Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman both represent the failed American Dream. Interestingly enough, Jay Gatsby and Willy Loman ended up arriving at the failed American Dream while doing different things in life. Even though the lifestyles of each man was different, certain similar attributes of the men lead to their downfall.
Willy Loman was a salesman around the New England area. He had a loving wife, Linda, a bachelor son, Happy, and a misfit son, Biff. All of these people along with his job were his main sources of pain in his life.
Linda was the greatest thing Willy had in his life. She was the perfect housewife, always doing as he said and standing up for him. When Willy had an affair with a clerk in Boston, he ruined how he viewed Linda. Sometimes he would start talking about how he would make it up to her but she had no idea what he was talking about. He also would become furious if Linda would knit stockings in the house because Willy would give stockings to the clerk when he went to visit her. These things caused him grief when he would be with Linda adding to his stockpile of pain.
Even though…show more content… They both represent the failed American Dream through their own actions. Their actions in life were driven by an unrealistic dream they had for himself and another. Willy had an unrealistic dream to be well liked by everyone he did business with and wanted Biff to be well liked and successful. Not achieving these generated his suicide. Gatsby had the unrealistic dream of a perfect life and needed Daisy to say she never loved Tom to do this. He was unable to achieve the perfect life when Daisy could not say she never loved Tom which crushed Gatsby. These major aspects drove each story even though each story had completely different things going on. A few minor things similar is that Gatsby and Willy both die at the end of their stories but in different ways. Another is that nobody goes to either ones
