Comparison: Death of a Salesman and A Streetcar Named Desire Essay (Movie Review)
The most outstanding connection between the Death of a Salesman and Street Car Named Desire is illusion. In the Death of a Salesman, Willy, the protagonist, is lost in the illusion that the American dream is only achievable via superficial qualities of likeability and attractiveness. He confuses the dream with philistinism and he ends up hurting his family due to his failure to achieve his dreams. In Willy’s interpretation, the elusive American dream calls men to be attractive and simpatico, but he does not meet the threshold and thus he is a failure. In Street Car Named Desire, Blanche DuBois, the protagonist, is disillusioned and lost in fantasy and thus she cannot deal with reality.
In a bid to avoid the reality, Blanche resorts to lies and scheming hoping to create a kinder world, as opposed to the harsh reality of life. Somehow, Blanche ultimately experiences a falsified form of happiness, but she never overcomes the illusions surrounding her thoughts.
The other connection between the two plays is that the protagonists are sexual outlaws. Both Willy and Blanche have a dark past surrounded by illicit affairs. Willy is romantically entangled in an illicit affair with a ‘woman’ he only encountered somewhere on his way to Boston, yet he is married. On the other hand, Blanche loses her job as a high school tutor after getting involved sexually with one of her male students. She also admits that she normally beds strangers. This sexually turbulent past haunts the two protagonists and to some extent, it contributes to their ultimate destruction.
