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Aristotle's definition of tragedy
Death of a salesman arthur miller character analysis
Aristotle's definition of tragedy
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“The goat song” is the original meaning of the word “tragedy.” The word developed when men lined up to offer their goats as sacrifices to their gods. The goats they held or lead realized their fates and began bleating sorrowfully. They mourned that their lives were to be laid down for others; however, Willy Loman from “Death of a Salesman” gave up his life courageously. Arthur Miller's character, Willy Loman, thought the only way he could help his family was to die. After much defeat Willy reflected on his life and said that he was of more value dead than alive (Miller 2173). Many arguments have been made about Willy's character; is Willy truly tragic or plainly pathetic? Considering all the factors of Willy's life that weighed upon him, the reader should determine that this low man was, indeed, tragic.
Aristotle analyzed drama to form a definition of tragedy. Aristotle considered “Oedipus the King” the perfect tragedy, so he modeled his definition after the play. He decided that there were some factors that made a tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, melody. The character had to have a tragic flaw that would ultimately lead to his downfall. The traits of tragedy's character defines Willy Loman as a tragic man. Also, a tragedy must have catharsis at the end, and the end of Death of a Salesman cleanses the audience.
Aristotle believed that the protagonist of a tragedy should be “good or fine”. (3) He must be considered a successful man in order for his life to go from good to bad. Willy sold for a living, but he was not prosperous. He borrowed from his neighbor Charley so he could pay for the appliances that were out of his budget. Aristotle would disagree that Willy was a tragic man rather than a pathetic on...
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...help his family in the only way he knew how and that was by his destruction. Willy Loman set out for popularity, but he became a tragedy. He should have taken these verses to heart, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world”(King James Version 1 John 2:15-16).
Works Cited
King James Version. Nashville:Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989. Print.
McManus, Barbera F. “Outline of Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy in the Poetics.” Nov. 1999. Web. 4 Nov. 2011. .
Miller, Arthur. “Death of a Salesman.” The Norton Introduction to Literature 10. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. 495-506. Print.
...ods come for the free drugs that he offers. Johnny is a man for whom we feel pride, shame and pity all at once but such a contradictory character would be unstable and unpredictable. Aristotle defines tragedy according to seven characteristics. These are that it is characterized by mimicry, it is serious, it expresses a full story of a relevant length, it contains rhythm and harmony, the rhythm and harmony occur in different combinations in different parts of the tragedy, it is performed not narrated and that it provokes feelings of pity and fear then purges these feelings through catharsis the purging of the emotions and emotional tensions. The composition of a tragedy consists of six segments. In order of relevance, these are plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and performance. For a comedy the ending must be merry. Instead Jerusalem ends in death.
Set ages apart, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex provide different perspectives on the topic of tragedy and what is defined as a tragic hero. Although Oedipus would be thought of as better representing the tragic hero archetype due to tradition and time period, the modern tragic hero of Oedipus Rex is more of a dismal one. Through analysis of their respective hamartias, it is exemplified that the New York businessman with his humble story proves to be more thought provoking than the King of Thebes and his melancholic tale. **By incorporating a more relatable character and plot, Arthur Miller lends help to making Willy Lowman spiral toward his own downfall while building more emotion and response from the audience than with Oedipus. When Oedipus learns of his awful actions, this invokes shock and desperation. With Willy Lowman, the audience goes for a bumpy ride until the eventual, but expected, crash. ** (NEEDS WORK)
Aristotle states that "For Tragedy is an imitation, not of men, but of an action and of life, and life consists in action, and its end is a mode of action, not a quality. Now character determines men's qualities, but it is by their actions that they are happy or the reverse. Dramatic action, therefore, is not with a view to the representation of character: character comes in as subsidiary to the actions. Hence the incidents and the plot are the end of a tragedy; and the end is the chief thing of all.
Willy Loman’s character is capable of making errors. He believes he is a very successful salesman and well liked. He also thinks that the company likes what he is doing. He once said, “I’m the New England man. I am vital in New England” (Miller pg. 32) Because of his false belief about his success Howard fired him. After he got fired charley offered him a job, but he refuses to accept, because he is too proud and jealous to work for Charley. His actions were wrong because at no time was a successful salesman. He is not a powerful character. Willy lives in his fantasies where he is the man. Who goes out to another place and comes out rich, he is love by everyone and admired by his family. In real life, he is lazy and does not live up to his own ideals. “As Aristotle explains, a tragic hero must be one of noble character and must fall from power and happiness.”(Www.ccd.rightchoice.org/lit115/poetics.html) but Willy neither has a noble characteristic nor does he fall from power because he does not have a position of power.
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.
Eisinger, Chester E. "Critical Readings: Focus on Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman: The Wrong Dreams." Critical Insights: Death of a Salesman (2010): 93-105.
