He was stuck in the past like Willy, still trying to recapture the love they had once shared. "Can't you repeat the past?" he shouted in disbelief. “Because 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, life is bottomless. He doesn't put a bolt on a nut, he doesn't tell you the law, or he gives you medicine. He's a man out there in nowhere, riding the smile and the shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back, it's an earthquake. ' (Miller Act 2). Charley understands why Willy committed suicide. This also sums up others who have seen their dreams fail. The American Dream clouded both Willy's and Gatsby's minds. It changed their personality and changed the way they saw things. They were too focused on what their heart wanted. You have to earn it, you can't just expect to achieve it. Gatsby and Willy's American dream has left them clueless. “He presents it in Gatsby as a romantic baptism of desire for a reality that stubbornly remains out of his sight” (Bewley). They both ended up without the life they dreamed of, and without any life at all. The authors of these books are trying to prove that the American dream is not what it seems. It ruined their lives instead of actually making them achieve it