Compare and contrast Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman and Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie?

I think that both characters are interesting reflections
of one another.  One immediate difference between them is that Amanda emerges as much
stronger than Willy.  This is not merely because of the suicide element.  It is also
because Amanda is forced to endure more because of being a woman in the context in which
she lives.  Due to her social conditions and context, Amanda might blow much in terms of
"hot air," but she recognizes her own limitations.  Her husband left, her disengaged son
will probably follow suit, and her daughter is a shell of the woman that she wishes her
to be.  While Amanda does engage in a nostalgia of the past, it is more benign than
Willy's, whose condition is brutally painful both because of his own delusion and his
own understanding of self and the extraordinary matrices placed upon him.  Whereas
Amanda has to appropriate her own reality in the realm of the private, where some
success could be seen or at least where failure is not has brutally harsh, Willy has to
appropriate reality in accordance to his own subjectivity in both home and work
settings, where challenges in both confront him.  In this light, his condition is even
more challenging than Amanda.  They both have trouble with reality and with the
realistic conditions in which they are immersed.  While both are filled with "hot air,"
I find Willy's predicament more pathetic and more pain- ridden than
Amanda's.