Choosing the Right Path Towards the American Dream

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Decisions matter, in the play Death of A Salesman, our playwright, Arthur Miller, compares Willy Loman, a carefree father who seems childlike, and Charley, on the other hand, is a kindhearted man of few words who is equipped for the real world. Both Willy and Charley long for the American Dream but on their journey there they go down completely separate paths. Throughout the play, Willy Loman proceeds with various decisions that are not in the best interest for him or his family. Meanwhile Charley only does what is best for his family and his friends. Although Willy and Charley are both fathers who care for their children, not everyone can get the American Dream.
In the course of the play, Willy Loman is displayed as an adolescent who has not taken a grip on life. When parenting his children, Willy does not act as a father figure. He acts as if he is one of the boys who do not discipline his children. Because of this, Happy and Biff have nothing to strive for in life. Willy yearns for attention and he obtains this by bragging about how popular and athletic his sons are in comparison to his neighbor, Charley’s son, Bernard. “When this game is over, you’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face. They’ll be calling him another Red Grange. Twenty-five thousand a year” (Page 63). In this line, Willy is showing off to Charley that Biff’s athletics will get him somewhere in life, while Bernard’s classwork and lack of social skills will never give him real world experience. Willy believes that hard work and dedication will never pay off “because the man who makes an appearance in the business world, the man who creates personal interest, is the man who gets ahead.” (Page 22) In sum, Willy Loman believes that living in the momen...

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...’m no genius but I know when I’m being insulted.”, Charley is trying to show Willy the truth about society, but Willy will not listen to him, he is too blinded by the American Dream and that he has to be a salesmen or else he will not be successful in life.
All in all, when comparing Willy and Charley side by side, we can clearly see that these two characters have chosen different decisions that have set them down a path that leads to their dream of having the American Dream or the road to suicide. Towards the end of the play, Willy plays his last card and commits suicide, this could symbolize that he was indeed childlike and not ready for the real world. He only had one goal of obtaining the American Dream, which does not come easy. I believe that Author Miller is trying to show us that hard work and dedication alone is not enough to get what we strive for in life.

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