arthur miller tragic hero essay

February 27, 1949 Tragedy and the Common Man By ARTHUR MILLER n this age few tragedies are written. It has often been held that the lack is due to a paucity of heroes among us, or else that modern man has had the blood drawn out of his organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the heroic attack on life cannot feed on an attitude of reserve and circumspection. For one reason or another, we are often held to be below tragedy-or tragedy above us. The inevitable conclusion is, of course, that the tragic mode is archaic, fit only for the very highly placed, the kings or the kingly, and where this admission is not made in so many words it is most often implied. I believe that the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were. On the face of it this ought to be obvious in the light of modern psychiatry, which bases its analysis upon classific formulations, such as Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations. More simply, when the question of tragedy in art is not at issue, we never hesitate to attribute to the well-placed and the exalted the very same mental processes as the lowly. And finally, if the exaltation of tragic action were truly a property of the high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable that the mass of mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms, let alone be capable of understanding it. As a general rule, to which there may be exceptions unknown to me, I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his "rightful" position in his society. Sometimes he is one who has been displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks t attain it for the first time, but the fateful wound from which the inevitable events spiral is the wound of indignity and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly. In the sense of having been initiated by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has been called his "tragic flaw," a failing that is not peculiar to grand or elevated characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The flaw, or crack in the characters, is really nothing-and need be nothing, but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are "flawless." Most of us are in that category. But there are among us today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them, and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear of insensitivity or ignorance is shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us-from this total examination of the "unchangeable" environment-comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy. More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn. And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy. Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is really but a clinging to the outward forms of tragedy. If rank or nobility of character was indispensable, then it would follow that the problems of those with rank were the particular problems of tragedy. But surely the right of one monarch to capture the domain from another no longer raises our passions, nor are our concepts of justice what they were to the mind of an Elizabethan king. The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best. Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity. The tragic right is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens-and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man debarred from such thoughts or such actions. Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic action, is obviously impossible. And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else, tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect. No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that tragedy must preach revolution. The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this sketching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world. There is a misconception of tragedy with which I have been struck in review after review, and in many conversations with writers and readers alike. It is the idea that tragedy is of necessity allied to pessimism. Even the dictionary says nothing more about the word than that it means a story with a sad or unhappy ending. This impression is so firmly fixed that I almost hesitate to claim that in truth tragedy implies more optimism in its author than does comedy, and that its final result ought to be the reinforcement of the onlooker's brightest opinions of the human animal. For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity. The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. Where pathos rules, where pathos is finally derived, a character has fought a battle he could not possibly have won. The pathetic is achieved when the protagonist is, by virtue of his witlessness, his insensitivity, or the very air he gives off, incapable of grappling with a much superior force. Pathos truly is the mode for the pessimist. But tragedy requires a nicer balance between what is possible and what is impossible. And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief-optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man. It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time-the heart and spirit of the average man. Return to the Books Home Page

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Tragedy and the Common Man

Read below our complete study guide on Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller. Our study guide covers Tragedy and the Common Man summary and detailed analysis.

Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller Summary

Tragedy and the Common Man is Miller’s analysis of a new form of theater. Miller starts the essay by pointing out the theatre of the 20th century that the number of tragedies written down is very few as compared to the comedies, which are relatively high in number. For such a difference in number, one reason which includes, according to Miller, is the scarcity of the heroes among modern society.

Secondly, the skepticism or doubtfulness of the modern man by science results in thinning of his blood. And the people don’t believe in heroes anymore. He claims that the modern man has become reserved, highly careful and attentive and one cannot have a heroic life with this attitude.

The tragedy that is written on an account heroic life have criteria or some merits while the modern man seems to be below that criteria or vice versa. Millers himself draws the conclusion for the above facts. Firstly he claims the tragic or heroic mode of life to archaic. As this is a modern world of the 20th century and the modern man no more believes in heroism. Secondly, the tragic and heroic mode is only suitable and applicable for the king and the kingly (i.e. people living like kings).

Despite his argument regarding the scarcity of heroes in the modern world; Miller believes that the common man of the modern world is a highly suitable subject for the tragedy just as the kings were. Moreover, he argues, whenever the question of tragedy comes, the people never hesitates in attributing this to the high-rank people as if the heroic mode of life is only ‘property of high-bred character alone’. Rather the ordinary people should cherish the tragedy from any other class.

Arthur Miller sets the general rules for the one to have a tragic life. Firstly, a hero is the person, according to Miller, who willingly laid down his life to for the sake of securing ‘his sense of personal dignity’. Secondly, they think that they are not given a rightful place in the society so the struggle ‘to gain a “rightful” place” in their society.

According to Miller, tragedy is motivated via ‘man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly’. In the course of attaining his rightful place in society and attaining his dignity, a hero sometimes loses his life. But for Miller, there is a window of opportunity in this. By such an act, the spectators will get obsessed with the inexactness of the society that might abolish the man unreasonably and will evaluate the cause. Hence, an ordinary man will be in a better position to understand the unfairness of society, and will try to develop the social order. Thus, the death of a hero bids optimism. For Miller, tragedy is intrinsically optimistic.

Miller argues about “the tragic flaw”, Aristotle’s hamartia, in a modern world is called as “inherit unwillingness” of a hero to continue passive to what he considers as a test to his self-esteem and “rightful” place in society. But this flaw, as mentioned, is not in the hero but is in the society. While the hero is the prey of that flawed society

Millers says that we do not have the scarcity of individuals among us who act against the social order that irritate them. The ordinary person accepts the conventions of society out of fear while the tragic hero who sees the flaw within “unchangeable society” and leads to the course of actions that shakes the basic foundations of society and from there “comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy”.

Miller further argues that the kings and kingly are often interrelated with tragedy as their characters are much bigger and have more to be defeated. But despite this, in the fiction of Job, around was an instant when an ordinary men challenge the scheme of things and stand against them to defend themselves. The willingness to lose everything for the sake of one’s dignity makes an ordinary common man to achieve a height of a king.

According to Miller, the quality in tragic plays that jiggles the spectators lies in the fear of being displaced and to be dragged away from our chosen image in the world. The common man in the modern world is most than ever scared to lose his rightful place in the society.

The tragedy is not all about the person to evaluate himself justly or to eradicate all the illness and evil from society. Similarly, the detection of some moral law is not the detection of some philosophical or abstract quantity. But the tragic mode of life requires a condition with which a person recognizes himself and is able to develop his insight. And this insight further enlightens and this enlightenment further helps him to finger out his enemy, the evils in the society.

