Willy Tragic Hero

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”.

Many workers today go through a low time or a struggle and give up. Today’s workers do not necessarily commit suicide when they are in a low point but they do things such as quitting the job or relying on government assistance. Willy strives to achieve the American dream and he eventually realizes that he has failed and gives up on life. This dream is a belief in America and that all things are possible if you work hard enough (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Arthur Miller uses this story to expose the problems with pursuit of such a dream: “What Miller attacks, then, is not the American Dream of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but the dream as interpreted and pursued by those for whom ambition replaces human need and the trinkets of what Miller called the ‘new American Empire in the making’ are taken as tokens of true value” (Bigsby). “Death of a Salesman” creates a challenge to the American Dream and shows that an American should live a prosperous and plentiful life instead of get lost and die tragically (Criticism of ' the American Dream' in 'Death of a Salesman'). Gradually throughout the play, Willy gets farther and farther away from achieving his idea of the American Dream. His income slowly decreases to nothing: “as a salesman, Willy stages a performance for buyers, for his sons, for the father who deserted him, the brother he admired. Gradually, he loses his audience, first the buyers, then his son, then his boss” (Bigsby). His problem is that he completely surrenders to the American Dream and by the team he realizes his mistake, he has nothing to fall back on (Panesar). If Willy would have embraced his natural talent for manual labor and his family’s love for the countryside, the Lomans could have a totally different lifestyle (Panesar). Towards the end of the play, Willy became overwhelmed

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, 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.

He then gouges out his eyes and wonders of into the desert (#4). Willy Loman is the son of a middle-class man. He has been working as a traveling salesman for the last forty years. This is not the life of nobility. Nobility is someone that is of a high social class. A nobleman could also be a person in a position of high authority. Willy Loman was a peon of the firm that he was selling for. At one point, he may have been respected, but that time has come and gone. Willy Loman was not endowed with a tragic flaw. His failure in life came from the pretensions of the American dream. All he wants in life was to support his family and see his sons be productive in life. This is at time in American society when many people essentially worked themselves to death. Society cannot be a character flaw, because it represents everyone, not just a tragic flaw in a single man (#1). One could argue that Willy Loman’s tragic flaw was his pride. This was one of Willy’s flaws, but it does not cause his death. His pride kept him from accepting the job that Charlie offered, but it did not keep him from borrowing money from him. The excessive pride flaw did not cause Willy Loman’s death. The cause of Willies death was his desire to provide for his family. This was the American dream at its worst (#1). Willy never realizes that he made a few irreversible mistakes. The first mistake was how he raises his sons.

He is so terrified of not being what and who he thinks he is in society, that he cannot let go of his illusions and clings to them until his death.  However, this is not because he is a common man.  It is because he is a man who lacks the courage, conviction and strength to move past his illusions, grasp the truth and prevent himself from stifling his, or his sons, full flowering and whole development.  This is because his fears and insecurities, not to mention failures, have arisen from his adopting unquestioningly a set of values that have been irreconcilable with the natural outpouring of his love and creativity.  There is a "wrong" or an "evil" in Willy's environment that has prevented this because he has based his career choice, his method of parenting, and his lifestyle on a value system that is based on "appearances" not truth.  When he discovers these values are illusions he stubbornly refuses to admit his mistakes, and, instead, becomes pathetic instead of tragically heroic because he clings all the more to his illusions and imposes them on anyone around him-or becomes irate with those who point out the errors of his actions and/or logic.  The truth of modern society is that it represents one that thwarts man in his effort to achieve his "rightful dignity", but Willy never accepts the discovery of the moral law (which to Miller is the illumination of tragedy) which supports a man's right to achieve such dignity.  Instead, he tries to live by the

Arthur Miller’s play Death of A Salesman demonstrates the life of a man facing troubles within himself and society. A tragedy is the imitation of an action that arouses fear and pity. This play could be considered a tragedy because it depicts the downfall of a perfect family and outlines the deterioration of a man’s life. A tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle, is someone who exemplifies great importance or heroic qualities; however, Arthur Miller views the tragic hero as someone who struggles heroically with life. Using Arthur Miller’s definition, it can be determined that Willy Loman is a tragic hero. Even though Willy Loman does not fit the classical view of a tragic hero, he is in fact a modern day tragic hero because of his error in judgment, a reversal of fortune, and his excessive pride.

In the play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller, Willy is both sympathized with and looked down upon throughout the story. Willy is a very complex character with problems and faults that gain both sympathy and also turn the reader off to him. Willy Loman is both the protagonist and the antagonist, gaining sympathy from the reader only to lose it moments later.

The elements of a tragic hero include: flaw or error of judgment (hamartia), a reversal of fortune for the hero, a discovery or recognition, excessive pride, and the character's fate must be worse than deserved. Willy shows almost all of those characteristics, and I'm here to tell you why. Willy has several flaws to choose from but they all come down to a fundamental flaw, the fatal flaw which lead to his death. The basic flaw of Willy Loman's life is centered around the way he thinks and can be summarized in one word: denial. He is always preoccupied with his own dreams and desires, so much so that he denies and ignores anything

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

The audience and readers who are average people like Willy can sometimes appeal to their emotions. In Willy’s case he can connect to the audience and readers to times when the audience felt like they didn’t belong and that they weren’t good enough. As a result of this connection between the two, Willy can be considered a tragic hero. Many people disagree with the fact that Willy is a tragic hero. Foster states in his essay, that “the hero must have ‘stature’”(Confusion and Tragedy: The failure of Miller’s “Salesman” 1).

“ In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.(Bill Cosby). Willy had potential, but his greatest flaw was that it was always misdirected. Not once did Willy notice he was truly not doing well in life, his desire for success was so much greater than his fear, yet he just could not be successful. He is under the impression that he is “living the American dream” unfortunately, everyone knows he is not. Although Miller claims Willy is a tragic hero, his self indulgence causes him to fail in every aspect of his life, therefore, he is a failure.

            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

The Presentation of Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Willy Loman is presented as both a tragic hero and an unconscious victim in "Death of a Salesman". "Death of a Salesman" is very much based upon the American Dream, and whether we are slaves or conquerors of this dream. This is an idea that the playwright Arthur Miller has very passionately pursued both through Willy's own eyes, and through his interaction with the different characters in the play. Firstly, the definitions of a hero and a victim very much influence the way that Willy is viewed by the audience.

More than that, he wanted to become that man that he admired who died “the death of a salesman” in his “green velvet slippers” whose funeral garnered many loving friends and family (Miller 81). Audiences can relate as they too have had an idol in their head that they have aspired to become. Seeing the aspirations of Willy warrants pity in the audience when they see what a failure Willy Loman becomes. Failure is what consumes Willy. He understands that that is his life. But in his deep deluded mind twisted with broken memories and false hopes he can never truly accept it. He never has that point of discovery that a tragic hero does. Willy Loman never realizes the doom waiting for him at the end of his downward spiral. Even his attempts at suicide, and finally his one successful one, were misguided and were attempts to become something greater. No one shows up at the funeral besides his family. He is not great like a tragic hero. Willy Loman is a nobody, he is only a tragic hero to himself, just like everyone in the audience. Everyone sings the song of their own tragedy . That is the American tragedy. Everyone is the American tragic hero with their own tragedy. Arthur Miller captures the Average man with the average family and average dreams, living an average life with no gain in the end.