Death Of A Salesman Comparison Essay

Dictionary.com defines peer pressure as “social pressure by members of one 's peer group to take a certain action, adopt certain values, or otherwise conform in order to be accepted”. What many people do not experience is the same type of pressure, but within the family. Death of a Salesman is a prime example of a once happy family that turns into something sour. It is discussed multiple times, in the play, about family member’s futures in the business world. Biff, the son of Willy and Linda Loman, has the dream of working out on the farm. However, is father is unsupportive and wishes that Biff would follow in his father’s footsteps, rather than making his own path. Similar to the idea of making choices on what path to take for the future, is a poem called The Road Not Taken. This poem perfectly depicts imagery on how one chooses a path to take. One can either choose the worn down path, the path which majority will take, or they can

As previously discussed, both of the texts have their own way of showing different paths to take. In Death of a Salesman, Biff shows his confusion about his future “I tell ya, Hap, I don’t know what the future is. I don’t know- what I’m supposed to want” (Miller, page 1914). He later goes on to tell Happy, his brother, about how his life was going well in his high school years, only for him to become a farmer. What Biff does not realize, not until the end of the play, is that he does not want to be a salesman, but that he is happy being a farmer. In The Road Not Taken, the beginning is filled with confusion just like Biff, “And sorry I could not travel both” (Frost, line 2). By the end of the poem a path is chosen, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- I took the one less traveled by” (Frost, lines 18-19). Just how Biff did not know which path to choose, he eventually chose the one that need more work and