Compare Oedipus And Willy Loman

The tradition of the tragedy, the renowned form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has principally become a discontinued art. Plays that evoke the sense of tragedy-the creations of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare-have not been recreated often, nor recently due to its complex nature. The complexity of the tragedy is due to the plot being the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. While the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero is still immensely important because of the need to have a medium of suffering, who tries to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and the sudden downturn in the hero’s fortunes. Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is the modern tragedy of a common man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus from Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, exhibits some qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character Willy Loman should not be considered a full-on tragic hero because, he although bears a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his own personal dignity, he is unlike a true tragic hero, like Oedipus, because he was in full control of his fate where Oedipus was not.

In both works, each character has a significant struggle they have to deal with, which motivates them to acquire a positive outcome. The prevalence of each character wanting to control their lives to avoid the possibility of failure ironically becomes the catalyst of each character’s eventual downfall. Willy Loman, for the majority of his life, has tried to obtain prosperity in a capitalistic nation in order to live the American dream. Oedipus, a seemingly noble king, who, like any good king, tries to free...

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...le to move on from that, and instead died thinking of himself as a success.

While both Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman can be described as tragedies, Willy Loman is not an example of a traditional tragic hero like Oedipus. To be labeled as a tragic hero, the character must experience an anagnorisis, a peripeteia, and must have hubris and a hamartia. Oedipus has all of these qualities, which is what makes him a prime example of tragedy. Oedipus’ tragic flaw, his discovery of what he has done, and his consequential destruction because of his discovery are all necessary to be termed a hero of tragedy. Although Willy Loman has a tragic flaw that is even comparable to Oedipus’ in that it results in his blindness from reality, he, however, does not experience a revelation as to why his demise is inevitable. Without such an experience, Willy is not a hero of tragedy.