In Arthur Miller’s 1949 essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man," Miller began by saying, "In this age few tragedies are written." This particular essay was published in the New York Times, was also the preface that was prepared for "Death of a Salesman" in 1949. Before Miller’s "Death of a Salesman," there was only one type of tragedy—that which fit Aristotle’s definition. For Aristotle, plays of tragedy had to revolve around kings, gods, or people of high class. In these classic tragedies, the diction must be elevated and fitting of the characters.Arthur Miller challenged just about every belief and convention that had previously been accepted about tragic plays, as in Shakespeare’s "Hamlet"—which could be considered the paragon of tragedies. In claiming, "The tragic mode is archaic," Miller explains "that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were." This very notion that regular people are just as fit to be main characters in a tragedy as royalty was also applied to the audience’s understanding of a tragic play. If the play was supposed to be about upper-class people, and was spoken in a vernacular that was only known to the high-bred, how were the common people who saw these plays supposed to comprehend their meaning?
The only way for this problem to be solved, according to Miller, was to present a character to whom the audience will readily relate. Miller did this by presenting Willy Loman, the main character of "Death of a Salesman," who was a common workingman with a wife and two kids.The reason that there is such an absence of tragedies in this day and age, is that "the turn which modern literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological," has been one that creates skepticism. With so much thinking involved, and analyzing, no one can really enjoy a play for what it is—pure entertainment. By constantly trying to figure out a reason for why something happened, the audience can no longer accept tragic action, let alone heroic action. This, along with the societal belief that in order for a protagonist to be recognized as a character he must be faultless, has made tragedy nearly impossible.
Every person has his/her faults, even the great Hamlet had his downfall; his ambivalence and indecisiveness brought him down. Just as Willy Loman’s lack of self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy are what destroyed him.
“I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” ( Tragedy and the Common Man). Arthur Miller follows his Millerian conventions of tragedy in the writing of The Crucible. Often literature uses tragedy to display a depressing theme represented by the tragic hero.
In Arthur Miller’s essay about “Tragedy and the Common Man,” he argues that the common man is as appropriate a subject for tragedy as the very highly placed kings and noble men. Mankind keeps tragedy above all forms because they are given the same mental abilities as the nobles. In “Death of a Salesman”, Willy Loman is a common man and a middle class worker, enough saving to provide food for his family. So if the tragic hero can be a common man, does Willy fit in that category? Even though he is a common man he fails to live up to the standards of being a tragic hero because he never accepts nor admits to his own errors. He, therefore, loses his dignity. One of his biggest errors is his failure of be a good father.
Arthur Miller states in his essay, "Tragedy and the Common Man," " . . . we are often held to be below tragedy--or tragedy below us . . . (tragedy is) fit only for the highly placed . . . and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied." However, Miller believes " . . . the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were" (1021). It is this belief that causes Miller to use a common man, Willie Loman, as the subject of his tragedy, Death of a Salesman. Miller redefines the tragic hero to fit a more modern age, and the product of this redefinition is Willie.
To quote critic Northrop Frye, “Tragic heroes are so much the highest points in their human landscape that they seem the inevitable conductors of the power about them, great trees more likely to be struck by lightning than a clump of grass. Conductors may of course be instruments as well as victims of the divisive lightning.” One such tragic hero who fits this view is Willy Loman of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Throughout the play, Willy’s tragic fall from grace (experienced through Willy’s delusional flashbacks) is shown to have affected those around him--particularly his family--in a negative way. This suffering Willy brings upon those around him contributes to the tragic vision of the work as a whole in that the characters affected by Willy are also forced to deal with tragedy
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.
Many dilemmas throughout the recent decades are repercussions of an individual's foibles. Arthur Miller represents this problem in society within the actions of Willy Loman in his modern play Death of a Salesman. In this controversial play, Willy is a despicable hero who imposes his false value system upon his family and himself because of his own rueful nature, which is akin to an everyman. This personality was described by Arthur Miller himself who "Believe[s] that the common man is as apt a subject for a tragedy in its highest sense as kings were" (Tragedy 1).
