In each of A Doll's House, Death of a Salesman, and A Raisin in the Sun, the main characters suffer from illusion, become disillusioned, and come to a tragic end because of the disillusionment. In Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House, Nora Torvald abandons her family to escape the restrictive confines of patriarchy, marriage, and economic control of women typical of her society. In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, after years of maintaining illusions about himself, his family, and the American Dream, succumbs to disillusionment and ultimately commits suicide. In Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun, Walter Younger Jr.'s disillusionment over living in a racist society where opportunities for African Americans are limited nearly breaks apart his family before he is rescued by their love. In this sense, Nora and Willy's fates are more tragic than Walter's, but the illusions and disillusionment of all three of these characters serve as specific criticisms of society by each of the authors of these respective plays. This analysis will show how illusion, disillusion, and disillusionment serve to affect the characters in these three dramas, as well as the social critique offered by Ibsen, Miller, and Hansberry respectively.
Far from being an equal in her own right, an illusion Nora believes comes with marriage, Torvald's treatment of his wife creates disillusionment in Nora. Nora believes men have controlled her all her life and expected them to act as they would have her act. As she says to Torvald, "a great wrong was done to me Torvald. First by Papa and then by you" (Ibsen 104). Nora has no life of her own. Everything she does, from the way she dresses and keeps the house to the way she performs for her husband's fantasies, is for Torvald. He likes to pretend she is still his innocent bride, especially as she begins to demand some respect in her own right for her own views or desires. As Torval...