Miller accounts the modern literature for the lack of tragedy in our environment. To him, modern literature purely represents the psychotic and sociological view of life. All it deals is with mind and make the actions impossible.

Miller says that the very delusion of tragedy is that it is directly associated with pessimism. But on the other hand, tragedy implies optimism. It is owing to the circumstances that tragedies reveal men’s persistence to the unmatchable probabilities and frantic however everlasting struggle for humankind. The fact that upsurges the tragedy is that this struggle for humankind has a possibility. According to him, probable achievements should be presented in tragedies. An equilibrium between what is conceivable and what is inconceivable, makes success appear promising and consequently stimulating downfall to a complex level. It appears that Miller’s hypothesis is correct, i.e. the nastiest of tragedies be able to occur to either a King or a common man.

Tragedy and the Common Man Literary Analysis

Tragedy and the Common Man is an argumentative essay by Arthur Miller about the new form of theater in the 20th century.

Tragedy and the Common Man Critical Appreciation:

Arthur Miller turns out to be popular after the 2nd world war not only because of his dramas but also as the theoretician of drama. Tragedy and the Common man get published in the New York Times shortly after his most famous work The Death of Salesman. In this essay, Miller supports Willy Lowman, a character in the Death of Salesman, regarding the suitability for the subject of tragedy. He presents the idea that a common man is also “noble” as kings and the idea of tragedy is no more limited to the nobility.

Miller begins the essay by figuring out that the modern man has become highly skeptical and their faith in heroes has declined. The twentieth century has encountered the two goriest world wars of the history and this makes the people disbelieve in tragedy and tragic mode of life. Consequently, the relevancy of a tragic hero to the modern world is disregarded by the modern man. Miller says that despite disbelieve in a heroism, the modern world is not having any scarcity of heroes. In fact, the modern world has plenty of heroes in the form of a common man.

Miller argues that there are no specific criteria for being a tragic hero, but a hero is a person who willingly laid down his life for the “sake of personal dignity”. Heroism has nothing to do with your social status or social background. Moreover, he argues, whenever the question of tragedy comes, the people never hesitates in attributing this to the high-rank people as if the heroic mode of life is only ‘property of high-bred character alone’. But the common man is also capable to exercise the tragedy to a greater extent just as kings.

Moreover, Miller argues that an ordinary person is perfectly suitable for the character of a tragic hero. He claims that the submissive ones, the one who agree to take their surroundings without vengeance, are “flawless.” But the common man, on the other hand perfectly fits into the character as maximum individuals do not partake this characteristic, in addition, they do not become trapped in the deteriorating of the “tragic flaw”.

For Miller, the “tragic flaw” in the hero is the reason that causes a “fall” of a tragic hero. And this flaw is not certainly a fault. The flaw exists to be nil, however, is the tragic hero’s reluctance to be passive in a challenge to his self-esteem which roots a fall of every tragic hero. The flaw in the personality of a tragic hero is the cause of his unwillingness to accept the flawed conventions of the society.

Throughout the essay, it is mentioned that the common man is a suitable subject for the tragedy and the whole essays centers around this idea. Now, the question is why the common man or the modern world is suitable for the tragedy as the tragedies are supposed to be ‘property of high-bred character alone’. Miller rejects this idea of tragedy to be characteristics of high-breed and claims that the common man’s willingness to lose everything for the sake of one’s dignity makes an ordinary common man to achieve a height of a king. Moreover, the common man is always in fear to be displaced from his rightful place in the society which makes him stand against the society and lead to actions which are best for the tragic mode of life.

According to Miller, the very delusion of tragedy is that it is directly associated with pessimism. But on the other hand, tragedy implies optimism. It is owing to the circumstances that tragedies reveal men’s persistence to the unmatchable probabilities and frantic however everlasting struggle for humankind. The fact that upsurges the tragedy is that this struggle for humankind has a possibility. According to him, probable achievements should be presented in tragedies. An equilibrium between what is conceivable and what is inconceivable, makes success appear promising and consequently stimulating downfall to a complex level. It appears that Miller’s hypothesis is correct, i.e. the nastiest of tragedies be able to occur to either a King or a common man.

Tragedy and the Common Man Themes:

Following the only theme of Miller’s essay Tragedy and the Common Man;

The Common Man is Suitable Subject for Tragedy:

In Tragedy and the Common Man, Arthur Miller argues in the world devoid of kings and kingly, the common man of this modern world fits perfectly for a tragic mode of life. The inherit unwillingness of a man to the flawed conventions of the society made him as superior as kings. The common always think that he is not given the rightful status in the society so he fights with society to gain his status. Moreover, the common man is always scared to be displaced from his position and this fear makes him fight for his rights. Those who go against the conventions of the society in the modern world are called are tragic heroes and the common man of the modern world are tragic heroes.

Tragedy and the Common Man

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Summary and Study Guide

Summary: “tragedy and the common man”.

The essay “ Tragedy and the Common Man ” was written by playwright Arthur Miller in 1949. It was published in The New York Times in the same year, just after the premier of his most famous play, Death of a Salesman . Born in New York City in 1915, Arthur Miller found success as a playwright through “social drama”: drama that depicted the struggles of ordinary American life at the time. In response to criticisms of Death of a Salesman , particularly criticism of its protagonist , Willy Loman, Miller wrote his essay “ Tragedy and the Common Man ” to argue that “common” or normal middle- or working-class people provide equally apt subjects for tragic drama as people of wealth or high rank.

This study guide refers to the original version published in 1949 in The New York Times , which can be accessed online . Citations given are to paragraph numbers in this version.

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Content Warning: The source material uses androcentric language prevalent at the time, and this is reflected in the guide. The guide makes reference to themes of suicide, murder, and incest, limited to the brief summary of Classical and Renaissance tragic plots.

Miller opens his essay with an observation that, at his time of writing, tragedies have become uncommon. He cites the reasons why their interest has declined: a popular belief that contemporary society lacks heroes, the fact that scientific skepticism has lessened the “heroic attack on life” (1), and the pervasive idea that tragedy is archaic and only fit for people of high stature, such as kings, nobility, or other important figures. Miller disagrees with these arguments and presents his thesis: The common man can be a subject of tragedy as much as people of high stature. He supports this with modern psychiatry; certain concepts/emotional situations (such as the Oedipus and Orestes complexes) derive their names from the royal figures of tragic works but apply to common people. This underpins his point that all people can experience the same emotional situations. He points out that it is commonly accepted that people of high stature can have the same mental/emotional states as the “ lowly ” and that if tragedy were only reserved for nobility, common people would not find that these stories resonate with them so much or even have the ability to understand them.

