Universität Greifswald
Kurs “20th Century American Drama”
Greifswald, August 2005

The reception of the American Dream in Tennessee Williams’
play “A Streetcar Named Desire” and Arthur Miller’s play
“Death of a Salesman”

by: Jessica Schweke

Contents

1. Introduction  3

2. An attempt to define the “American Dream”  4

3. The American Dream in Tennessee Williams’ play “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947)   7

3.1 Blanche DuBois and the perception of the American Dream 7
3.2 Stanley Kowalski and the perception of the American Dream 10

4. The American Dream in Arthur Miller’s play “Death of a Salesman” (1949)  14

4.1 Willy Loman and the perception of the American Dream 14
4.2 Biff and Happy and the perception of the American Dream  16

5. Conclusion 18

References  19

1. Introduction

In this seminar paper I am going to work out the perception of the idea of the American Dream in the two plays A Streetcar Named Desire from 1947 by Tennessee Williams and Death of a Salesman, written in 1949 by Arthur Miller.

I chose this topic because firstly I find the theme of the American Dream really fascinating. The idea behind the term consists of so many different factors and I was not aware of all of them in the beginning. Further, I liked the idea of looking at two different plays that have been written around the same time, have totally different plots but are yet somehow linked by the subliminal theme of the American Dream.

To find a suitable definition of the American Dream I mainly oriented my analysis around the works of America’s founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin as well as Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, John Winthrop and James Truslow Adams. Based on these texts I transferred these factors on the plays by Williams and Miller and searched for differences and similarities. The following text will therefore be concerned firstly with a definition of the term ‘American Dream’ and the conversion of these notions in the characters Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’ drama A Streetcar Named Desire and in Willy Loman as well as his sons Biff and Happy in Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman.

2. An attempt to define the “American Dream”

To precisely define the ‘American Dream’ and its facets, I think it to be necessary to firstly define what ‘America’ is since the term ‘American Dream’ obviously describes the dream of a whole nation.

America is a nation of seemingly endless opportunities. It is a country which holds many different natural resources in many different regions and landscapes like mountainous areas, deserts, coastlines and rainforests. This shows that already geographically it is a nation of great diversity. Furthermore, American society is of the same diverseness. It is a society influenced and formed by many different cultures and nations. From the beginning of America’s colonization, various nations have begun to settle in the ‘New World’ and have formed it after the example of their homelands but with the notion to better their living situation. They were “melted into a new race of men” to form “the most perfect society now existing in the world.” [Crèvecoeur: 908]

The different aspects comprised in the American Dream are deeply influenced by the history of the American nation as a nation of diversity. The early settlers who came from England in the early 17th century to escape religious persecution shared the wish to purify their church in order to make it appealing to God and to worship him adequately. Disappointed of the corruption of the Church of England, they then fled to America where they wanted to form a new kind of society in which the gap between the rich and the poor was not as big as in Europe anymore [Crèvecoeur: 905ff] and everybody was free to worship God without being prosecuted. It follows that the wish for freedom is a major component of the American Dream.

With the War of Independence in the late 18th century and the striving for economic and political autonomy from England as the mother country which has always held the power of decision over the colonies in America, the craving for independence in general again became crucial. The colonies’ independency from the kingdom was obtained on July 4th, 1776 with ratification of the Declaration of Independence. Subsequently, another factor added to the American Dream. In the Declaration it was seen as “self-evident: that all men are created equal” [Jefferson: 971]. This equality of all members of a society was also a basis of the American Dream that is still apparent today.

Yet other aspects of the American Dream are “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” [Jefferson: 971] as is also put down in writing in the Declaration of Independence.

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