Aristotle laid down the basics principles of tragedy in his Poetics. He wrote that the purpose of tragedy was to make the audience feel "pity and fear" for the characters. Aristotle believed that tragedy brought about a catharsis of his emotions. Catharsis is something that arouses solemn emotions, but is not depressing. The hero of any ancient Greek tragedy was a great man who suffered because of a tragic flaw, or error in judgment. The hero was a person of noble stature, but was responsible for his or her own

downfall. The fall is a not pure loss. There is some increase in awareness, some gain in self-knowledge, and some discovery on the part of the tragic hero.

Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is one of his best-known plays, but it created a big controversy. "I believe that th

Silverberg believed that Shakespeare knew the meaning of tragedy also. He compared King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Prometheus, Agamemnon, and Oedipus to the lives of Roger and John. "This that the life and death of one of these men fulfills the requirements of classical tragedy, and one does not" (Silverberg 8). Roger was the happy man who led a happy life. His death was ironic and could not be considered as a tragedy in literary terms. John's decline, which came from bad choices and bad health, led to his downfall.

Richard B. Sewall explained his view of tragedy in The Tragic Form. "Tragedy makes certain distinguishable and characteristic affirmations, as well as denials, about the cosmos and the man's relation to it; the nature of the individual and his relation to himself; the individual in society;" (Sewall 166). Cosmos is the theory of the universe and humanity's relationship to it. Writers of tragedies assumed the existence of a power beyond humanity, such as God. Good and evil were both forces in cosmos. Tragedies were more concerned with evil, but the belief in good kept the hero from giving up.

The tragic character always protests, putting himself against something. He puts himself in a position that forces him to go up against whatever would frustrate him. The character accepts his conflict and goes through a phase Sewall calls the character's "perception." "He proceeds, suffers, and

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