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Miller goes on to provide his definition of tragedy: Tragedy is created when a character is ready to die for his sense of personal dignity and/or to regain his rightful position in society. He lists examples of famous tragic heroes from classical Greek tragedy (Orestes and Medea) as well as Shakespearean drama (Hamlet and Macbeth). The character’s previous dignity or rightful position may be displaced by events in the play, or the character may be trying to attain a rightful sense of place for the first time but, in both cases, the tragic events are a result of the character’s “compulsion to evaluate himself justly” (5).

The tragic story is initiated by a tragic flaw . Miller argues that this flaw is not always a weakness, merely an unwillingness to be passive in the face of a challenge to one’s image, and that those who appear to be without this tragic flaw are those who have accepted their fate. Those who choose not to be passive in the face of things that “degrade” them can act as an example for a society to examine and question previously accepted aspects of that society. The fear and terror that is usually associated with tragedy comes from this deeply challenging premise. More importantly, the questioning of rules and assumptions leads to learning and social change. This learning is not exclusive to nobility or royalty but accessible to the common man: In fact, Miller points out, it is the “inner dynamic” of popular social revolutions.

Claiming that a tragic character must be of a certain rank or stature, Miller asserts, ignores tragedy’s deeper purpose. If a character’s stature truly mattered, tragedies would only deal with issues faced by nobles and royalty, and they would not have resonated with wide popular audiences so deeply, or across so many centuries. On the contrary, Miller notes that the reason tragedy appeals to so many is because it deals with a common fear—the fear of being separated from one’s chosen self-image. “Today,” Miller asserts, this fear may be stronger than ever, and felt most strongly by the common man.

Miller returns to the nature of the tragic flaw. He notes that the (self-)destruction which results from the hero’s attempt to “evaluate himself justly” highlights a flaw in the society the character lives in, not necessarily in the character himself. Tragedy, then, serves to critique the aspects of society that “suppress” man.

Miller argues that the psychiatric or sociological view of life becoming pervasive in the mid-20th century is partly to blame for the lack of tragedy as a continued art form. This introspective focus renders heroic action futile or impossible by presenting “our miseries, our indignities” (12) as stemming from the mind itself, removing the societal aspect. The opposite approach, which places all the blame on society, means that the tragic hero must be faultless, lacking “validity” as a character. A tragedy must fall between these two extremes to be effective.

Therefore, tragedy requires the author to be willing to question everything; all social structures, institutions, and customs should be examined. This need not foment social unrest but is an inner struggle and is expressive of the universal human condition.

Miller returns to what he considers the most common misconception about tragedy: that because it has an unhappy ending, it must be pessimistic. Miller argues that the opposite is true: Tragedy is optimistic because it reinforces man’s “indestructible will,” his tenacity in the face of opposing forces. Tragedy, then, must include the possibility of victory; if a hero is faced with a battle he cannot possibly win, he is not a tragic hero but a “pathetic” hero. Tragedy requires a balance between the possible and impossible, and thus reinforces the idea of mankind’s strength of spirit. This optimism explains the lasting appeal of the tragic form.

Miller concludes his essay by stating that the tradition must be revived and updated to reflect the “average man” of the modern era.

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Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero: Character Analysis Essay

Is Willy Loman a tragic hero? Why did he kill himself? Find here the answers! This essay focuses on the essay Tragedy and the Common Man in which Artur Miller gave the reasons why Willy Loman should be considered a pathetically tragic character.

Introduction

Willy Loman Is a Tragic Hero

Works Cited

A tragic hero is person who usually appears in romantic literature. To make it clear, it should be mentioned that the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is created in Romanticism genre as the main character has visions which divide his life into two parts, real where Willy Loman and his sons are unable to achieve success in sales, and unreal, where everything is great. Willy Loman’s family got used that he talks to himself and do not react to this anymore.

There is a statement that Willy Loman is a tragic hero according to Arthur Miller’s definition of what a tragic hero is in his famous essay Tragedy and the Common Man . To make the situation clear, we are going to discuss the main features which confirm the statement and make Willy a tragic hero.

Is Willy Loman a Tragic Hero?

The essay Tragedy and the Common Man written by Arthur Miller presents the main characteristics of a tragic hero in romantic literature. One of the main features is the referencing of a hero to a common person. Miller states that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” (Miller ‘Tragedy’ 1461).

Willy Loman is a simple person who used to work as a salesman, but due to age and health problems he wants to settle less active life. This is the first argument which proves that Willy Loman is a tragic hero.

Arthur Miller also believes that a hero becomes tragic when he is “ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity” (Miller ‘Tragedy’ 1462).

This is exactly what has happened with Willy when he got to know that all he was trying to reach (to make his children be successful by means of making them good salespeople) was ruined, he did not manage to achieve this goal. Thus, he understands that he is not a person, that he has not fulfilled his life goal. “Nothing is planted. I do not have a thing in the ground” (Miller ‘Death of a Salesman’ 122).

Saying these words, Willy means that all his life is spent in vain and there are no results of it. Willy understands that salesman is not the best profession and his desire to sacrifice his life for the benefit of his family is nothing but the desire to save his dignity and do not declare in public that all he has been planning was ruined. This is the second argument in support of the idea that Willy Loman is a tragic hero.

Arthur Miller is sure that one of the main characteristics of a tragic hero in the play is the understanding of the difference between real and unreal worlds. He says, “The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world” (Miller ‘Tragedy’ 1463).

The main character is a tragic hero as he has been torn away from the world of illusion where his sons are successful salespeople and has been put in the reality where they have failed to become wealthy and have nothing to do.

He realizes that he was a bad father, except for the imaginary world where he was the best. The tragedy of the hero is characterized by the fact that he was torn from his imaginary world and put in cruel reality where his dreams were not realized. This is the third argument in support of the fact that Willy was a tragic hero.

Reading an essay Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller, it is possible to state that concluding statement about a tragic hero is exactly what can be seen in Willy Loman, a character of his play Death of a Salesman .

The author writes that the main essence of a tragic hero is “intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity” (Miller ‘Tragedy’ 1464). This is the main characteristic feature which shows Willy as a tragedy character, as searching for something in his life, he has failed to become a personality.

To sum it up, it should be mentioned that the ideas Arthur Miller presents in his essay Tragedy and the Common Man are perfectly reflected in his play Death of a Salesman . The main character of the play, Willy Loman, is a tragic hero as it is stated in the author’s essay.

