The characters of Willy in Death of a Salesman and Amanda in Glass MenagerieIn "Death of a Salesman", Willy Loman thinks that the ticket to succeed is sympathy. He told his sons: "The man who comes into the business world, the man who arouses personal interest, is the man who advances." » In "The Glass Menagerie", Amanda Wingfield has the same conviction. Girls are supposed to be attractive and they are supposed to be attractive in order to entertain gentlemen. As she tells Laura: “All pretty girls are a trap, a pretty trap, and men expect them to be” (1048). It is this very belief that Amanda and Willy attempt to instill in their children, and it is this emphasis on likability that makes the characters of Amanda Wingfield and Willy Loman so unlikeable. Much of the reader's animosity toward Willy comes from his responsibility for the ruin of his sons. Willy's affair ends up being the reason why Biff ends up failing out of high school and becoming a football player. This blunder discourages and destroys his eldest son. This is why Biff refuses to go to summer school; this is the reason why Biff leaves the house. Yet this is all due to Willy's need to be likable. He cheats on his beloved wife simply because it makes him feel special, because it gives him proof that women other than Linda are interested in him, because it makes him feel appreciated. A woman “chose him”; a woman laughs when he jokes about keeping her pores open; a woman gives him some attention (38). In fact, it is Willy's emphasis on likability that leads Biff to set aside his education in the first place. Bernard, the friend next door who begs Biff to study for the reagents, is described by Willy as a... middle of paper ... something she discovered was useless. They both focus on something that has brought them nothing but pain and suffering and it is this entrapment that makes Amanda and Willy the most unlikeable. Rather than learning from their mistakes and teaching their children to avoid making the same ones, Amanda and Willy lead their children down the same path that leads to failure, a path that Amanda found to be a dead end, a path to which Willy found no end. all.Works Cited: Miller, Arthur. Death of a seller. Literature: an introduction to fiction, poetry and drama. Seventh edition. XJ Kennedy and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999. 1636-1707. Williams, Tennessee. The Glass Menagerie. In Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing, 4th ed. Ed. Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1995. 1519-1568.