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As Northrop Frye states, tragic heroes are “the inevitable conductors of the power about them...instruments as well as victims.” Tragic heroes experience great pain and suffering themselves, through which the audience members can contemplate their own faults. More than that, tragic heroes can bring about the destruction of others including those they love. Examples from classical literature like Oedipus and Hamlet provide obvious examples of how tragic heroes cause the death or destruction of their loved ones. Willy Loman, the classic though common tragic hero, also becomes a conduit of despair in Death of a Salesman.
Arthur Miller’s play Death of a Salesman epitomizes the tragedy of the common man. In Miller’s essay “Tragedy and the Common Man,” he writes that classic tragic flaws are “not peculiar to grand or elevated characters,” (1). A common man like Willy Loman can be every bit as much of a tragic hero as Oedipus or Hamlet because the common man is “as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were,” (Miller, “Tragedy” 1). In addition to possessing a tragic flaw such as hubris, blindness, or willful ignorance, the tragic hero is also characterized...
Lacking charm or social skills, Willy Loman fails to achieve the American Dream. Willy has been beaten down by frustration, and has allowed bitterness and anger to get the better of him. Worse than that, Willy Loman passes down his pessimism, poor attitude, and underachievement to his children. It is one thing for Willy himself to fail, and quite another for him to be unable to inculcate better values in his children. The Loman children, Biff and Happy, lie to others and to themselves, just like their father.
Towards the end of the play, the delusions in the family have completely gripped and torn apart the household as a result of the poor example Willy set for his sons. “We never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!” Biff exaggerates, to which Happy responds, “We always told the truth!” (Miller Death 97). Both brothers use hyperbole to show how out of touch they each are with reality, and with the truth. Willy Loman has passed down his dysfunctional cognitive biases to his sons, creating a web of suffering.
The tragic…
Works Cited
Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Retrieved online: http://www.pelister.org/literature/ArthurMiller/Miller_Salesman.pdf
Miller, Arthur. “Tragedy and the Common Man,” Retrieved online: https://www.nplainfield.org/cms/lib5/NJ01000402/Centricity/Domain/444/tragedymillerandaristotle.pdf
Tragedy and the Common Man," he contemplates the idea that only the wealthy, noble characters can fully understand tragedy, and therefore appreciate it. That thought is not a reflection of his own opinion, as Miller argues the case of tragedy and the common, working class man - for tragedy knows no income boundaries, but rather that this person would "lay down his life...to secure one thing - his sense
In conclusion, Death of a Salesman tells the tragic tale of Willy Loman's life. We do feel pity for this man as we watch him fail and we do understand that he makes tragic mistakes throughout his life that have brought him to this point. Many critics want to make allowances for the play because it represents the world in which we live. In doing so, they seem to forget
That tragedies reflect life is one of Aristotle's requirements and this requires that dramas drift from the tales of great kings and princes. Arthur Miller writes, "Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is really but a clinging to the outward form of tragedy" (Miller qtd. In Wilson 132) and "I believe that the common man is as apt a subject
Death of a Salesman: Tragedy in Prose Tragedy, can easily lure us into talking nonsense." Eric Bentley In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, we are introduced to Willy Loman, who believes wholeheartedly in what he considers the promise of the American Dream -- that a "well liked" and "personally attractive" man in business will unquestionably acquire the material comforts offered by modern American life. Willy's obsession with the superficial qualities of attractiveness
I.148-9) his actions will cause, Oedipus sits in oblivion. He refuses to listen to his wife and brazenly tells her, "I will not listen; the truth must be made known" (II.iii.146). Iocaste morphs from being Oedipus' wife to his enemy because she is speaking words he does not want to hear. He tells her: The Queen, like a woman, is perhaps ashamed To think of my low origin. But I Am a child
Critic Heyen says, "There is no question but that the play is elusive. As Miller himself has said, 'Death of a Salesman is a slippery play to categorize because nobody in it stops to make a speech objectively stating the great issues which I believe it embodies'" (Heyen 47). Therefore, many critics look at the play in different ways, attempting to categorize it and reference it according to their