Connections

            Numerous works involve dysfunctional families and their problems, but The Glass Castle is about more than a dysfunctional family. It is about the ability to fulfill dreams despite your past. The play, Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller connects to The Glass Castle in this way. The play shows a father’s relationship with his sons and with his wife. The main character, Willy Loman, is a salesman who had the one dream to be successful and for his kids to be successful. He is a traveling salesman “riding on a smile and a shoeshine” (138). He’s an old, rather irritable man that has lost much of his life to his job. Loman reminds me of Rex Walls, even though they are outwardly different. Loman is an average man living in an apartment in a city whereas Rex “skedaddles” from one tiny town to the next without the slightest wish to settle down and conform. But both men have the same dream, to get somewhere in their life and to give their children the chance to accomplish what they couldn’t.

From Death of a Salesman:

“All right, boy. I’m gonna show you and everybody else that Willy Loman did not die in vain. He had a good dream. It’s the only dream you can have-to come out the number-one man. He fought it out here, and this is where I’m gonna win it for him” (139)

                

              The main theme in this play is “The American Dream”. Loman in unable to accept the discrepancy between the dream and his own life just as Walls’ father is unable to look at his life realistically. The Walls’ dream of a better, normal life is a waste of time. They never reach the place where they exactly wanted to be, but they get pretty close. A big difference between the two works is that in Death of a Salesman the main character never realizes that he did succeed and he wasn’t childish to dream. In The Glass Castle Walls knows that in the end she found her place and was happy with the way her dream turned out. Both works express the desires that everyone has. The common wish of the world is to be successful, but it’s each person’s idea of what success is that defines the wish.