Originating in Greece, tragedies were and remain a common and popular form of dramatic entertainment. To be considered an authentic tragedy, the protagonist must be one of aristocracy. This noble character begins the story as a likeable person whose destined fate is foreshadowed in dramatic irony to the reader. The reader is aware of the errors in judgment that the protagonist is inflicting on oneself. As the last to discover one’s unfortunate fate, the protagonist is devastated. The revelation is far too much to bear; therefore, the protagonist either commits suicide or inflicts pain or mutilation onto oneself. “Oedipus the King” reflects all of the essential components of a tragedy; however, “Death of a Salesman” lacks some of these defining characteristics. In “Death of a Salesman” the protagonist is not a “tragic hero” (Kennedy, Gioia 1282) like Oedipus. He lacks the nobility that is a prerequisite to being...
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Seventh Edition. X.J. Kennedy, and Dana Gioia. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1999
Willy Loman’s tragic flow leads him to purse the idea that reputation in society has more relevancies in life than knowledge and education to survive in the business. His grand error of wanting recognition drove him crazy and insane and lead to his tragic death. Willy’s hubris makes him feel extremely proud of what he has, when in reality he has no satisfaction with anything in his life. Willy Loman’s sons did not reach his expectations, as a father but he still continued to brag about Biff and Happy in front of Bernard. Willy Loman caused the reader to empathize with him because before his tragic death he did everything he could for his family. Empathy, Hubris , and Willy Loman’s tragic flow all lead him to his death that distend for him the beginning.
According to Aristotle, a tragedy must be an imitation of life in the form of a serious story that is complete in itself among many other things. Oedipus is often portrayed as the perfect example of what a tragedy should be in terms of Aristotle’s Poetics. Reason being that Oedipus seems to include correctly all of the concepts that Aristotle describes as inherent to dramatic tragedy. These elements include: the importance of plot, reversal and recognition, unity of time, the cathartic purging and evocation of pity and fear, the presence of a fatal flaw in the “hero”, and the use of law of probability.
Death of a Salesman is a classic tragedy depicting a salesman and his attempts in the American dream. The tragic aspect of the story is the pride that destroyed the opportunities that the salesman, Willy Loman had in achieving the American dream. However, because Willy did not grasp the opportunities and took his own path, he ended up as a failure as a salesman, husband, father and friend. Willy Loman is a relatable character because everyone has flaws and make that one mistake that they would regret till the day they die. In this play, all the Lomans are tragic characters who possess a fatal flaw of their own and flaws that they share with one another. These flaws eventually ended up destroying their family and turning the American dream into an American nightmare.
, he accomplished none save one of his dreams, which he would have accomplished both with and without ceding his life. Willy Loman’s death did not procure the achievements of glorifying the Loman name, nor proving himself to his son. If he had stayed a bit longer, his financial problems would have resolved to a flat line and he may have been able to continue on with his other dreams by helping along his sons to accomplish them, but this was not the case. Willy Loman did not see that future and extinguished himself for his
Every tragic play must have a tragic hero. A tragic hero does not need to be good; for example, Macbeth was a wicked person, even though he was a tragic hero. This tragic hero, Aristotle tell us, should not be absolutely evil, since the death of such a figure, being only just, would fall to move the audience; not should the figure be absolutely good, for his death would violate our concept of right and wrong, evoking not a tragic sense but a feeling of courage" (Fallon, Shakespeare 7). According to Aristotle, "The tragic hero must be an important person in the community, a king, a queen, a prince, of a famous warrior, a man or woman of substance and responsibility because that figures experiences a fall, and any fall is more moving if it comes from a great height" (6). Also a tragic hero does not have to die, but in all Shakespeare's plays the hero dies, while in other tragic plays they may alive.
The concept of tragic hero is very important in the construction of tragedy. It is the main cause of pity and fear. The tragic hero is a character between the two extremes; he is neither virtuous nor evil. At the same time, this character is better than the ordinary men or audience, he has some good qualities. Moreover, as a tragic hero, he is moving from happiness to misery by his downfall at the end. In fact, this downfall is caused by an error or a flaw in his character not by a vice or depravity. Another feature in the tragic hero is that he has good reputation and he is a man of prosperity. It can be said that Oedipus is a tragic hero because he has all the previous mentioned characteristics and the whole play is a classical application of this concept.
Aristotle. Poetics. Trans. Gerald F. Else. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1967. Dorsch, T. R., trans. and ed. Aristotle Horace Longinus: Classical Literary Criticism. New York: Penguin, 1965. Ley, Graham. The Ancient Greek Theater. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Reinhold, Meyer. Classical Drama, Greek and Roman. New York: Barrons, 1959.