In the first B.C dramatist known as
Aristotle started to write a series of plays called the tragedies. They were as follows: the play revolved around a great man, such as a king or war hero, who had a tragic flaw. This flaw would eventually become his downfall and he would fall from his glory. In the case of obvious it was his hubris; and Oedipus, his pride and curiosity. Through out the play the hero has many opportunities to overcome his mistakes. On the other side, the reason that his nature he sarcomas to it and deals with a sever punishment. Even though these types of plays are still written today most authors have varied their loom of writing a tragedy. An example is Author Miller. He attempts to illustrate the misfortune in the common man; he shows this in “Death to a
Salesman.” According to Arthur Miller, "the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who ready to put his life aside, if necessary, to secure one thing - his sense of personal dignity." (Tragedy and the
Common Man p.1) He is saying in this quotation is that even that the common man can even be tragic because occasionally the one thing that she prizes the most, his sense of self-dignity, can be so jaded that he will sacrifice his own life to secure this dignity. In “Death to a Salesman”, Arthur
Miller successfully shows that you do not have to be someone important or king to show that. The classical model of a tragedy is that of someone of a high position contains superior qualities such as leadership for instance a king.
However the hero always has a flaw, which may be an excess of one of these qualities such as hubris. This hero while trying to accomplish a goal such as a quest will eventually be dealt punishment, which is usually death. One could argue that not only Aristotle’s definition of tragedy is true but that there can be many different kinds of tragedies.
From the tragedy of a common man to that of a family or group of people. In opposition to Aristotle's view one could argue that any type of man could show tragic qualities, no matter what social environment the man comes from. The hero could range from a highly intellectual and educated man with great potential but whose flaw is lack of motivation, to a crack addict living on the street who refuses to enter rehab.
The fate of people such as this might not be as appalling as death; however may be economic failure or social rejection.
A tragic hero is an individual who possesses a fatal flaw in their character that will bring about their own destruction or suffering. Aristotle believed that “A man doesn't become a hero until he can see the root of his own downfall. (Aristotle #1)” This Ancient Greek philosopher also believed that each tragic hero has four characteristics. The first of these characteristics is that a tragic hero is born with either wisdom or high integrity, and in some cases both.
support is a pathetic effort to protect his identity. Linda will never admit to herself,
“The American dream is, in part, responsible for a great deal of crime and violence because people feel that the country owes them not only a living but a good living.” Said David Abrahansen. This is true and appropriate in the case of Willy Loman, and his son Biff Loman. Both are eager to obtain their American dream, even though both have completely different views of what that dream should be. The play Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller shows the typical lives of typical Americans in the 1940’s. Miller’s choice of a salesman to be the main character in this play was not a coincidence, since it represents the typical middle-class working American, some of which have no technical skills what so ever. Miller’s play gives us insides on the daily lives of many Americans, this through the eyes of Willy and Biff Loman, he also shows what kind of personalities, what dreams they have, and their different points of view of what the American dream means.
Considered by Aristotle as the perfect example of tragedy, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King is an Athenian play that follows the undoing of a Theban king by the name of Oedipus. The play presents a question Oedipus himself cannot answer: is it the man’s actions or is it the gods’ decisions that control the man’s destiny? Perhaps the answer is both man and god, but it is the man’s imperfections that determine what fate the gods will give him. While there is no direct proof that gods control everything in a man, from his dreams to his choices, Oedipus still proves that no matter how renowned a man is, that man’s weaknesses will determine his success or his failure. Oedipus fits the convention of a tragic hero as he is a man of high estate who suffers
BANG! Your father is dead. Within a few seconds, although he attempted many times, your father dies. He gave up. All the fights, all the disrespect, and all the struggles are behind you. However, all the hope, all the passion, and all the love is still there. In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the main conflict is between Willy Lowman and his son Biff. Most of their struggles are based on disrespect; however, much of the tension throughout the play is also caused by the act of giving up.
Most readers are aware of the many famous deaths or acts of death within the Shakespearean plays. And when the main characters die in Shakespeare’s plays, indeed, the readers would categorize the play as a tragedy. The problem with any tragedy definition is that most tragic plays do not define the tragedy conditions explained or outlined by Aristotle. According to Telford (1961), a tragedy is a literary work that describes the downfall of an honorable, main character who is involved on historically or socially significant events. The main character, or tragic hero, has a tragic fault, the quality that leads to his or her own destruction. In reading Aristotle’s point of view, a tragedy play is when the main character(s) are under enormous pressure and are incapable to see the dignities in human life, which Aristotle’s ideas of tragedy is based on Oedipus the King. Shakespeare had a different view of tragedy. In fact, Shakespeare believed tragedy is when the hero is simply and solely destroyed. Golden (1984) argued the structure of Shakespearean tragedy would be that individual characters revolved around some pain and misery.
