Miller and Eliot on Beauty Comparing and

Miller and Eliot on Beauty Comparing and Contrasting "Beauty" in Miller and Eliot Arthur Miller and T.S. Eliot are two 20th century American playwrights. While the latter is more commonly noted for expatriating to Britain and writing some of the most memorable poetry of the early 20th century, the former is noted for his famous depiction of the common man's struggle to find meaning and fulfillment in Death of a Salesman.

As distinct as the two writers may seem, they both conceive of and treat the theme of beauty -- Miller analyzing its absence in Salesman, and Eliot analyzing its abandonment in several poems like "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and "The Wasteland." This paper will compare and contrast both writers and show how they deal with the theme of beauty in their works.

The Absence of Beauty in Salesman and "Prufrock" Beauty is missing from Willy Loman's life in Death of a Salesman, and Miller represents this fact by contrasting Willy to his surroundings through various motifs. Motif is a literary device constantly used throughout Salesman to bring to light certain points (ideas such as peace, happiness, success, defeat, and awe).

Miller, however, does more than merely employ motif to stimulate drama: he creates a character that is utterly unable to measure up to the kind of heroism and beauty as defined by men like Aristotle. Miller's Loman ("low man") may be the measure of inadequacy in the modern world. What is missing from Loman's life, it may be said, is the appreciation of Beauty -- or Truth, as Keats called it. This absence of Beauty is observed in the cessation of flute music in the play's very beginning.

The flute motif begins the drama, setting off Act One with a melody that is meant to evoke Beauty -- images of "grass and trees on the horizon" -- encouraging the audience to imagine pastures that appear, perhaps, greener on the other side. This motif is ironically juxtaposed, however, with the setting of the Act, which is the Salesman's house, outlined against a world of hard, towering high rises.

As Willy Loman enters the scene and begins to speak with his wife, the flute dies out and the cessation of this motif tells us much about Willy's present situation, adding a kind of pathos to his line to Linda, "I'm tired to the death" (Miller 2). Miller indicates that the "flute has faded away," (2) which illustrates thematically the notion that Willy's life has lost its melody, its happiness, its sense of being -- and its beauty.

Willy has, essentially, one foot out the door -- and his wife (literally) is surprised to find that he is still hanging on. If Willy is barely there (as a person), so too is Eliot's Prufrock -- a character who cannot even rouse himself to the level of humanity. Indeed, Prufrock is as much a wisp of a man as Loman, and both seem to have abandoned the struggle to attain a higher peace or purpose in life.

While Loman appears to be haunted by the fact in Death of a Salesman, Eliot's Prufrock appears to be content with what may be termed, essentially, his damnation.

Eliot's Use of Dante and the Old World as an Indication of Beauty In fact, the idea of damnation -- that loss of the True Beauty, which in Christian terms is the attainment of and unification with God -- is present at the very beginning of "Prufrock." Eliot quotes one of the damned souls of Dante's Inferno as a preface to the poem -- and the quotation is indicative of the despair that fills Prufrock.

What Prufrock "knows" is that there is no hope for the modern world -- it has been abolished -- and, thus, he is an empty shell of a man, on the cusp of old world religion and art, unable to pry open the doors of the beauty of the old world (even though it hangs in the galleries and "the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo") (Eliot 13-14, 35-36).

For Prufrock, Michelangelo has been emptied out, because that which he represents -- an old world ideology -- has been repudiated by the ideology of the modern world, thus sealing off both Beauty and Truth as it relates to God, the ultimate source of all goodness and beauty according to the old world ideology.

Beauty in Eliot's conception of the modern world is essentially related to scientific constructs and technological advances and shallow pretensions: cars, houses, advertisements, models, galleries -- these things are deemed beautiful…but what is lacking is spiritual beauty. This kind of beauty existed in the old world because of the chance to work out one's salvation through Christ -- the spiritual antidote to the gloom in Eliot's eyes.

In the modern Protestant world, however, one's salvation is simply granted by virtue of having "accepted" Christ: there is no sense of struggle (unless it is with one's faith -- and once this struggle is resolved the race is essentially over). Beauty Replaced by the Dream in Miller's Salesman Willy Loman's life is also steeped in gloominess and depression. However, Miller does not connect Loman's loss of beauty to the modern world's loss of Christ the same way that Eliot subtly does.

