Table of contentsBibliographyPrimary sourcesSecondary sourcesArthur Miller's Death of a Salesman can be compared to Aristotle's notions of tragedy expressed in his Poetics, involving a fall caused by hamartia and hubris, and an eventual recognition and reversal of fortune, culminating in the audience's experience of catharsis. Despite this enduring model of tragedy, Willy Loman, the central character of the play, is not necessarily a tragic hero in this sense, and does not meet all of the above criteria. We can therefore say that Miller presents a modern society in which tragedy has no place, and is not even possible. On the other hand, this classical concept of tragedy is not appropriate for modern society, and other measures of tragedy, or a reinterpretation of tragedy, might be what Miller presents. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayA fundamental feature of Aristotelian tragedy is a high-ranking tragic hero, who commits a mistake, hamartia, causing disgrace. Miller's drama can be argued to affirm this improbability of achieving high status in his plays Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, as neither protagonist comes from a particularly high background. In Death of a Salesman, Linda clearly shows Willy's inability to meet this requirement: “I'm not saying he's a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never published in the newspaper. He's not the best character who ever lived. But he is a human being (…) Be careful, you finally have to pay attention to such a person. » Even if it is not tragic in the Aristotelian sense of the term, Death of a Salesman can be considered a “democratic tragedy”. Willy may be nothing special, but he is a human being, and so the tragedy is our humanity and our ultimate insignificance. The failure of "attention [...] to such a person" in the play, culminating in Willy's suicide, reveals the need for "attention" of the socio-economic capitalist system in which monetary wealth measures " greatness” of a person. Miller asserts the improbability of achieving high status and the precarious, even ultimately unsatisfactory and irrelevant, status that financial authority confers; this is seen in Willy's suicide at the end of the play, although the family has paid off the mortgage. Nevertheless, the tragedy of the loss of individuality and thus the inability to meet the Aristotelian criteria of tragedy is tragic in itself. Miller reimagines tragedy in a more complex modern form, moving from person to culture and examining their mutual influences (mimicking the tensions of democracy), thereby reflecting the perils of capitalism. Feminist critic Linda Kintz noted that Death of a Salesman offers "a nostalgic take on the plot of the universalized male protagonist of the Poetics", criticizing both the treatment of women in the play and the notion of Aristotelian tragedy in it. -even as an intrinsically flawed tragedy. and limiting concept. Linda is marginalized from capitalist systems of power, which confer value and status on her, thereby devaluing her. Additionally, Linda is characterized as a submissive housewife, as explained by Happy's response to hanging up her laundry: "What a woman!" They broke the mold by making it. The mold of Aristotelian tragedy has been broken, but society and Miller still inadvertently affirm the improbability of a truly "democratic" tragedy in modernity via the application ofmasculine value systems. The hamartia, or error, required in Greek tragedy, is frequently caused by hubris, pride, or excessive confidence. Willy's character oscillates between delusion and self-assurance, making assertions such as, "I'm not a dime!" I'm Willy Loman and you're Biff Loman!' This self-confidence is undermined by the use of an economic metaphor, emphasizing that it is indeed "one ten cents", used and rejected by the capitalist system, thus rendering its insistence baseless. While the naming process is often a moment of self-definition and power, as in Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Behold I, Hamlet the Dane", the gradual fragmentation of Willy's mind and the diminishing sense of self and the grip on reality, cause these words of attempt at self-definition to have no meaning. As Miller himself commented: "But he was anguished by the consciousness of being in a false position, so constantly haunted by the emptiness of all in which he had placed his faith, so conscious, in short, that 'he had to somehow be filled with his faith. spirit or fly away, that he has staked his life on the ultimate affirmation. Willy's "false position" is conveyed through fantastical narratives, including his stories of his brother and father, claiming "we have a little tendency of our own." trust in our family. Willy thus tells an approving narration of his life. In some ways, Willy can be seen as lacking pride, as a delusional and pitiful character. Alternatively, his blindness and madness can also be considered a major character flaw. In some ways, Willy is portrayed as a modern-day King Lear, with his blindness to reality plunging him into madness. Nonetheless, his appeal to his boss, Howard, reveals an insightful critique of capitalism: "You can't eat an orange and throw away the skin – a man is not a fruit!" » This statement