All the reasons the author provides in the essay are confirmed by the character’s description in the play. It seems that the author tried to reflect all this ideas about a tragic hero in Willy Loman to show the reader that such characters exist.

Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman . New York, NY: Penguin, 1998. Print.

Miller, Arthur. “Tragedy and the Common Man .” Discovering Literature . Eds. Hans P. Guth and Gabriele L. Rico. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993. 1461-1464. Print.

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IvyPanda. (2023, October 28). Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero: Character Analysis Essay. https://ivypanda.com/essays/willy-loman-is-a-tragic-hero-according-to-arthur-millers-essay-tragedy-and-the-common-man/

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IvyPanda . 2023. "Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero: Character Analysis Essay." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/willy-loman-is-a-tragic-hero-according-to-arthur-millers-essay-tragedy-and-the-common-man/.

1. IvyPanda . "Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero: Character Analysis Essay." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/willy-loman-is-a-tragic-hero-according-to-arthur-millers-essay-tragedy-and-the-common-man/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Willy Loman as a Tragic Hero: Character Analysis Essay." October 28, 2023. https://ivypanda.com/essays/willy-loman-is-a-tragic-hero-according-to-arthur-millers-essay-tragedy-and-the-common-man/.

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A Summary and Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Death of a Salesman is that rare thing: a modern play that is both a classic, and a tragedy. Many of the great plays of the twentieth century are comedies, social problem plays, or a combination of the two. Few are tragedies centred on one character who, in a sense, recalls the theatrical tradition that gave us Oedipus, King Lear, and Hamlet.

But how did Miller come to write a modern tragedy? What is Death of a Salesman about, and how should we analyse it? Before we come to these questions, it might be worth briefly recapping the plot of what is, in fact, a fairly simple story.

Death of a Salesman : summary

The salesman of the title is Willy Loman, a travelling salesman who is in his early sixties. He works on commission, so if he doesn’t make a sale, he doesn’t get paid. His job involves driving thousands of miles around the United States every year, trying to sell enough to put food on his family’s table. He wants to get a desk job so he doesn’t have to travel around any more: at 62 years of age, he is tired and worn out.

He is married to Linda. Their son, Biff, is in his thirties and usually unemployed, drifting from one temporary job to another, much to Willy’s displeasure. Willy’s younger son, Happy, has a steady job along and his own home, and is therefore a success by Willy’s standards.

However, Happy, despite his name, isn’t happy with the life he has, and would quite like to give up his job and go and work on a ranch out West. Willy, meanwhile, is similarly dreaming, but in his case of the past, rather than the future: he thinks back to when Biff and Happy were small children and Willy was a success as a salesman.

The Lomans’ neighbour, Charley, offers Willy a job to help make ends meet, but Willy starts to reminisce about his recently deceased brother, Uncle Ben, who was an adventurer (and young Willy’s hero). Linda tells her sons to pay their father some respect, even though he isn’t himself a ‘great man’.

It emerges that Willy has been claiming to work as a salesman but has lately been borrowing money as he can’t actually find work. His plan is to take his own life so his family will receive life insurance money and he will be able, with his death, to do what he cannot do for them while alive: provide for them. Biff agrees reluctantly to go back to his former boss and ask for a job so he can contribute to the family housekeeping.

Meanwhile, Willy asks his boss, Howard, for his desk job and an advance on his next pay packet, but Howard sacks Willy. Willy then goes to Charley and asks for a loan. That night, at dinner, Willy and Biff argue (Biff failed to get his own former job back when his old boss didn’t even recognise him), and it turns out that Biff once walked in on his father with another woman.

Willy goes home, plants some seeds, and then – hearing his brother Ben calling for him to join him – he drives off and kills himself. At his funeral, only the family are present, despite Willy’s prediction that his funeral would be a big affair.

Death of a Salesman : analysis

Miller’s family had been relatively prosperous during the playwright’s childhood, but during the Great Depression of the 1930s, as with many other families, their economic situation became very precarious. This experience had a profound impact on Miller’s political standpoint, and this can be seen in much of his work for the theatre.

Death of a Salesman represented a decisive change of direction for the young playwright. His previous success as a playwright, All My Sons , was a social drama heavily influenced by Henrik Ibsen, but with his next play, Miller wished to attempt something new. The mixture of hard-hitting social realism and dreamlike sequences make Death of a Salesman an innovative and bold break with previous theatre, both by Miller and more widely.

In his essay ‘ Tragedy and the Common Man ’ (1949), which Miller wrote to justify his artistic decision to make an ordinary American man the subject of a theatrical tragedy, Miller argued that the modern world has grown increasingly sceptical, and is less inclined to believe in the idea of heroes.

As a result, they don’t see how tragedy, with its tragic hero, can be relevant to the modern world. Miller argues, on the contrary, that the world is full of heroes. A hero is anybody who is willing to lay down his life in order to secure his ‘sense of personal dignity’. It doesn’t matter what your social status or background is.

Death of a Salesman is an example of this ethos: Loman, who cheated on his wife and lied to his family about his lack of work and his reliance on friends who lent him money, makes his last gesture a tragic but selfless act, which will ensure his family have money to survive when he is gone.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that Miller is somehow endorsing the hero’s final and decisive act. The emphasis should always be on the word ‘tragedy’: Loman’s death is a tragedy brought about partly by his own actions, but also by the desperate straits that he is plunged into through the harsh and unforgiving world of sales, where once he is unable to earn money, he needs some other means of acquiring it so he can put food on the table for his family.

But contrary to what we might expect, there is something positive and even affirmative about tragedy, as Arthur Miller views the art form.

For Miller, in ‘Tragedy and the Common Man’, theatrical tragedy is driven by ‘Man’s total compunction to evaluate himself justly’. In the process of doing this, and attaining his dignity, the tragic hero often loses his life, but there is something affirmative about the events leading up to this final act, because the audience will be driven to evaluate what is wrong with society that it could destroy a man – a man willing to take a moral stand and evaluate himself justly – in the way that it has.

Does Willy Loman deserve to be pushed to take his own life just so his family can pay the bills? No, so there must be something within society that is at fault. Capitalism’s dog-eat-dog attitude is at least partly responsible, since it leads weary and worn-out men like Willy to dream of paying off their mortgage and having enough money, while simultaneously making the achievement of that task as difficult as possible. When a younger and better salesman comes along, men like Willy are almost always doomed.

But by placing this in front of the audience and dramatising it for them, Miller invites his audience to question the wrongs within modern American society. Thus people will gain a greater understanding of what is wrong with society, and will be able to improve it. The hero’s death is individually tragic but collectively offers society hope.

