After reading The Death of a Salesman I realized that Willy, the main character is similar to Gatsby, the main character in The Great Gatsby. They both had a dream and died before it could come true. Gatsby’s dream was to be with the love of his life, Daisy. Most of the time he thinks about the all of the “what if’s” and always wonders what would have been. When the time finally came to be with her, Gatsby dies. The novel is very depressing but it taught me that sometimes, some dreams are not meant to come true. There is a difference between a dream and reality. The dream for Gatsby was to be with Daisy, the love of his life. The reality was that she was married to another man.
Willy Loman’s dream was for his sons to be come successful businessmen. He himself was a successful salesman, but he tried to live a better life, one that he wanted through his sons, Biff and Happy. Willy put a lot of pressure on his sons. The years of pressure eventually lead to resentment. Biff, Willy’s eldest son was under more pressure than Happy simply because he was the oldest. It wasn’t his dream but Biff just wanted to make his father proud. In the novel, Biff witnesses his father having an affair with another woman and ever since then things have not been the same between. Willy begins to hallucinate scenes from his past and his wife and sons begin to worry. In the end of the play, Willy kills himself.
The two stories are very similar. Both characters strive for their dreams and don’t think about their consequences. Unfortunately, in both cases the consequence was their own death. Gatsby did not care if Daisy had a life with another man all he wanted was her and he would stop and nothing until he got what he wanted. Willy wanted more than anything for his sons to follow in his footsteps. He pushed Biff so hard it got to the point where Biff grew resentment toward his father. I’m not saying that Gatsby and Willy are wrong for wanting something so badly, but they let their dreams get the best of them. They were unconsciously hurting people along their path toward their dreams.
After reading both of these stories I learned that you have to look at a situation from every angle. Figure out how you are going to go about solving a problem and consider people’s feelings. What goes around will always come around.