The American Dream

According to James Truslow Adams, the American Dream is "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position." I believe the American Dream is the ideal that we have the freedom to pursue our own ideals of success. While comparing the main characters in Death of a Salesman by Author Miller and The Awakening by Kate Chopin, I believe that Edna and Willie both have trouble finding their true selves. Throughout the two novels, one of them fails to find the person within and one succeeds in this goal. I will also explore their relationships with the other characters in the novels and how they influenced their lives. Both main characters strive to reach for the American Dream through success, and again one fails and one succeeds. When the characters in these books “awaken” they are forced to face reality. Of course, that is if they even achieve “the awakening”. When these characters throughout each play awaken or fail to awaken, each character acts differently. Some of the characters refuse to awaken, some decide to take their life because there is no room for their new found self in the world, and some are better off for awakening.

As I read Death of a Salesman, I can see the different views of what each character considers success. I believe the father Willie believes that success is having a job and supporting the family with money while striving to be well liked. I believe that Willie’s flashbacks show his ideal of success when he had an income and got along well with his boys and wife. Now he wishes he was as successful as back then and this is why I think Willie has the flashbacks. He wants to go back to that pleasant time throughout the play, and Willie struggles with his own identity. One can see this when Willie pretends to be making a wage and borrows it off the neighbor; however, who's to say that Willie would have been better off it he “awakened” to face reality. It seemed to make him even worse off every time he was faced with only a glimpse of reality. Willie was lost between what he thought was reality and his actual life. I do not believe he was a failure because his success was raising his family, but according to his point of view on success he considered himself a failure. Willie never seems to “awaken” from these delusions throughout the novel. He allows the visions to invade his everyday life. When Willie is faced with reality, another dream is played within his head and a lie comes from the delusion. Willie pretends that he is a successful, well-liked salesman. He even states that when he dies he will have a large funeral. Sadly, at the end of the novel we find out that Willie kills himself and his large funeral turns into a gathering of only his immediate family and a few friends. When Biff confronts Willie with reality toward the end of the play in act 2, Willie refuses to hear it and denies the truth. On page 130, Willie, “caged wanting to escape”, responds to Biff pulling out the pipe saying, “I never saw that”. Willie does not acknowledge the reality that he is trying to kill himself. Biff continues saying that “your going to hear the truth-what you are, and what I am!... We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!”. Willie does not want to hear this and he eventually tells his son that he his being spiteful and that is the only reason he is saying those things. After the dispute, Biff breaks down crying and Willie realizes that his son really likes him. Once Biff goes upstairs, Willie starts saying “that boy is going to be magnificent!”. Willie falls right back into the trap of false reality. At the end of the play, Willie finally succeeds at killing himself without awakening from the false view of himself and his family. Willie's wife, Linda, does not tell him she knows about him pretending to make money because she views success differently. She does not care how much money he makes as long as he is a decent man. She views success as being a decent, caring person that cares about family and friends. Linda lectures Biff about finding a job and caring about the family, which she believes he does not do because Biff fights with Willie all the time. Linda is especially worried that Biff does not care about his father who seems to be sick, because of his wrestling attempts to be well liked by everyone. Willie seems to be suicidal because he has been trying to kill himself: with the pipe by the gas and other times when he is driving. I believe he wants to kill himself because he is actually “unsuccessful” according to his view of success; he does not have a job and his boys will not follow his ideal of success. Willie and Biff do not get along because of their different views of success. Willie refuses to accept reality and Biff is sick of trying to please his fathers false hopes of Biff becoming a salesman. We can see this when Biff says, “you're going to hear the truth-what you are and what I am!'... “The man don't know who we are! The man is going to know! We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!”. Biff believes that being successful is finding a career that you love. He does not think working as a Salesman and living at home is success because he would not be independent and he does not have a passion for the job. Willie and Linda seem to think supporting your family is success; therefore, he decides to start a business and live at home to help his family by the end of the first Act. This decision does not follow through, however, because Biff will never be happy doing something he doesn't love. Biff’s brother Happy seems to view success similar to the way Biff views it because they get along well; however, Hap does not have the truthful nature that Biff possesses. Happy is a peacemaker that wants everyone to be happy; the author named him “Happy”, after all. Happy strives for everyone to get along, even if they have to lie to make everything go smoothly. He wants to keep the peace and hates confrontation. The play seems to center around Willie, Linda, and Biff. Willie never realized that Biff wanted to do something he loves to be successful and he never supported what his son really wanted to do in his life. Linda wants Biff to put his ideals aside and do what is right for his father. As the play continues, Willie remains to pretend to be someone else, Biff disappoints his father yet again by stealing something from his boss and refusing to go back to return it, and Willie eventually kills himself. In the end, what kills Willie is his stubborn refusal to accept his sons' own ideals and his failed attempts to force his ideals onto his children. Another factor of his illness is that he pretends to be someone he was before his older age. Biff and his brother believe that they should be who they are inside and not pretend to be someone else. Willie was never true to himself, because he tried to make up a fake life.

