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Post by amytheoriginalg on Jan 29, 2016 23:35:45 GMT
Over the summer and in the beginning of the year, we read Arthur Millers Death of a Salesmen. For those of you who forgot, the play focuses on the plight of Willie, a common man who wants to make a better life for his family, but becomes depressed and unstable, eventually ending up in his suicide. Wille wants his family to have a comfortable life and enough money to do so, hence why he wants to be a New York salesmen. However he is unable to do so because of his unstable personality where he is shown to have flashbacks and be hypocritical due to his fixation with past dreams. With this play, Miller says that the American Dream can become so enthralling that people will give up their lives for its stability, even though it might not still be obtainable like the way it was in the past.
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Post by jzhangx3 on Jan 30, 2016 18:46:34 GMT
Amy, I agree with what you said. People like Willy tend to overemphasize and glorify the American Dream, not realizing that it might be unattainable or not as promising as it sounds. In The Death of a Salesman, Willy takes a different look on the American Dream--instead of thinking that people can rise up the social ladder by working hard, he believes the opposite; he firmly believes that by being "well-liked" and "attractive," a person can become successful and live the Dream (this is sometimes true in modern day times, if you look at some of the rising stars in pop culture--very ironic). This version of the American Dream leads Willy into the depths of depression and insecurity as he tries to see how his life fits into it.
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Post by Ms. McGettigan on Jan 30, 2016 20:00:09 GMT
I'm so glad you brought up "Death of a Salesman!" It is certainly a classic example of a story of the failed American dream. Willie thought that if he worked pretty hard his whole life, which he did, and was generally well-liked, then success would be inevitable. But, the dream failed him. Or did he not understand what the American dream really is or requires?
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Post by Teresa Dinh on Jan 30, 2016 21:12:39 GMT
I think Willy just didn't understand what the American dream required. Willy had a very narrow-minded definition of the American Dream. Like Jen mentioned, he thought that working hard and being attractive and well-liked would take him to the top. His way of thinking is superficial. For example, Willy thought Biff was going to do extremely well in life because Biff was athletic, and aestheticism is associated with being attractive and well-liked. However, Biff did not care about school, and I think it's important to keep in mind that school wasn't something that Willy emphasized the importance of in order to achieve the American dream.
Willy again shows that he is superficial because he did not like Bernard because he considered Bernard to be a nerd. Ironically, Bernard was able to become a successful lawyer and achieve the American dream through hard work and academic success, even though he failed to fall into Willy's requirements for the American Dream.
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Post by margaretpalko on Jan 31, 2016 17:06:30 GMT
Hey Teresa. I agree with what you said. I think Willie got so wrapped up in being well liked and this idea of having a successful business that it clouded his judgment and actually tore apart his family. I think there's two sides to what people call the American Dream and he took it as being well liked and achieving a successful business. He had the well liked part down, but he continuously worked for a successful business and that is what tore him apart. Others look at it as working hard, so I see your point with Bernard. I think if Willy saw how hard he worked he would have seen that he achieved the American Dream. He owned a house, and a car and made his family happy. So you are right, I don't think he truly understood it. Overall in all of these books we read we see that the dream is very different for every character in some way, but I think what makes Death of a Salesman so different is the fact that Miller chose to center the dream around the common man.
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Post by Emily Werkheiser on Jan 31, 2016 19:57:03 GMT
I also agree that Willy was not successful in achieving the American Dream because he did not fully understand what it requires. In the play, Willy is disillusioned with the idea of the American Dream, thinking that attaining the American Dream means having a high social status and being a valued member of society. Willy puts such a heavy value of having a high prestige that he sacrifices his mental state and loses sight of what it truly takes to reach the American Dream, which involves addressing and coming to terms with what is truly holding one back. In The Death of a Salesman, Miller characterizes Willy Loman as a self-deluded failed salesmen who desperately formulates excuses and blames others for his lack of success. For instance, as conveyed by the direct characterization of his first name, Willy has an immediate willingness to become enveloped in the misconstrued reality that his mind has fashioned in order to deny the actuality of his failure in his career and family life. Additionally, Willy’s various episodes of ranting to himself about Biff’s loss of all he had going for him and how this hinders Willy from achieving the popularized idea of a perfect American family shows how Willy turns Biff into a scapegoat for his own life’s failures. Willy has given up his ability to see the reality that it is his lack of hard work and tendency to blame others when things go wrong, that is the true reason behind his inability to have the life he wants. This sacrifice of any realistic mindset keeps Willy from coming to terms with his faults, which despite his thoughts that this will get him closer to his goals, will really only hold him back from achieving the American Dream. Therefore, Miller’s characterization of Willy Loman as one who sacrifices his sanity and blames others for his problems, conveys how the American Dream cannot be achieved without a reevaluation of the true underlying problem, oneself.
