Comparing The Great Gatsby and Death of a Salesman Essay

Almost everyone has dreams in their life at one point or another. It is just human nature to want something that you dont have. American Dreams can build magnificent people but it can also be a terrible force that will destroy even the strongest person. In F. Scott Fitzgeralds The Great Gatsby and Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman, Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman are characters controlled by their American Dreams. Their dreams come from their pasts and are based mostly on themselves and a goal that they want to achieve but they sometimes affect the ones they love. The lack of control of these dreams ultimately causes the downfalls of both Gatsby and Loman.

Jay Gatsbys dream puts him on a path where he spends all of his energy trying to re-create his past love with Daisy Buchanan, from Louisville. The little bit of time Gatsby spent with Daisy years before was the happiest time of his life, and he continually speaks of trying to recapture that time and his lost love. Nick, Daisys cousin and the storys narrator, describes the past that Gatsby is attempting to regain. The officer looked at Daisy while she was speaking, in a way that every girl wants to be looked at sometime, and because it seemed romantic to me I have remembered the incident ever since (Fitzgerald 75). This was the love they shared in Louisville before Gatsby had to leave to go to war and Daisy fell out of his life. This happiness with Daisy is what fueled Gatsbys American Dream.

In The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby uses his enormous wealth to accomplish his American Dream. He constantly is throwing extravagant parties hoping that Daisy Buchannan will eventually show up to one. However, everyone shows up except Daisy. I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited. People were not invited - they went there (Fitzgerald 41). Eventually he comes to his senses and just invites her over to take a tour of his house. When she sees all of the rooms and everything that he owns she becomes extremely impressed with Gatsby and from there on their love begins to take hold. If Gatsby did not have all of his money then he would never come anywhere close to reaching his American Dream.

When Gatsby is killed at the end of The Great Gatsby, he has a funeral in which only a few people decide to show up to. A little before three the Lutheran minister arrived from Flushing, and I began to look involuntarily out the windows for other car The minister glanced several times at his watch, so I took him aside and asked him to wait for half an hour. But it was not any use. Nobody came (Fitzgerald 174). When Gatsby was alive everyone wanted to be around him but when he dies all of those same people try to separate themselves as far away as possible. They do not want to be associated with this terrible incident that happened and all of the background unknown information about Jay Gatsby.

Unlike F. Scott Fitzgeralds Gatsby, a character who has all of the material things a man could possibly want but no one to share them with, Arthur Millers Willy Loman has no material things but he does have the unfailing love of his wife and two boys. Willy always wants to get the material things for his family while Gatsby simply wants the family.

Unlike how Jay Gatsby tries to recreate his past, Willy Loman seems to be stuck in his past. Willy is constantly having flashbacks into his earlier life remembering how he was a success and how his kids loved him. He always wants to remember the old days of Biff being a huge football star and having a beautiful wife and never wants to leave the old days. He never seems to pay attention to his current situation at home or at his job. He constantly lies to Linda and the boys about his situation at work and his personal state of mind. Such as how he has tried to end his life multiple times by either crashing the car or inhaling the smoke out of the furnace. This pushes the load on to the rest of the family, especially Linda. Linda takes the burden onto her shoulders by replacing the tubing that was attached to the furnace and this is just one way Willy tried to end his life. Even after finding the tubing behind the furnace and she still defends her husband.

I don't say he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He's not the finest character that ever lived. But he's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He's not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person (Miller 56).

Linda will defend Willy to the very end because she loves him and understands that he will never be the same man that she married many years ago. The burden of Willy living in the past does not just affect Linda it also hurts their sons and close friends. Willy is living his life in the past and he is destroying the lives of the people that he loves.

As money plays a positive role in Gatsbys overall quest towards his American Dream, it plays a negative role for Willy and his quest to become a well-liked salesman. Willy was once a very successful salesman and made a good amount of money but now he is working without pay and this affects the lifestyle that he is forced to live. Money is so scarce that it is hard for the Lomans to afford to pay the bills for the appliances and to get the simplest items. Linda cannot even afford to buy a new pair of stockings and she is forced to mend them herself. Since Willy is poor that is a direct result that he failed at reaching his American Dream.

After all the hardwork and miserable moments that Willy Loman endures he tragically takes his own life at the end of a Death of a Salesman. He believes that there is no reason for him to live any longer since he will never achieve his American Dream. The irony is that after so many years of fighting for his American Dream it is that very dream that ultimately kills him. At his funeral only a small amount of people came, just like at Jay Gatsbys funeral in The Great Gatsby. Only Willys family and friends go to his funeral which shows us that he was not well-liked and being liked was the only thing he truly wanted. Willy passes his American Dream onto his son Happy; He had a good dream. Its the only dream you can have-to come out number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where Im gonna win it for him (Miller 139). Happy vows to accomplish Willys dream and this shows that Willy really was not a bad father considering he passed on values to his children.

The Great Gatsby and the Death of a Salesman are stories about two men who are both struggling to obtain their own American Dreams. Their attempts at happiness ultimately end in tragedy one at the hand of another and one by his own hand. Its ironic that the one that took his own life, Willy Loman, actually achieved his American Dream of being loved but he just did not recognize it.