Willy Loman, the Modern Hero in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

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 order to gain a proper perspective on the concept of what a tragic hero is, we must synthesize information from the following play’s, “The Death Of A Salesman”, and “Oedipus The King”. Both plays takes the stance on the idea that validates the ultimate notion,  “tragic hero. From Willy’s hubris personality to his questionable and mysterious death, to Oedipus dynamic and complex choices and kingly personality that determines his fate. A tragic hero is a literary character who makes a judgement that leads to his/her downfall. In other words, even though both characters made incredible contributions and left a very noble legacy, their choices and decisions determined their ultimate fate. In today’s world tragic heroes are commonly present,

    In Arthur Miller's play, Death of a Salesman, a major theme and source of conflict is the Loman family's lack of morality.  This is particularly evident in the father, Willy Loman.  Willy has created a world of questionable morality for himself and his family.  In this world, he and his sons are men of greatness that "have what it takes" to make it in the competitive world of business.  In reality, Willy’s son Biff is a drifter and a thief, his son Hap is continually seducing women with lies, while Willy does not treat his wife with respect and lies to everyone.

In Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman is an example of a failure as a good father. He did not discipline his sons well by not punishing them. He did not set a good example to his sons by not admitting his faults. He did not make his family his number one priority. Instead, it was his work, coming before his family, his friends, and even himself. Not only is Willy Loman not a good father and husband, but he was a failure by not becoming successful, not achieving the American Dream.

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.

Tragedy, as defined by Aristotle, is “a drama treating a serious subject and involving persons of significance” (Kirszner and Mandell 1086), the success of a tragedy occurs when the audience “feels both fear and pity because they see in themselves the potential for similar situations” (Kirszner and Mandell 1087). Aristotle’s literary theory of tragedy applies only to “imitation of persons who are above the common level, he must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous – a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families” (Aristotle) because his theory was developed for application to the literary works of poets and playwrights such as Homer, Aeschylus, and Sophocles, whose works were the interpretations of Greek mythology. This means that one cannot look fully to Aristotle’s definition of a tragic hero in application to modern literature. Therefore, many scholars and literary critics look to playwright Arthur Miller’s description written in his article Tragedy and the Common Man where he writes, “I believe that common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” (Miller). Miller points out in his article that the common man can exhibit all the same qualities and characteristics as those of a man born into nobility, and that same common man can execute the same actions. But not all tragedies are heroic, there must be specific elements in the creation of a tragic hero that can be difficult to

  Charley says something in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman that sums up Willy’s whole life. He asks him, "When the hell are you going to grow up” (Miller 97)?  Willy spends his entire life in an illusion, seeing himself as a great man who is popular and successful.  Willy exhibits many childlike qualities and his two sons Biff and Happy pattern their behavior after their father.  Many of these qualities, such as idealism, stubbornness, and a false sense of self-importance in the world have a negative impact on Willy’s family,

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

As a salesman, Willy shows he perceives himself highly when talking to Linda about his job: “I’m the New England man. I’m vital in New England” (14). One can also see Willy’s inflated sense of self-worth when he talks to his children about his job: “They know me, boys, they know me up and down New England... I have friends. I can park my car in any street in New England, and the cops protect it like their own” (31). However, even though he is extremely confident about his value as a salesman to his family, the reality of Willy’s reputation at his job is almost completely opposite: “I’m fat. I’m very—foolish to look at... they do laugh at me” (37). Although he essentially brags to his family about his expertise in business, Willy acknowledges the reality that his career is much less successful than he expects it to be. In fact, the inner turmoil inside of Willy from his unrealistic expectation of himself of being a fantastic salesman leads Willy to become mentally unhealthy, and eventually results in Willy committing suicide when he believes that he doesn’t have any self-worth anymore. Willy’s previous inflated self-worth is demonstrated yet again at his funeral, when no one shows up even though Willy thought he had a lot of friends from his job: “Why didn’t anybody come...

One thing that continues to come up in "A Death of a Salesman" is the fact that Willy has this huge desire to be "well liked." This is more important to him than being accomplished or having a good job. He constantly tells Linda and his kids that it is more important to be "well liked" than to be successful at work or in school. He lies to his kids about the fact that he is "well liked" which eventually leads to his two kids growing up as failures. Seeing how his lies have hurt, not only himself, but his children too, Willy decides to do what in his mind, is the only thing he can do to save help his family. He decides to kill himself and then maybe he will have a lot of people show up to his funeral which would mean that he is well liked. Of course no one shows up to the funeral but Willy 's

            To identify the tragic hero in Sophocles’ renowned play “Antigone”, we should first consider both the elements present in Greek tragedies and what characteristics define a tragic hero. Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is: “Tragedy is a story taking the hero from happiness to misery because of a fatal flaw or mistake on his part. To be a true tragic hero he must also elicit a strong emotional response of pity and fear from the audience. This is known as catharsis or purging of emotion.” In most cases the tragic hero begins

To what extent can Willy Loman be considered a tragic hero according to Aristotle’s rules?

            Pity for Willy is hardly avoidable when reading Death of a Salesman. His low rank, the lack of respect displayed by his sons, his misguided dreams, all lead to sympathy for a character on the verge of senility. ?Nobody dast blame this man,? (231) says Charley at the grave site, because, despite what Willy was lead to believe, they understood the position he was in, even though the means do not justify the end. His dream of success as a salesman failed. The sons whom he took so much

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