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amyyu
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Post by amyyu on Feb 3, 2016 3:36:25 GMT
In addition to what everyone said about the American Dream in The Death of a Salesman, I think that Arthur Miller centered his novel around Willy's downfall and his obsession with the American Dream in order to emphasis that the American Dream is something that does not equal happiness. Everyone has different goals in life and rather than achieve what society believes to be success, one should strife for what they think will make themselves happy-- their own version of success and the ideal life. Happiness is something that is extremely personalized, and a single definition of the "ideal dream" is just completely ridiculous. The American Dream is extremely over-hyped and causes ordinary and oblivious people like Willy to sink into a depression so low that it ultimately causes his death.
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Post by emsykes on Feb 4, 2016 15:18:28 GMT
Over the summer and in the beginning of the year, we read Arthur Millers Death of a Salesmen. For those of you who forgot, the play focuses on the plight of Willie, a common man who wants to make a better life for his family, but becomes depressed and unstable, eventually ending up in his suicide. Wille wants his family to have a comfortable life and enough money to do so, hence why he wants to be a New York salesmen. However he is unable to do so because of his unstable personality where he is shown to have flashbacks and be hypocritical due to his fixation with past dreams. With this play, Miller says that the American Dream can become so enthralling that people will give up their lives for its stability, even though it might not still be obtainable like the way it was in the past. Amy, I completely agree with the theme you chose for Death of a Salesman. The American dream can destroy people, and to me, that is devastating. I believe that in modern times, the American Dream is not just one common goal. Everyone is different, so we all have different goals. In the end, the only thing we, as American Dreamers, have in common is a chase. Willie was chasing his former self, and his success. In the Great Gatsby, Nick is chasing acceptance. In Grease, Danny is chasing a girl. With these examples, we can conclude that Americans chase a dream, but they do not necessarily chase the SAME dream. What other literary works display this theme of a chase? |
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Post by crandallethan on Feb 6, 2016 2:33:48 GMT
I do somewhat believe the American Dream failed Willy, however i also believe Willy somewhat failed the American Dream. Yes the success on the American Dream depends on the must succeed attitude, but at the end of the day this formula feeds on success which Willy could not mount. Willy's inability to execute or realize he wasn't executing was what cost him. Willy was to simple minded,did not dream big enough, and did not see that his plan wasn't succeeding. The Dream is a success with a capitalistic mindset (willy brings this to the table) compounded with a capitalistic idea (willy is starved of this) . Unfortunately, Willy's lopsided equation becomes more lopsided than normal, because although others in his predicament would simply go back to square one, Willy over compensates with the capitalistic mindset which throws an already untrue formula completely out of whack. Arthur Miller's statement about the American Dream is profound, but by-proxy he creates another statement about what is required out of the dreamer to take advantage of his dream.
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Post by ronaldrajan on Feb 7, 2016 1:11:25 GMT
I totally agree with you that Willy had a skewed view on what the American dream was supposed to be. He looked past what the reality of his situation was and was instead lost his mind in in the false dream he was living. If Willy had been more accepting of the situation he was in, he might have been able to live a happy life with his two sons and his wife, rather than chasing a fantasy.
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kchen
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Post by kchen on Feb 8, 2016 1:32:12 GMT
Ronald, I agree that Willy's perception of the American Dream was skewed. I think that one of the core aspects of the American Dream is that one needs to work hard to achieve it. Willy believed that being "well-liked" would be enough to attain the American Dream. He looked down upon Bernard, who worked hard in school and eventually became a successful lawyer, thus achieving the American Dream. Biff, who had grown up with Willy's flawed ideas about the American Dream, moved from job to job and was never able to achieve it.
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Post by jillian on Feb 8, 2016 3:07:29 GMT
Death of a Salesman is very interesting. The Main character, Willy Loman has a very interesting take on the AMerican Dream. In his eyes, The American dream is being successful and wealthy, but achieving it through being sociable and friendly, and an overall well-liked person. He didn't want to actually have to go through the hard work it takes to achieve success. He had the chance when his brother wanted him to travel with him to Alaska to go mining, but Willy didn't want to go, and we can see that he forever regrets it throughout the tedious flashbacks he encounters.He even ruins his son, Biff's, life by insisting that he didn't need to study for his classing and insisting to Biff that he can get by in life by being well liked. Instead, Willy should have encouraged Biff to study and work hard. (Also the cheating scandal that Biff found out about didn't help) But Death of a Salesman is a very good example of how much pressure is put on someone to achieve the American dream and the devastating affects that are left when the person fails.
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Post by owenleber on Feb 8, 2016 7:35:52 GMT
In addition to the discussion about the unattainability of the American dream for Willy Loman, I would like to add on how different Arthur Miller's idea of the American dream is from F. Scott Fitzgerald's view of it. Fitzgerald sees it as a social goal for the individual like Nick Carraway to climb the ranks and eventually like and close to the elites such as Gatsby. Miller sees it as obtaining the love and support from a great and caring family. These two very different view of the American dream show hoe the dream can be different for everyone. My ideal American dream may be very different from the one that you possess. I thought this was a very interesting relation between the two authors and their takes on the American dream. If anybody has anything to add on to this subtopic, feel free to below.
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