appears oddly pathetic because of the tension between Willy's assertions and desperate begging for a job. Likewise, Willy's selfish portrayal of his financial success and his hero-worshipping sons in the first act reveals his insecurity about failing to achieve the "American Dream." Schlöndorff's presentation of this scene in bright, garish colors in his 1985 film production, Death of a Salesman, conveys the constructed and false nature of this reverie. Perhaps it is this ongoing tension between failed potential and reality, and the refusal to face the obvious truth, that is the source of Willy's hamartia as he embodies the literal translation of the word "fail the target”. This consequently causes the discretization of his character and his downfall. Indeed, Willy literally fell, often found slumped, on his knees and “dejected”. Matthew Roudané comments that "Miller presents no fewer than twenty-five scenes in which Willy's body language and dialogue create images of falling, falling, or falling." » It is in flashback, at the end of the scene where Biff discovers Willy's affair, that we are given the scene "Willy is left on the ground on his knees", a prophetic movement of the fall that will suffer Willy later. The "unlikely possibility of tragedy" is clearer in Death of a Salesman due to the lack of obvious anagnorisis, and Willy seems to have no moment of true recognition or revelation. Even though he inevitably realizes that his dreams of success will not materialize, Willy still remains delusional. In the final scene, Ben's apparition appears, representing Willy's misconceptions about his worth and purpose, and culminates in the ill-advised sacrifice of his own life. Willy had a visionopenly sentimental about his own death: “Can you imagine this magnificence with twenty thousand dollars in your pocket? (…) It's very clever, you realize that, don't you, darling?' In reality, Willy represents the inhuman, hollow and perverse logic of the American dream. His inability to sell his products resulted in his inability to "sell himself", but his suicide for life insurance money is ultimately a deluded disregard for what he had: the love of his family . His perception of the “magnificence” of monetary wealth is the result of his personal value placed within a capitalist framework. Rather, the play's epiphany comes from Biff, who comments that Willy "never knew who he was." This idea reveals Willy's continued underappreciation of himself, including his misguided motivations for committing suicide. Thus, Willy has no anagnorisis and does not even succeed in the individual quest for personal dignity and integrity that can be considered characteristic of the modern tragic hero. Willy remains until his death “a man distracted from human necessities by public myths,” ignoring the true love and care of his family in order to pursue the illusion of the American dream. However, we can say that catharsis is present in death. from a seller. The last lines of the piece, in the Requiem, are Linda's "We are free...we are free...". This “freedom” perfectly expresses the purging of emotions felt at the end of the play, and even the characters themselves feel relief from the pressure of Willy’s ideals, failures, and expectations. Alongside this is the pity and fear over Willy's suicide. Willy's struggle to find himself is universalized, as Miller comments: "I think Willy Loman is looking for a kind of ecstasy in life that machine civilization deprives people of. He is searching for his identity, his immortal soul. Sympathy for Willy's suffering, combined with the audience's acute fear of experiencing this themselves, leaves a collected sense of pathos and determination to avoid the same fate as the characters. . The meta-theatricality of Willy's poor performance as the salesman character that he and society have constructed, encourages the audience not to live in bad faith. This accords with Yeats's assertion that "tragedy must always be a drowning and a breaking of the dikes which separate man from man." Thus, catharsis has a unifying effect, necessary in a modern and individualistic society, and a technological “machine civilization” which has an isolating effect. However, as Leech points out, Willy is not tragic in the Aristotelian sense of the term, because “he is a victim of the American dream rather than of the human condition”. While the themes of family cohesion and death are universal, the specific causes of Willy's tragedy and the audience's sense of catharsis are based on an understanding of a specific geographic, sociocultural, and economic situation. Therefore, through catharsis, Miller affirms the capacity and necessity for tragedy in modern society, but one that is not an Aristotelian genre, but rather a reinvented style of modern tragedy. Keep in mind: this is just a sample. Get a custom article now from our expert writers.Get a custom essayUltimately, the death of a salesman does not make tragedy implausible. Instead, Miller encompasses both ancient and contemporary ideas of tragedy and tragic heroism. If "the play embodies, for many, the peripeteia, hamartia and hubris that Aristotle considered essential to all great tragedies", this can also be disputed. Miller definitely doesn't find them.",.238-45.