Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman breaks the mold of formulaic tragedies of previous eras. In this play he deals with middle-class people. At the opening of the play, the tragic hero, an old traveling salesman, Willy Loman, has already fallen and from the beginning was never an influential, admirable, or famous individual accept in his own mind. Even his loyal wife Linda admits that he has never been a "great man" or even the "finest" of characters. Nevertheless, she maintains that he is worthy of some attention as a human being who suffers. After all, she says, "a small man can be just as exhausted as a great man."]

While some may view Willy as an all-together pathetic old man with absurd pretensions, Miller must see his character as a man aiming high and agonizing deeply. Willy Loman is a tragic hero who reflects the essence of a man's intent to claiming his whole due as a personality with struggle and without reservation demonstrating the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity.

ragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing- his sense of personal dignity." Death of a Salesman entirely reflects this general opinion of Miller. Just as Shakespeare's Hamlet and Macbeth attempt to gain a rightful position in their respective societies, Willy Loman seeks for his place in the world and is on an endless search for happiness and a sense of self worth. He is in constant concern about being well liked, and works himself to pieces over one of his son's football games. Although his values seem warped, his aspiration lost, and his problems trivial, the passion with which he attempts to achieve his flawed concept of success demonstrates a degree of greatness. He even dies in quest of his dream, which in itself achieves tragic status.

Although Death of a Salesman doesn't follow the traditional definition of a tragedy, centuries later it allows readers to know that tragedies still do exist. After hundreds of years of classical masterpieces from Shakespeare and Sophocles, "it is time... that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possibly lead in our time-the heart and spirit of the average man." Although pitiful to any spectator, Willy Loman represents every man living a life of quiet despe

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Approximate Word count = 1186
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)