Jordan Williams
Smith
AML2020
10/23/2014
The Similarities of Parents As a parent most people want their kid to be the best that they can be, some say they want their child to be even more successful than they were themselves. For that to happen parent raise their expectations high, maybe even higher than their child wants to exceed. It isn’t hard to wish the best for somebody or even push that somebody to do their best but there becomes a time when parents can go too far and the children do not want to go any farther than they already have. In the story The Glass Menagerie, by Tennessee Williams, the mother in the story was one of those pushy parents who wanted her children to not make the same mistakes that she had bigger plans than they had wanted. Also in the story Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, there was a father who was a salesman and wanted his sons to do big things but winds up pushing too far and the children don’t exceed the expectations of their father. Parents sometimes don’t know when to far is too far. In Williams’s story, The Glass Menagerie, Amanda who was the mother in the story was a faded Southern belle who was abandoned by her husband and is trying to raise her two children under harsh financial conditions. Amanda desires for the comforts from her youth and also longs for her children to have the same comforts, but her devotion to them has made her almost "hateful" towards her children. Amanda would always be on her daughter, Laura about finding a gentleman caller, and she would brag about how when she was younger and was searching for a gentleman caller, she would have sometimes 15 in one day. Laura has a childhood illness which has left her with a limp, and she has a mental fragility and an inferiority complex that have isolated her from the outside world which makes it difficult to live up to her mother’s expectations. Willy Loman is a failing salesman who always dwells on the past. He looks at the past of his golden years, a time in his life where he was doing well in life. He believes the past was full of fond memories and a place where he was popular. To him it was a place where he was truly happy. He would greatly exaggerate his success stating that “He averaged a hundred and seventy dollars a week in commissions.”(Miller) when he probably didn’t make that much at all. By him thinking that his past was such a great success, he believes that his children will want to be like him and be successful as well. In reality his past wasn’t so great, and he wasn’t popular at all. He only perceived it that way. This misrepresentation causes him to live in a world of illusion. He can’t face the fact that his whole life has been one full of failure and that he isn’t someone special. He isn’t “a dime a dozen” (Miller); he thinks he’s different from everyone else. But in fact he’s just like a lot of people, he isn’t highly recognized like he thinks he is and he hasn’t done anything special with his life. He also can’t see that the lives of his children are also failures and he believes they are doing it in spite of him. Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman and Tennessee Williams’ play, The Glass Menagerie show two parents who have lived a life of failure but are unable to recognize their