Miller does, on the other hand, depict Loman's crisis as a kind of betrayal of the beauty of the human soul -- which Loman has traded for a measly salesman's life. This betrayal is represented in a second motif that Miller uses to establish the idea that Willy Loman's pursuit of the American Dream has been nothing more than the futile chase of an empty promise. The motif is found in the concept of scenery.

Willy reveals early on his obsession with scenery: "I was driving along, you understand? And I was fine. I was even observing the scenery. You can imagine, me looking at scenery, on the road every week of my life…" (3). The sense here is that Willy has been driving through life for so long on automatic pilot that he has failed to take notice of the Beauty around him.

Distracted and caught up in the lie of Success as Fulfillment (the American Dream), Willy has pursued his sales as though attempting to sell even himself this pitch. However, as Death approaches, Willy suddenly begins to take more interest in his surroundings -- in the scenery -- in the world around him.

This motif is reflected in Uncle Ben who speaks of going into the jungle (a symbol of life) and bringing out a diamond (a symbol of success) -- yet Willy's desire is no longer with diamonds, but with gardens: he wants to grow that which he sees in nature (he wants to reflect the Beauty and Truth he sees in the scenery -- even if he does not realize this is what he wants).

The pursuit of the diamond does not satisfy him, which is why he so angry and distracted all the time. Miller portrays the anger of the common man at having been cheated of the American Dream. Eliot, on the contrary, portrays the despair of the modern man who accepts his disinheritance from the old world values, and confesses that he is content merely to "grow old" and "wear the bottoms of [his] trousers rolled" (120-121).

The difference between the two portrayals of the common modern man is the emphasis the two writers place on the theme of beauty. For Eliot, Beauty exists in the fragments of the old world that may still be collected and pieced together -- as in "The Wasteland." But for Miller, Beauty exists as a kind of ideal that is often lost in the commotion and rush of modern life.

Beauty and Christ in Eliot To better understand how Eliot treats of the theme of beauty, however, one must examine the Christian connection since Christ is the center of Dante's Divine Comedy, which provides the epigram to Eliot's "Prufrock." The epigram from Dante is highly significant for two reasons: 1) it roots the poem in medieval Christian doctrine, and 2) it introduces the theme of despair (the epigram consists of the words of a soul who speaks only because he knows no one will ever hear): "If I thought that my reply would be to one who would ever return to the world, this flame would stay without further movement; but since none has ever returned alive from this depth, if what I hear is true, I answer you without fear of infamy" (Inferno 27.61-66).

The words might just as easily be Prufrock's to the reader: they are a kind of admission of the pointlessness of Prufrock's (ironic) love song -- it is not intended to inspire anyone with hope: it is merely a statement of fact, the fact of modern-day de-signification and insignificance.

As Mutlu Konuk Blasing states, "Prufrock does not know how to presume to begin to speak, both because he knows 'all already' -- this is the burden of his lament -- and because he is already known, formulated." The de-signification of which Eliot (a convert to Anglicanism) describes has its parallel in Dante's Inferno for a reason: the nightmare of Hell is, for Eliot, the nightmare of modern reality: no hope, no salvation, no recognition of sin, no sense -- just utter banality and mechanistic repetition: "In the room the women come and go / Talking of Michelangelo" (Eliot 13-14, 35-36).

Again, the reference to Michelangelo (repeated throughout the poem) is no accident: Michelangelo represents the artist on the cusp of the old world (the religion of the Sistine Chapel) and at the forefront of the new (the Renaissance and modern science and de-Christianized politics). Beauty and the Heroic in Miller Miller's Salesman, in a way, also conjures up ideas of the ancient world. Critics have debated whether Willy Loman may actually be considered a Tragic Hero (Shapshay 18).

Since, according to Aristotle, art is the representation (or imitation) of an action (1.1) it stands to reason that different artistic expressions provide a unique interpretation of that action. Aristotle confirms this point when he remarks that "Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life" (1.2). The Tragic Hero, he defines, as someone who is full of goodness and propriety and yet is true to life. It is in his description of Character that Aristotle lays out these principles that define the Tragic Hero (2.15).