So it may be counter-intuitive to describe a tragedy like Death of a Salesman as ‘optimistic’, but in a sense, this is exactly what it is. Miller takes the classical idea of the tragic flaw, what Aristotle had called the hamartia , and updates this for a modern audience, too: the hero’s tragic flaw is redefined as the hero’s inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity and rightful status in society.

There is something noble in his flaw, even though it will lead to his own destruction. So really, the flaw is not within the individual or hero as much as in society itself.

A key context for Death of a Salesman , like many great works of American literature from the early to mid-twentieth century, is the American Dream: that notion that the United States is a land of opportunity where anyone can make a success of their life and wind up stinking rich. Miller’s weaving of dream sequences in amongst the sordid and unsatisfactory reality of the Lomans’ lives deftly contrasts the American dream with the American reality.

1 thought on “A Summary and Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman”

This is a very insightful and convincing appreciation. What it misses is any idea that Miller’s being Jewish may have had a hand in helping him to see why the American dream and its popularity-cult needed to be criticized. The word “cult” in “populairty-cult” says it all, because “The Death of a Saleman” is at its core a play about idolatry, the Ol,d Testament theme against which its prophets railed the most.

Willy is portrayed as an idol-worshipper, whereas his friend, Charely, and Charley’s son, Bernard, are both seen as devotees of the “true” God, in whose religion the human being is always endowed with dignity and always seen as an end in himself, never as a means to some other end. The play, in fact, asks a very Jewish question. If the true God and the false god both require sacrifice, how can you ever know which is which? And its tragedy supplies us with Miller’s answer: those who worship idols discover in the end that THEY are the sacrifice!

Miller, like Philip Roth later on, was a Jewish-American inheritor of the Old Testament’s prophetic tradition, a tradition in which Amos, Isaiah, Jeremia en Ezekiel continually used their verbal art to expose Israel’s stinking moral corruption, foreseeing nothing but doom if it continued in irs idolatrous ways. Change ancient Israel to America, change the average Israelite of that time to Willy Loman now: both wind up destroying themsevles for the very same reason: with all the good will in they world, they have no self-knowledge and spend their whole lives worshipping a false god, deluded in the belief that they are worshipping the true one.

Their mistake in both cases only becomes apparent when it is time to offer the sacrifice, but by then, of course, it is always too late!

Tragedy And The Common Man

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller is often considered a classic American tragedy. The playwright himself has said that the focus of the work is not on the death of Willy Loman, but on the effect his death has on his family. In this way, Death of a Salesman can be seen as exploring the common man’s struggle against the forces of society and fate.

Miller himself was born into a working-class family, and his plays often explore the hopes and struggles of average people caught up in larger events. Many critics see Death of a Salesman as a comment on the American Dream, and on the ways in which society can crush individual dreams. The play has also been read as a metaphor for the Cold War, with Willy Loman’s individual failure reflecting the larger failure of America to live up to its ideals.

Death of a Salesman remains one of Arthur Miller’s most popular and influential works. It has been adapted for film and television several times, and is still regularly performed on stage. The play continues to resonate with audiences today, as it speaks to universal themes of family, success, and the human condition.

“If the exaltation of tragic action was truly a quality of high-bred characters alone, it is difficult to imagine that the general public would prefer tragedy to all other types.” (Dwyer). It strains credibility that only high-ranking individuals enjoy tragedy. According to his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man,” Arthur Miller develops his own theory of a tragedy and the tragic hero. This pattern supports the notion that both low-class and high-ranking characters can be victims of drama.

Death of a Salesman follows this pattern and is therefore, a tragedy. The high-bred character that Miller speaks of is usually someone who comes from a privileged background. They have all the advantages in life and typically have an easy time making things happen for themselves.

This is not the case for common men. Death of a Salesman’s Willy Loman is a prime example of someone who does not have the benefits that come with privilege. He constantly struggles to make ends meet and support his family. Even though he works hard, it’s never enough. His entire life is one big struggle.

In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman makes some poor choices that eventually lead to his downfall. He has an affair, he steals from his employer, and he lies to his family. These choices are all indicative of a man who is desperate and does not have much to lose. In the end, Willy takes his own life. This is the final act of a tragic hero.

While Death of a Salesman may not be considered a traditional tragedy, it does follow Arthur Miller’s pattern for a tragedy of the common man. Willy Loman is someone who is easy to relate to. He’s not perfect, he makes mistakes, and he pays the ultimate price for those mistakes. His story is one that will resonate with many readers.

Miller redefines tragedy as something that happens more frequently than what is depicted in Shakespeare and Euripides’ plays, thus defining Death of a Salesman as a tragedy. Willy Loman is a tragic hero. His greatest fear is that people will see him as a decent, likable guy who doesn’t make errors. He wishes to believe that he is well-liked and decent, without making any mistakes. The reality is that he makes mistakes and is human like everyone else.

Loman’s fatal flaw is his blindness to the truth. He can only see what he wants to and this flaw leads to his downfall. Miller demonstrates that everyone can be a tragic hero due to their own unique set of circumstances.

Death of a Salesman is a play that is relevant to any time period because it deals with universal truths about human nature. Death of a Salesman addresses the common man and his struggles. It is a tragedy in the classical sense in that Loman has a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall, but it is also relevant to the modern day because it speaks to the common man.

The failure to acknowledge my existence is what makes Willy a tragic hero. The tragedy in this story resides in the fact that Willy does not realize his mistake and therefore continues to repeat it. It’s like he doesn’t think anything he’s doing is wrong. This man doesn’t deserve our time or energy; I’m glad no one listens to him! His “underlying fear of being dispossessed” is the actual tragedy.

The death of a salesman is not just about the death of one man, but about the American dream and what it has become. The “disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in the world” is something that we can all relate to, whether or not we are salesmen. In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller gives us a glimpse of the darker side of the American dream, and in doing so reveals Willy Loman to be the tragic figure he is.

However, he is a guy who strives to do things correctly. The fact is that Willy has numerous incidents that haunt him. Throughout the play, Willy transitions in and out of a dream. He is constantly haunted by memories of his late brother Ben, who struck it rich in the jungle. He also has flashbacks of events that afflict him in other areas. For example, when Biff catches Willy cheating on Linda with another woman (Margot Kidder). This haunts Willy because he believes it is one of the reasons why Biff does not love him.

Willy is always trying to make up for his past sins. The play is Willy’s journey to find a way to come to terms with these memories and ghosts. He wants to find a way to peace so that he can die in peace. Death of a Salesman is both a personal tragedy and a tragedy of the common man.

