"The characters in the texts deal with a shallow concept of success"

Discuss in relation to Sam Mendes' American Beauty and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

"There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it." (Oscar Wilde)

While the American Dream is much more attainable for the average person in America today, it still fails to fulfill and satisfy the deeper needs of a people trapped in a material culture. The study of Sam Mendes' American Beauty alongside Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman exposes various similarities inherent in the values possessed by the central protagonists of the texts. Both Mendes and Miller explore the notion of the American Dream: While Mendes presents it as a shallow and un-fulfilling goal, Miller shows how such a dream in unattainable for the American Everyman in the late 1940s. One can follow the progression of this Everyman from the post-depression era to America in the present and come to the realisation that, following Freud's teachings, what has been repressed of the individual, has not been fulfilled. Both Mendes and Miller explore a similar sense of success but in the comparison of

The American Dream is a repression of one's self for the sake of conformity, a repression that is not compensated by money. The allure of such 'success' satisfies only the shallow exterior. Ricky says, "There is this life behind things." Mendes and Miller show how there is life behind people that are suppressed by a pursuit of money, of success. Mendes tells us, through Ricky, that Angela is not beautiful and Lester not successful. He tells us to open our eyes to the realm natural beauty in the world, to see what Lester does not see, that the further he tries to access 'success,' the further he strays from it. It is in comparing American Beauty to Death of a Salesman that one sees the similarities in the characters of Lester and Willy. Both of these men have families and the potential to be happy, but in attempting to find money, they push their families aside and lose the more stable chance of being fulfilled.

Carol thinks that beauty is the roses in her garden. Lester thinks that Angela is beautiful. Mendes shows that beauty is neither, beauty is truth and real love, all of the things that are discarded when trying to obtain monetary success.

We become aware that Willy is self-conscious and insecure. It concerns and upset him that he can't achieve the success that he imagines. He is an ordinary man but he lives an illusion that he is well liked and 'successful' in the American sense of the word. Willy masks his ordinariness as Angela masks hers, failing to believe that he is what his son Biff tells him he is, "A dime a dozen." Happy, Willy's son, reflects the cyclical nature of the American Dream in American society passed from generation to generation. Defending his father he argues, "He had a good dream. It's the only dream you can have." Biff, Miller's symbol of truth and reality, realises that his father died in vain, "He had the wrong drea

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Approximate Word count = 1258
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)