Tragedy And The Common Man

In Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Willy Loman’s life seems to be slowly deteriorating. It is clear that Willy’s predicament is of his own doing, and that his own foolish pride and ignorance lead to his downfall. Willy’s self-destruction involved the uniting of several aspects of his life and his lack of grasping reality in each, consisting of, his relationship with his wife, his relationship and manner in which he brought up his children, Biff and Happy, and lastly his inability to productively earn a living and in doing so, failure to achieve his “American Dream”.

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the author conveys the reader about how a person lives his life when he or she cannot live the “American Dream.” Willy Loman, the main character in the play is a confused and tragic character. He is a man who is struggling to hold onto what morality he has left in a changing society that no longer values the ideals he grew up to believe in. Even though the society he lives in can be blamed for much of his misfortune, he must also be the blame for his bad judgment, disloyalty and his foolish pride.

Arthur Miller shows the downfall of the American dream through the eyes of Willy Loman. Willy Loman is an all American family man and businessman that would do anything for his family. In the end of the play Willy Loman committed suicide to save his family from going under. Arthur Miler describe Loman’s tragic story as “a man who did believe that he alone was not meeting the qualifications laid down for mankind by those clean-shaven frontiersmen who inhabit the peaks of broadcasting and advertising offices (Isherwood, 2012) “. The thing I find so innovating about this play is that even though some of the events mentioned are controversial the author never down played the events that

In the play, Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller establishes Charley, a humble and successful salesman as the foil to Willy Loman, a prideful and arrogant man. Charley is the perfect character to help depict Willy’s flaws. Although the two contrast with each other, their characteristics help maintain a balance between them. Willy Loman lives in his own world, where he believes that in order to be successful, one must be well liked with a great appearance. “The man who makes an appearance…is the man who gets ahead” (Miller 1568). These are obvious words from Willy which proves that he does not believe in hard work. He instills within both of his children that looks and personality are all that matters. The characteristics of Willy allow us to grasp the idea that he lives within a false reality. He is a man living within a child’s fantasy based off of the life of Dave Singleman. The very words he spoke against his neighbor Charley and his son, Bernard, are the very words that prove him wrong.

Willy Loman is a senile salesman who lives a dull life with a depleting career. He has an estranged relationship with his family and believes in the American Dream of effortless success and affluence, but in no way accomplishes it. Feeling like the aim of life is to be favored by others and gaining a materialistic fortune, Willy lives in a world of delusion where

Willy Loman, the central character in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, is a man whose fall from the top of the capitalistic totem pole results in a resounding crash, both literally and metaphorically. As a man immersed in the memories of the past and controlled by his fears of the future, Willy Loman views himself as a victim of bad luck, bearing little blame for his interminable pitfalls. However, it was not an ill-fated destiny that drove Willy to devastate his own life as well as the lives of those he loved; it was his distorted set of values.

In The Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, it is argued weather that Willy Loman is a tragic hero. There are cases for both classifications of Willy. By definition, a tragic hero is a person born into nobility, is responsible for their own fate, endowed with a tragic flaw, and doomed to make a serious error in judgment. The tragic hero eventually falls from great esteem. They realize they have made an irreversible mistake, faces death with honor, and dies tragically. The audience also has to be affected by pity or fear for the tragic hero. In order for Willy Loman to be a tragic hero, he has to fulfill all of these descriptions. Willy Loman fits into some of

Miller amalgamates the archetypal tragic hero with the mundane American citizen. The result is the anti-hero, Willy Loman. He is a simple salesman who constantly aspires to become 'great'. Nevertheless, Willy has a waning career as a salesman and is an aging man who considers himself to be a failure but is incapable of consciously admitting it. As a result, the drama of the play lies not so much in

Although classical tragedies typically require a person who comes from royalty, Willy Loman is an average man, and his tragic background comes from an imagined greatness. Through years and years of elaborate lies, Willy has convinced both himself and the members of his family that he is a renowned salesman in New England; as a matter of fact, he continuously implies

Arthur Miller presents his play ‘Death of a Salesman’ in the ancient form of a tragedy. Aristotle has defined his idea of the ‘perfect’ tragedy in his text, ‘Poetics’ (350 BC).Here he suggests that the protagonist must fall from an elevated social standing as a result of a “fatal flaw” within the character; the fall from the main character creates resolution to the play which is seen as just; finally, Aristotle identified that the action of the drama should take place within a 24hour timeframe. An ancient play which is believed to be the perfect tragedy is Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. ‘Death of a Salesman’ is definitely a tragic play, but is Willy

have been many tragic heroes which can relate to Arthur Miller’s essay “Tragedy and the

Arthur miller believes that a person should not have to be of high social class to be considered a tragic hero. This is Millers reason for using a common man like Willy Loman, a man that underwent a meaningful suffering. By the end of the play we realize that Willys flaw wasn’t actually a flaw at all, it was his unwillingness to settle for anything less than achieving his dreams. Throughout the play the characters experience fear, consequence, lies, pain and chaos. Miller uses a Willy as a relatable character to put forth the idea that anyone can be a tragic hero, as well as to describe the tragedy brought with a person flawed with the refusal

As the play’s titular character in Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is viewed by many as the definitive modern tragic hero of modern literature. He is a man struggling to gain upward mobility in a society designed to keep him in the trenches. The classic idea of a tragic hero is an important person who falls from a lofty seat in life. Willy, however, is just a common man trying to get to a place he can fall from. According to Arthur Miller, a tragic hero need not be a king or anyone of high rank. What’s important is the existence of the character’s “tragic flaw”, out of which creates the need to resist anything the character would consider a force attacking their being. Miller outlined the tragic flaw as a quality of a character that leaves them unable to accept anything that would affect or alter his/her status or self-image. While this flaw can create the tragic nature of a character, it does not necessarily create a tragic hero out a character. Willy Loman, though perhaps a tragic character, is not a tragic hero because he does not display the characteristic traits or actions associated with heroism.

Throughout this play Miller portrays his main character, Willy Loman, as senile, unsuccessful and slightly insane. Willy’s deranged personality is in part because his father abandoned him at a young age. Willy also feels abandoned by his cherished brother Ben. Ben went off to become a big success and rich. Willy sees this and it helps lead him to feel inadequate as a man

Willy Loman’s feelings of alienation and loneliness are direct psychological results of his interaction with society and the conditions that are found within it.  Although, he does not necessarily have the ability or allow himself to have the ability to define his feelings as such, they are still very much a part of his everyday existence.  This is evident in his constant bragging and attempted compensation.  He does not feel that he is truly a part of society.  Indeed, he is not.  Miller himself seems to be saying that this is not necessarily a bad thing; this society is not that wonderful.  Yet Willy still yearns to be like his brother, Ben, and the other men he sees making