A Comparison Of Beatrice In City Life And Death Of A Salesman

Dreams have been and will continue to be the foundation of society. Without a vision, an individual will go through his entire life living for the sake of living, not living for a purpose. However, one must be able to tell when his dream is motivating him to work harder, or causing delusions. In Mary Gordon’s story “City life,” and Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman,” the characters all have dreams but were blind to the delusions that went along with them. In “City Life,” the character Beatrice grew up in a less than ordinary childhood which gave her the foundation of her dream for a better life. In “Death of a Salesman,” characters Biff and Willy also had visions for their lives which seemed out of reach for them. One evident factor

When coming from a sub-optimal childhood there are many different paths an individual can take throughout his life. For Beatrice, the second an opportunity presented itself she left her old life with the intentions of starting a new and better one. Beatrice grew up in a family with two alcoholic parents and tried to stay out of the house as often as possible. As her life went on Beatrice’s dream emerged from the idea that any life besides hers would be a good one. Her dream also came from the idea that, “…it wasn’t poverty that that was the problem. It was the way her parents were. It was what they did.” With this in mind, Beatrice knew she would live a different life than her parents, doing the

The dreams they had for themselves, were not their own but rather influenced by society. Beatrice’s dream was to have a normal life. To her, a normal life meant anything besides the one she grew up living. She never stopped to think about what would make her happy in life, but rather focused on making her life a mirror image of those she surrounded herself with while growing up. The reason her past caught up with her was because she pursued a dream that was not her own. Similar to Beatrice, Willy lived his life in hopes of pursuing the American Dream. Willy lost himself while trying to follow a dream that did not belong to him. The dream made him delusional once he started to believe that if he did not succeed in living the American Dream there was nothing else to life. One of Willy’s friends points out after Willy’s death that if he would have focused on something he really loved he might have had more success in life, “He was a happy man with a batch of cement.” This concept goes for any dream an individual might have. If a dream is modified to fit an individual’s needs and desires, it can be considered a productive