Miller expertly captures the struggles of the average person trying to make it in America. Willy’s story is one that is still relevant today. Many people are still struggling to find their place in the world and make sense of their lives. Death of a Salesman is a timeless masterpiece because it speaks to this struggle.

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Home › Drama Criticism › Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on July 30, 2020 • ( 0 )

Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman is, perhaps, to this time, the most mature example of a myth of Contemporary life. The chief value of this drama is its attempt to reveal those ultimate meanings which are resident in modern experience. Perhaps the most significant comment on this play is not its literary achievement, as such, but is, rather, the impact which it has had on spectators, both in America and abroad. The influence of this drama, first performed in 1949, continues to grow in World Theatre. For it articulates, in language which can be appreciated by popular audiences, certain new dimensions of the human dilemma.

—Esther Merle Jackson, “ Death of a Salesman : Tragic Myth in the Modern Theatre”

It can be argued that the Great American Novel—that always elusive imaginative summation of the American experience—became the Great American Drama in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman . Along with Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night , Miller’s masterpiece forms the defining myth of the American family and the American dream. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is the play’s only rival in American literature in expressing the tragic side of the American myth of success and the ill-fated American dreamers. A landmark and cornerstone 20th-century drama, Death of a Salesman is crucial in the history of American theater in presenting on stage an archetypal family drama that is simultaneously intimate and representative, social and psychological, realistic and expressionistic. Critic Lois Gordon has called it “the major American drama of the 1940s” that “remains unequalled in its brilliant and original fusion of realistic and poetic techniques, its richness of visual and verbal texture, and its wide range of emotional impact.” Miller’s play, perhaps more than any other, established American drama as the decisive arena for addressing the key questions of American identity and social and moral values, while pioneering methods of expression that liberated American theater. The drama about the life and death of salesman Willy Loman is both thoroughly local in capturing a particular time and place and universal, one of the most popular and adapted American plays worldwide. Willy Loman has become the contemporary Everyman, prompting widespread identification and sympathy. By centering his tragedy on a lower middle-class protagonist—insisting, as he argued in “Tragedy and the Common Man,” that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were”—Miller completed the democratization of drama that had begun in the 19th century while setting the terms for a key debate over dramatic genres that has persisted since Death of a Salesman opened in 1949.

Miller’s subjects, themes, and dramatic mission reflect his life experiences, informed by the Great Depression, which he regarded as a “moral catastrophe,” rivaled, in his view, only by the Civil War in its profound impact on American life. Miller was born in 1915, in New York City. His father, who had emigrated from Austria at the age of six, was a successful coat manufacturer, prosperous enough to afford a chauffeur and a large apartment over-looking Central Park. For Miller’s family, an embodiment of the American dream that hard work and drive are rewarded, the stock market crash of 1929 changed everything. The business was lost, and the family was forced to move to considerably reduced circumstances in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn in a small frame house that served as the model for the Lomans’ residence. Miller’s father never fully recovered from his business failure, and his mother was often depressed and embittered by the family’s poverty, though both continued to live in hope of an economic recovery to come. For Miller the depression exposed the hollowness and fragility of the American dream of material success and the social injustice inherent in an economic system that created so many blameless casualties. The paradoxes of American success—its stimulation of both dreams and guilt when lost or unrealized, as well as the conflict it created between self-interest and social responsibility—would become dominant themes in Miller’s work. As a high school student Miller was more interested in sports than studies. “Until the age of seventeen I can safely say that I never read a book weightier than Tom Swift , and Rover Boys, ” Miller recalled, “and only verged on literature with some of Dickens. . . . I passed through the public school system unscathed.” After graduating from high school in 1932 Miller went to work in an auto parts warehouse in Manhattan. It was during his subway commute to and from his job that Miller began reading, discovering both the power of serious literature to change the way one sees the world and his vocation: “A book that changed my life was The Brothers Karamazov which I picked up, I don’t know how or why, and all at once believed I was born to be a writer.”

In 1934 Miller was accepted as a journalism student at the University of Michigan. There he found a campus engaged by the social issues of the day: “The place was full of speeches, meetings and leaflets. It was jumping with Issues. . . . It was, in short, the testing ground for all my prejudices, my beliefs and my ignorance, and it helped to lay out the boundaries of my life.” At Michigan Miller wrote his first play, despite having seen only two plays years before, to compete for prize money he needed for tuition. Failing in his first attempt he would eventually twice win the Avery Hopwood Award. Winning “made me confident I could go ahead from there. It left me with the belief that the ability to write plays is born into one, and that it is a kind of sport of the mind.” Miller became convinced that “with the exception of a doctor saving a life, writing a worthy play was the most important thing a human could do.” He would embrace the role of the playwright as social conscience and reformer who could help change America, by, as he put it “grabbing people and shaking them by the back of the neck.” Two years after graduating in 1938, having moved back to Brooklyn and married his college sweetheart, Miller had completed six plays, all but one of them rejected by producers. The Man Who Had All the Luck, a play examining the ambiguities of success and the money ethic, managed a run of only four performances on Broadway in 1944. Miller went to work at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, tried his hand at radio scripts, and attempted one more play. “I laid myself a wager,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I would hold back this play until I was as sure as I could be that every page was integral to the whole and would work; then, if my judgment of it proved wrong, I would leave the theater behind and write in other forms.” The play was All My Sons, about a successful manufacturer who sells defective aircraft parts and is made to face the consequences of his crime and his responsibilities. It is Miller’s version of a Henrik Ibsen problem play, linking a family drama to wider social issues. Named one of the top-10 plays of 1947, All My Sons won the Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award over Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. The play’s success allowed Miller to buy property in rural Connecticut where he built a small studio and began work on Death of a Salesman .

This play, subtitled “Certain Private Conversations in Two Acts and a Requiem,” about the last 24 hours of an aging and failing traveling salesman misguided by the American dream, began, as the playwright recounts in his introduction to his Collected Plays , with an initial image

of an enormous face the height of the proscenium arch which would appear and then open up, and we would see the inside of a man’s head. In fact, The Inside of His Head was the first title. . . . The image was in direct opposition to the method of All My Sons —a method one might call linear or eventual in that one fact or incident creates the necessity for the next. The Salesman image was from the beginning absorbed with the concept that nothing in life comes “next” but that everything exists together and at the same time within us; that there is no past to be “brought forward” in a human being, but that he is his past at every moment. . . . I wished to create a form which, in itself as a form, would literally be the process of Willy Loman’s way of mind.