Arthur Miller, to a certain extent, employs these principles when he creates the character of Willy Loman -- but Willy Loman is less a representation of a tragic heroism and more a representation of the defeat at the heart of the American Dream. Loman represents the lack of beauty in the common man's ambition. Miller, therefore, does not completely follow Aristotle's definition -- for he is not interested in creating a good and noble character -- but a character that is merely true to life.

Indeed, the character of Willy Loman conveys little of the beauty or goodness that Aristotle says is necessary a characteristic of the Tragic Hero. Willy is, if anything, a pathetic character. His speech does not reflect any outright goodness or nobility, but rather confusion and frustration -- exasperation with himself for being perplexed. Thus, Miller rejects the ancient heroic paradigm for the modern paradigm of the anti-hero: the self-consumed, self-seeking, self-loathing creature spawned by Dostoevsky's Underground Man.

Miller's Loman does not fit the mold of the tragic hero according to Aristotle's first definition -- he simply lacks the beauty of goodness. "The second thing to aim at," states Aristotle, "is propriety…a type of manly valor…" (2.15). This principle essentially tells us that the Tragic Hero ought to conform to a certain standard or convention: he ought to embody the accepted moral code of his time and exemplify it with strength in both mind and heart.

To a degree, Loman does embody the moral code of his time: that moral code is ambiguous and undefined -- which is part of the reason Loman feels so confused. The lack of definition (or of appropriate definition) may also be described as Loman's flaw: he has failed to define himself appropriately, surrendering instead to the false doctrine of the American Dream. Willy is not so much a hero brought low by an internal flaw as he is an anti-hero brought into being by an external flaw.

Miller himself states that "I set out not to 'write a tragedy' in this play, but to show the truth as I saw it" (Shapshay 19). Willy Loman represents the truth of the lie which is the American Dream. He represents the absence of beauty and morality in the American Dream.

Thus, he is no Tragic Hero, according to Aristotle's definition -- but another kind of lost soul like Eliot's Prufrock and all the characters of "The Wasteland," wandering through the modern world as though cut adrift from anything resembling meaning or purpose. As Marjorie Barstow tells us, "Aristotle finds the end of human endeavor to be happiness…[which proceeds] from a steady and comprehensive intellectual vision which views life steadily and distinguishes in every action the result to be gained" (2).

For the Tragic Hero to be truly heroic, he must, to some extent, attempt to achieve this standard of happiness (or at least believe himself capable of achieving it). Barstow states that the Tragic Hero must not achieve the ideal for he "is a man who fails to attain happiness, and fails in such a way that his career excites, not blame, but fear and pity in the highest degree" (2).

When one looks at Aristotle's definition in this light, it appears that Willy Loman may indeed fit the mold of the Tragic Hero: he does, after all, strive for a kind of peace; and his demise does bring about a kind of cathartic effect. Moreover, Loman is a representation of true life in the modern world. And true life is indeed the third principle of Aristotle's concept of the Tragic Hero: "Thirdly, character must be true to life: for this is a distinct thing from goodness and propriety," writes Aristotle (2.15).

This principles intimates that no matter how great or noble or strong the Tragic Hero, he must not assume the properties of God (even if he nears them), for he is still a representation of humanity -- and therefore he must possess some defect. Willy Loman certainly represents humanity in the modern world -- at least in the sense that he suffers from a foolish acceptance of the American Dream. However, he is "low" -- not great.

Prufrock and Loman: Anti-Heroes without Beauty and Goodness While Eliot's Prufrock is also true to life -- he is no more of a heroic character than Miller's Loman. Indeed, Prufrock asserts that he is far short of anything resembling a heroic character when he maintains that he is more like a minor character in a Shakespearean tragedy than a title character like Hamlet.

Rather than charge the scene and perform great works, Prufrock states that he is content to be "politic, cautious, and meticulous" (116); in other words, he is content to be no one of any consequence. Prufrock would prefer it to be so.

While the Inferno was only the first stop on Dante's journey through the afterlife -- he still traveled through Purgatory and, finally, into Paradise -- Eliot's Prufrock is content to forego Purgatory and Paradise: after all, they are part of the doctrine of Him Who raised Lazarus; and Lazarus, according to Prufrock (94-96) is hardly "worth it, after all" (87). Prufrock, like Loman, has abandoned Beauty. He strives for a kind of objectivity -- but he fails to mount any resistance to the emptiness engulfing the modern world.

The Faith of Dante is gone. Even.