According to Aristotle, tragedy requires an admirable hero with power and in a high state, but more importantly, he or she possesses a tragic flaw that leads to their downfall. This tragic flaw most closely relates to a character’s hubris, excessive pride in themselves or their judgment. But sometimes a character cannot be categorized as tragic, and one can argue whether or not the tragic character violates the requirements. In Sophocles’ Antigone Creon and Antigone serve as tragic characters in the play; however, Creon’s character exemplifies Aristotle’s theory of tragedy.
Happy Loman has grown up to be a well-adjusted man of society. He has developed from a follower to a potentially successful businessman. Throughout his childhood, Happy always had to settle for second fiddle. Willy, his father, always seems to focus all his attention on Happy's older brother Biff. The household conversation would constantly be about how Biff is going to be a phenomenal football star, how Biff will be attending the University of Virginia and be the big man on campus, how Biff is so adulated among his friends and peers, and so on. Young Happy was always in Biff's shadow, always competing for his father's attention but failing each time. Happy would resort to such antics as laying on his back and pedaling his feet backwards to capture his father's attention but to no avail. Willy would continue to not take notice of his younger son and maintain his attention on other matters that he thought were of greater importance. Growing up under these conditions is what motivated Happy to be the man he is today.
On the other hand, another type of tragic hero exists, the modern tragic hero. This type of hero is a product of a clash between the individual and the social environment. Arthur Miller, the famous playwright, said, “each person has a chosen image of self and position, tragedy results when the character’s environment denies the fulfillment of this self concept.” (LATWP, 640). This is a contrast from Aristotle’s classic tragic hero because the hero is no longer born into nobility but gains stature in the action of pitting self against the cosmos, and the tragedy becomes, “the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this world.”
"Oedipus Rex" and "Death of a Salesman" are two examples of tragedies. In these two plays the characters are good, but not perfect, and their misfortunes are the result of their tragic flaws.
“Death of a Salesman” written by Arthur Miller in 1948 attempts to give the audience an unusual glimpse into the mind of a Willy Loman, a mercurial 60-year-old salesman, who through his endeavor to be “worth something”, finds himself struggling to endure the competitive capitalist world in which he is engulfed. Arthur Miller uses various theatrical techniques to gradually strip the protagonist down one layer at a time, each layer revealing another truth about his distorted past. By doing this, Miller succeeds in finally exposing a reasonable justification for Willy’s current state of mind. These techniques are essential to the play, as it is only through this development that Willy can realistically be driven to motives of suicide.
Aristotle sees tragedy of being made of pity and fear. When tragedies occur in people’s lives it appears fear and pity is always an accompanying trait. Aristotle finds these two emotions to be staples in creating the perfect tragedy play. A tragic hero is the direct spawn of creating a tragic play.
To conclude, “Death of a Salesman” by Arthur Miller satisfies the criteria for a tragic play because Willy’s pride is a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. Ultimately, Willy gains enlightenment of his false perception of life and realizes how he inhibits the success of his family. This epiphany leads him to sacrifice himself for the well-being of his family. During his lifetime, Willy’s pride caused him to have an overinflated ego, a bizarre idealistic view on life, and a false value system. These negative traits eventually lead to his downfall in which he sacrifices himself, proving to be a modern tragic hero. Willy Loman is a common man brought down to his demise because of the one tragic flaw of pride that he possesses.
A tragic hero can be defined by several different factors; the hero usually has a major flaw that prevents him from seeing the truth that lies in front of him, which contributes to the character’s peripeteia due to mistaken judgement. This mistake then leads to achieving anagnorisis, usually at the end of the play, but is too late to change anything, and results in death.
The concept of tragic hero is very important in the construction of tragedy. It is the main cause of pity and fear. The tragic hero is a character between the two extremes; he is neither virtuous nor evil. At the same time, this character is better than the ordinary men or audience, he has some good qualities. Moreover, as a tragic hero, he is moving from happiness to misery by his downfall at the end. In fact, this downfall is caused by an error or a flaw in his character not by a vice or depravity. Another feature in the tragic hero is that he has good reputation and he is a man of prosperity. It can be said that Oedipus is a tragic hero because he has all the previous mentioned characteristics and the whole play is a classical application of this concept.