The play took shape by staging the past in the present, not through flashbacks of Willy’s life but by what the playwright called “mobile concurrency of past and present.” Miller recalled beginning

with only one firm piece of knowledge and this was that Loman was to destroy himself. How it would wander before it got to that point I did not know and resolved not to care. I was convinced only that if I could make him remember enough he would kill himself, and the structure of the play was determined by what was needed to draw up his memories like a mass of tangled roots without ends or beginning.

At once realistic in its documentation of American family life and expressionistic in its embodiment of consciousness on stage, Death of a Salesman opens with the 63-year-old Willy Loman’s return to his Brooklyn home, revealing to his worried wife, Linda, that he kept losing control of his car on a selling trip to Boston. Increasingly at the mercy of his memories Willy, in Miller’s analysis, “is literally at that terrible moment when the voice of the past is no longer distant but quite as loud as the voice of the present.” Reflecting its protagonist, “The way of telling the tale . . . is as mad as Willy and as abrupt and as suddenly lyrical.” The family’s present—Willy’s increasing mental instability, his failure to earn the commissions he needs to survive, and his disappointment that his sons, Biff and Happy, have failed to live up to expectations—intersects with scenes from the past in which both their dreams and the basis for their disillusionment are exposed. In the present Biff, the onetime star high school athlete with seeming unlimited prospects in his doting father’s estimation, is 34, having returned home from another failed job out west and harboring an unidentified resentment of his father. As Biff confesses, “everytime I come back here I know that all I’ve done is to waste my life.” His brother, Happy, is a deceitful womanizer trapped in a dead-end job who confesses that despite having his own apartment, “a car, and plenty of women . . . still, goddammit, I’m lonely.” The present frustrations of father and sons collide with Willy’s memory when all was youthful promise and family harmony. In a scene in which Biff with the prospect of a college scholarship seems on the brink of attaining all Willy has expected of him, both boys hang on their father’s every word as he exults in his triumphs as a successful salesman:

America is full of beautiful towns and fine, upstanding people. And they know me, boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ’cause one thing, boys: I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own.

Triumphantly, Willy passes on his secret of success: “Be liked and you will never want.” His advice exposes the fatal fl aw in his life view that defines success by exterior rather than interior values, by appearance and possessions rather than core morals. Even in his confident memory, however, evidence of the undermining of his self-confidence and aspirations occurs as Biff plays with a football he has stolen and father and son ignore the warning of the grind Bernard (who “is liked, but he’s not well liked”) that Biff risks graduating by not studying. Willy’s popularity and prowess as a salesman are undermined by Linda’s calculation of her husband’s declining commissions, prompting Willy to confess that “people don’t seem to take to me.” Invading Willy’s memory is the realization that he is far from the respected and resourceful salesman he has boasted being to his sons as he struggles to meet the payments on the modern appliances that equip the American dream of success. Moreover, to boost his sagging spirits on the road he has been unfaithful to his loving and supportive wife. To protect himself from these hurtful memories Willy is plunged back into the present for a card game with Bernard’s father, Charley. Again the past intrudes in the form of a memory of a rare visit by Willy’s older brother, Ben, who has become rich and whose secrets for success elude Willy. Back in the present Willy is hopeful at Biff’s plan to go see an old employer, Bill Oliver, for the money to start up a Loman Brothers sporting goods line. The act ends with Willy’s memory of Biff’s greatest moment—the high school football championship:

Like a young god. Hercules—something like that. And the sun, the sun all around him. Remember how he waved to me? Right up from the field, with the representatives of three colleges standing by? And the buyers I brought, and the cheers when he came out—Loman, Loman, Loman! God Almighty, he’ll be great yet. A star like that, magnificent, can never really fade away!

The second act shatters all prospects, revealing the full truth that Willy has long evaded about himself and his family in a series of crushing blows. Expecting to trade on his 34 years of loyal service to his employer for a nontraveling, salaried position in New York, Willy is forced to beg for a smaller and smaller salary before he is fired outright, prompting one of the great lines of the play: “You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away—a man is not a piece of fruit.” Rejecting out of pride a job offer from Charley, Willy meets his son for dinner where Biff reveals that his get-rich scheme has collapsed. Bill Oliver did not remember who he was, kept him waiting for hours, and resentfully Biff has stolen his fountain pen from his desk. Biff now insists that Willy face the truth—that Biff was only a shipping clerk and that Oliver owes him nothing—but Willy refuses to listen, with his need to believe in his son and the future forcing Biff to manufacture a happier version of his meeting and its outcome. Biff’s anger and resentment over the old family lies about his prospects, however, cause Willy to relive the impetus of Biff’s loss of faith in him in one of the tour de force scenes in modern drama. Biff and Happy’s attempt to pick up two women at the restaurant interconnects with Willy’s memory of Biff’s arrival at Willy’s Boston hotel unannounced. There he discovers a partially dressed woman in his father’s room. Having failed his math class and jeopardized his scholarship, Biff has come to his father for help. Willy’s betrayal of Linda, however, exposes the hollowness of Willy’s moral authority and the disjunction between the dreams Willy sells and its reality:

Willy: She’s nothing to me, Biff. I was lonely, I was terribly lonely.

Biff: You—you gave her Mama’s stockings!

Willy: I gave you an order!

Biff: Don’t touch me, you—liar!

Willy: Apologize for that!

Biff: You fake! You phony little fake! You fake!

Willy’s guilt over the collapse of his son’s belief in him leads him to a final redemptive dream. Returning home, symbolically outside planting seeds, he discusses with Ben his scheme to kill himself for the insurance money as a legacy to his family and a final proof of his worth as a provider of his sons’ success. Before realizing this dream Willy must endure a final assault of truth from Biff who confesses to being nothing more than a thief and a bum, incapable of holding down a job—someone who is, like Willy, a “dime a dozen,” no better than any other hopeless striver: “I am not a leader of men, Willy, and neither are you. You were never anything but a hard-working drummer who landed in the ash can like all the rest of them!” Biff’s fury explodes into a tearful embrace of his father. After Biff departs upstairs the significance of his words and actions are both realized and lost by the chronic dreamer:

Willy, after a long pause, astonished, elevated Isn’t that—isn’t that remarkable? Biff—he likes me!

Linda: He loves you, Willy!

Happy ,deeply moved Always did, Pop.

Willy: Oh. Biff! Staring wildly: He cried! Cried to me. He is choking with his love, and now cries out his promise: That boy—that boy is going to be magnificent!

Analysis of Arthur Miller’s Plays

Doggedly holding onto the dream of his son’s prospects, sustained by his son’s love, Willy finally sets out in his car to carry out his plan, while the scene shifts to his funeral in which Linda tries to understand her husband’s death, and Charley provides the eulogy:

Nobody dast blame this man. You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back—that’s an earthquake. And then you get a couple of spots on your hat, and you’re finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory.