Like countless characters in a play, Willy struggles to find who he is. Willy’s expectations for his sons and The Woman become too high for him to handle. Under the pressure to succeed in business, the appearance of things is always more important than the reality, including Willy’s death. The internal and external conflicts aid in developing the character Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
Willy Loman will bring his downfall upon himself as he entices his own disillusions and the bedrock of his values pertaining to success and how one can achieve it. His failure to recognize the fruitless outcome of his own idealism will seal his fated suicide and have a determining effect on the failures of his two sons that when adolescent, idolized their father as a guid...
Alistair Deacon from As Time Goes By once said that, “The people in the book need to be people.” The main character in a story or in a play always has to be somewhat likeable or relatable. Who doesn’t like to feel like they can relate to their favorite character in a story? In many cases the authors of stories or books always try to make the reader feel like they are not the only ones with problems or going through a crazy situation. Wanting the reader to become engaged in the characters' conflicts is what they aim for. In Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, many people were gripped by Willy Loman’s, the main character, problems because they too struggle with many of the conflicts that Willy faces. Willy could not keep his life together, failing to see reality and pursuing the wrong dream, with a wrong viewpoint, ended up causing others around him and himself to hurt.
In short, Willy Loman's unrealistic dreams caused his downfall. By trying to be successful with material desires and being "well-liked" he failed. By the play's end he had to lose his own life just to provide funding for that of his family. He put his family through endless torture because of his search for a successful life. He should have settled with what he had, for his true happiness included a loving family. Willy's example shows that one must follow their own dreams to be truly accomplished.
Willy Loman’s character in Death of a Salesman portrays him as a tragic hero. Willy Loman continued to want recognition and his reputation, but never forgets about his family. These characteristics describe him as a tragic hero in Death of a Salesman. Willy Loman’s tragic flow leads him to pursue the idea that reputation in society has more relevance in life than knowledge and education to survive in the business. His grand error of wanting recognition drove him crazy and insane and led to his tragic death.
In the play, The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller,Willy Loman, an unsuccessful business man struggling to support his family is completely out of touch with reality throughout the plot line. Many characters throughout this play and their interactions with Willy have showed the audience his true colors and what he thinks is important in life. His constant lying and overwhelming ego certainly does not portray his life in factual terms, but rather in the false reality that he has convinced himself he lives in.
Miller himself had three wives, so he was well-experienced in this area of dysfunctional families. In this play, Miller greatly challenges the idea of an ideal family with two parents who love each other and children who are beautiful and successful. These families are only a figment of our imagination to Miller. We can assume his life has somewhat to do with this assumption of his, but sadly, Miller happens to be right about this dysfunctional family, for the most part. “Death of a Salesman,” also addresses tragedy, as does “The Crucible.” Tragedy is something everyone will become familiar with at some point in their life, but that does not mean everyone will be able to handle it properly. The main character of “Death of a Salesman,” the man who ends up with the fateful death, is named Willy. In many eyes, Arthur Miller has a dark mind, but in all reality he is exposing society through the eyes of a man that is not a Christian, only furthering the truth that there is no hope in life without God. The plot of his play has three major events, which are first when Linda fully exposes Willy’s craziness, second when Willy begs
Arthur Miller himself argued that Loman's situation - that of the formerly successful and now unemployed salesman unable to find a reason for continued life - was so general a quality of American life that he (Willy) was victimized "by our being what we are (Karl, p. 330)." According to Perkins (p. 710), Willy Loman's "fatal flaw" has been variously interpreted as a pitiable blindness to the realities of the American Dream, as the unrealistic hope of a doting father for his son's advancement to l...
Arthur Miller is recognized as an important and influential playwright, not to mention essayist and novelist. Although he has had plenty of luck in his writing career, his fame is the product of his ingenious ability to control what he wants his readers to picture or feel. As one of his critics states, "Miller writes ingeniously, conveying the message that 'if the proper study of mankind is man, man's inescapable problem is himself (Broussard, 306).'" Miller accurately puts into words what every person thinks, feels, or worries about, but often has trouble expressing. By the use of symbolism, Arthur Miller portrays Willy's (along with the other Lowmans') problems with family life, the society, and himself in Death of a Salesman.