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Death Of A Salesman

Death of a Salesman is a play that has come to redefine the concept of modern tragedy. A challenge to Philip Sydney's judgement that "tragedy concerneth the high fellow" Death of a Salesman is the tragedy of the common man of the low-man. Many critics charge that Death of a Salesman falls short of tragedy and is therefore disqualified as a "great" play. Tragedy is developed as a form of drama that incorporates incidents arousing pity and fear, to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions. The ancient philosopher, Aristotle, wrote the first, and in many ways the most significant, thesis on tragedy in his Poetics. He argued that the protagonist of a tragedy must be a man of noble birth, who due to some predestined flaw, or hamartia, in his character, suffers greatly. Aristotle argues that many tragic representations of suffering and defeat can leave an audience feeling not depressed, but relieved and perhaps even exalted. He also argues that a tragic hero will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror if he is of higher than ordinary moral worth. For Willy to be a tragic hero in the Aristotelian sense, he would have to be a man of obvious virtue who has a tragic flaw that leads to his downfall. This would place the blame for the events of the play firmly on Willy's shoulders, even though the punishment is extreme.

Willy Loman does not fit the criteria of a traditional tragic hero in one telling way – he is not of noble birth. Miller believed that "the common man is as apt for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were" and that it mattered not whether he "falls from a great height or a small one." People who are atop the social hierarchy can still hold a high place in other peoples' hearts – we can see that Linda adores Willy, and until Biff's discovery of his affair with the Woman, he and Happy idolise him. Willy aspires to be a tragic hero; he is man of "massive dreams" not high stature, although Biff's proclamation of him in Act II as a...