Another character from the book The Awakening also struggles with her identity. Edna knows that there is no room for an independent women in society, but unlike Biff, she changes who she is to awaken and become true to herself. During this time period, women were expected to be passive and listen to their husband, no matter what the circumstance. Many husbands treated their wives like property and Edna's husband, Mr. Pontellier, treated her as such. We can see this is how he treats her on page 3 in the quote, “You are burnt beyond recognition,” he added, looking as his wife as one looks at a valuable piece of property which has suffered some damage. Edna was not happy with this ideal and she decided to make a stand. Her first attempt to be her own person shows when she refuses to answer the questions her husband asks her about their child being sick. After Mr. Pontellier falls asleep, she goes outside and cries continuously on the porch. The reader feels sorry for Edna and one can tell she wants to become her own self once “An indescribable oppression, which seemed to generate in some unfamiliar part of her consciousness, filled her whole being with a vague anguish”. One important stance that Edna makes is in chapter eleven. Mr. Pontellier asks his wife fondly,“Edna, dear, are you not coming in soon?” and Edna responds by saying,

“No; I am going to stay out here.” “This is more than folly,” he blurted out. “I can't permit you to stay out there all night. You must come into the house instantly.” With a writhing motion she settled herself more securely in the hammock. She perceived that her will had blazed up, stubborn and resistant.

“In the novel The Awakening, there is a metaphor that is carried on throughout the novel. This metaphor is to “awaken” which means to come out of a dream. But who is to say that Edna was better off after she “awakened”; after all, she did end up dead. It is obvious that Edna “awakens” in the play The Awakening. When Edna awakens, she discovers a new side of her that she didn't know existed. She changed her views and believes and wanted to be independent. Edna wanted to make her own decisions and refused to be oppressed by society and her husband. This is unheard of in the time period, but it does not stop her from becoming the new person she wants to be. Edna knows that she will be unhappy if she remains passive so she ran from her ties to responsibility and the stereotypical duties forced upon her. As she explains in chapter six that she normally would have “gone at his request” when her husband told her to do something.
“She would, through habit, have yielded to his desire; not with any sense of submission or obedience to his compelling wishes, but unthinkingly... as we go through the daily treadmill of the life which has been portioned out to us”

When Edna refuses to come into the house, she is finally doing as she wishes, when she wishes to do it. She had never done this before and she is “awakening” by becoming someone independent. In chapter six of The Awakening, we can see a the main character, Edna, facing reality. “Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities pressing into her soul” as she was realizing she had to face the reality of being an oppressed wife. As she continues to grow independent from everyone, she discovers that she was bored with her old life in chapter nineteen. Edna did not want a picture perfect life where everyone was “blindly content”. The people around her had not awakened like her and were unable to see anything but black and white. At the end of the novel, Edna decides to kill herself because she realizes that there is not place for an independent woman in this society. She wants to remain free to choose what happens so as her last decision, she takes her life.

Willie is like Edna in a way because both think that they do not belong in society; however, Edna kills herself to remain awoken and Willie kills himself to avoid awakening. Edna was able to achieve success once she awoke because she chose her path. The last decision she made was solely her own as well as others she made while awakening. Even though she ended up dead, she believed that in order to be completely true to herself and make her own decisions independently she had to be dead. She thought that society would not accept her new self. This may have been true of the time period she lived in when women's rights were not considered as important as a mans right to tell a woman what to do.