He was stuck in the past like Willy, still trying to recapture the love they once shared. “Can’t you repeat the past?” he cried, incredulous. “Why, of course you can” (Fitzgerald 116). At the end of the book, Willy commits suicide. He realizes that his American dream is impossible to achieve. “Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no bottom in life. He doesn't put a bolt in a nut, he doesn't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man in the blue, who relies on smiling and shining shoes. And when they start to stop smiling, it's an earthquake. » (Miller Act 2). Charley understands why Willy killed himself. This sums up others whose dreams have also failed. The American dream has clouded the minds of Willy and Gatsby. It changed their personality and their way of seeing things. They were too attached to what their hearts wanted. You have to earn it, you can't just hope to achieve it. Gatsby and Willy's American dream has left them feeling helpless. “He presents it in Gatsby as a romantic baptism of desire for a reality that remains stubbornly out of his sight” (Bewley). They both found themselves without the life they dreamed of, and without a life at all. The authors of these books attempt to show that the American dream is not what it claims to be. It ruined their lives instead of allowing them to realize