unobtainable dream. Willy convinces himself and his sons when he says, "Be liked and you will never want. You take me, for instance. I never wit in line to see a buyer. 'Willy Loman is here!' That's all they have to know, and I go right through."
             Willy Loman can not comprehend that not all dreams come to be and that if one sets their bar too high, they may have to lower it in order to be content in the future. Willy hopes and really believes that "someday (he'll) have (his) own business, and (he'll) never have to leave home anymore." Willy's disturbing avoidance of his neighbor Charley is a direct denial of his present state. Charley is living the American Dream. He has worked hard and earned every morsel of food put on his table, every penny out of his pocket. Will...

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Glass Menagerie and D.O.S. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 22:25, April 25, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/30885.html