Koncept američkog sna u djelima Great Gatsby S. Fitzgeralda i Death of a Salesman A. Millera

The American Dream was created by the first settlers who came to America. For them the Dream was connected to God and religion, and they believed that if they worked hard enough, God would elect them when the apocalypse came. Yet, when they began connecting the Dream with the ability to succeed and accumulate material wealth, the Dream started to be corrupted. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman (1940) and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) both deal with this topic. Fitzgerald connects Gatsby's Dream not to material wealth, but to the love of his life, Daisy. Just like the Dream, Daisy is desirable, materialistic, selfish, careless, beguiling, and haunting. Fitzgerald also places emphasis on social status and implies that the Dream stopped being achievable for an individual when it became corrupted. Therefore, poor people never get their chance to achieve the Dream. Like Fitzgerald, who emphasizes the detrimental effect of materialism, Miller also points at the corruption of the Dream and its values. Through his main character, Willy Loman, he shows a man who believes in all the wrong values of the Dream, which leads to an unsatisfactory and dysfunctional life of both himself and his family. On the other hand, through the character of Charley, Miller depicts a man who understands the system and therefore succeeds. Miller implies that some parts of the Dream that were later created, such as individualism or competition, have caused the downfall and the disintegration of society. He also implies that people need to start working together towards greater good to be able to restore the true values of the American Dream