Linda delivers the final, heartbreaking lines over her husband’s grave: “Willy. I made the last payment on the house today. Today, dear. And there’ll be nobody home. We’re free and clear. We’re free. We’re free . . . We’re free. . . .”

The power and persistence of Death of a Salesman derives from its remarkably intimate view of the dynamic of a family driven by their collective dreams. Critical debate over whether Willy lacks the stature or self-knowledge to qualify as a tragic hero seems beside the point in performance. Few other modern dramas have so powerfully elicited pity and terror in their audiences. Whether Willy is a tragic hero or Death of a Salesman is a modern tragedy in any Aristotelian sense, he and his story have become core American myths. Few critics worry over whether Jay Gatsby is a tragic hero, but Gatsby shares with Willy Loman the essential American capacity to dream and to be destroyed by what he dreams. The concluding lines of The Great Gatsby equally serve as a requiem for both men:

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eludes us then, but that’s no matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther . . . And one fine morning—

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Death of a Salesman as a modern tragedy | Arthur Miller |

Arthur Miller’s famous drama “Death of a Salesman” is regarded as one of the most impressive pieces of work of art in the 20th century. It examines the psychological turmoil of the hero named Willy, and the competitive and commercialized society’s influence on his life. “Death of a Salesman” is called modern tragedy because it does not obey the concept of Greek tragedy or the traditional concept of tragedy.

According to the traditional concept of tragedy, the protagonist should be noble and a character of high status or rank. This dignity of the protagonist stimulates our adoration and sympathy for him in spite of his tragic flaw. But Miller’s idea of the tragedy is completely different. Miller dismisses the traditional concept of tragedy and remarks that not only kings but middle-class salesmen like Willy Loman can also be suitable for a tragedy . According to Miller, as much as pity and fear are aroused by the fall of a king, that much pity and fear can be caused by a common man’s struggle against society too.

Table of Contents

American Dream:

The reason for Willy Loman’s tragedy is his own society in which he lives. The cause of his suffering is also the competitive and materialistic nature of American society. In short, Willy Loman becomes a target of the American Dream . Willy thinks that wealth and worldly success can be achieved by means of personal links, contacts, and an attractive personality. Surely Willy is a failed and ineffective salesman, owing to the fact that he misinterprets the underlying idea of the American dream. Willy has completely ignored hard work which actually equals material wealth and success. If Willy had given importance to hard work, he would have taken the job that Charlie had offered and could have attained success and material wealth rather than running after his foolish perception of success and happiness.

The tragedy of a Common man:

In “Death of a Salesman” Miller conveys how the common man is ruined by the mistaken ideas of society. Willy’s interaction with Howard reveals the inhumanity of the commercialized American society. When Willy asks for a post in New York Howard rejects his request and continues playing his tape recorder without paying much attention to Willy. Willy screams when he is rejected: “You can’t eat orange and throw peel away. Man is not a piece of fruit”. This suggests that in modern tragedy, it is the common man who endures and suffers while in Aristotle’s concept of tragedy kings and queens suffer.

Read More: American Dream in English Literature

Multiple plots and more than one central character in Modern Tragedy:

Greek tragedies have one integrated and unified plot and a central character around which the entire tragedy revolved. But Modern tragedies have manifold plots and more than one principal character. In “Death of a Salesman” , we can call Willy Loman and his son Biff Loman both protagonists because both of them are running after material success and committing the same mistakes. At the same time, we can also call them one another’s antagonists because Willy’s anticipation of Biff impedes Biff from achieving his goal and Biff’s knowledge of his father’s extra-marital affairs impedes Willy to gain his self-respect or confidence. Furthermore, the drama operates more conventionally in the interplay of subplot and plot. Biff’s struggle to discover his own success outside the conventional American Dream aids the principal plot of Willy struggling to find the purpose of his existence. So Miller has rejected the Aristotelian concept of tragedy by presenting numerous plots and more than one principal character.

Aristotle’s Poetics and Death of a Salesman:

In his groundbreaking work in the field of tragedy “Poetics” Aristotle states that the plot of a tragedy should at least have a “change of fortune” . Here Fortune denotes fate. If we see in Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” , then Willy Loman’s fortune does not change throughout the play. From the beginning to the end of the play Willy is poor and dejected. According to Aristotle, a tragic should be a noble and admired individual. “Death of a Salesman” is a modern tragedy in that the hero is neither a noble-person nor an admired individual; Willy is a poor, working class salesman. Nevertheless he is a tragic character because his tragic flaw – his false ideals of what constitutes a prosperous life – put Willy down. He thinks that being admired and popular is the ultimate recipe of happiness. Willy has totally sidelined hard work which actually equals material success. This is Willy’s hamartia, causing the miserable situations which arises in the play and bringing about his successful suicide attempt. Because Willy has been self-centered and preoccupied with his own false ideals, this “suicide” would be seen as brave and heroic in his own view. This makes Willy’s story without a doubt tragic.

Read More: Aristotle’s theory of imitation and catharsis

Use of flashbacks, flash-forwards, and dreams in Modern tragedy:

Unlike classical tragedies, the main plot in modern tragedies has a time span of many weeks, months, or years, and dramatists present this long time with components such as memories, flashbacks, dreams, and flash-forwards. Miller initially named the drama “The Inside of His Head” , which demonstrates that he wanted to convey to the audience what transpires in a person’s mind when his desires are not fulfilled and when he dwells in a world grounded on false ideas. Miller’s technique of going back in past and going forward in the future between the imaginary and real-life permits the audience and reader to experience how the misinterpretation of the American dream has brought about the present condition. This also reveals manifold sides of all the characters that would not have been disclosed if only the contemporary events or circumstances had been depicted.

Conclusion:

So Miller through his drama “ Death of a Salesman” has criticized commercialized and competitive American society. In this crazy competition, everyone is busy leaving each other behind. Miller asserts that the competitive society has produced only a wearisome and anxious disruption for the common man. Willy’s tragedy perhaps best realized, in this statement of Linda: “A terrible thing is happening to him. so attention must be paid”. (Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.)

Short note on elegy
Justify the title Pride and Prejudice
The use of irony in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice
Women Characters in Pride and Prejudice
The Monk in “The Canterbury Tales”

John Proctor As A Tragic Hero In Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

Category: History , Literature
Topic: John Proctor , The Crucible , Tragic Hero

Pages: 1 (632 words)

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