Willy Loman's Evaluation as a Tragic Hero
In his essay "Tragedy And The Common Man," playwright Arthur Miller offers a modern definition for tragedy and a new criteria for the tragic hero. Due to his "underlying struggle...attempting to gain his rightful position in his society," Willy is a perfect example of Arthur Millers idea of a tragic hero (Tragedy 228).Willy exemplifies four aspects of Arthur Miller's utopian tragic hero; he possesses a tragic flaw, he is degraded by society, his surroundings seem to conspire against him, and despite his hardships he struggles against the world to maintain his dignity. Tragic heroes are often characterized because they bear a tragic flaw. Willy's obvious tragic flaw is his pride. He takes pride in everything he does, he even says, "Call out the name Willy Loman and see what happens!", just to display to his sons how much pride he takes in his name (Death 62). His lifelong dream was to live the life of a salesman and to "die the death of a salesman", and for people to recognize his name everywhere that he traveled (Death 81). He struggles with the reality that he was unsuccessful in completing his dream, and refuses to stop trying. He becomes indignant with his piers when they try to explain that he was a failure, for examp
Willy could not achieve tragic hero status on his own. Fate has it that life seems to work against him. He depended on his children to care for him but they left him on his own. When his life begins to get difficult and he is going through hardships he loses his job. Worst of all he is losing his mind and his friends. With his world slipping out of his grip, Willy's dreams become distorted and his pride begins to dissipate. Willy realizes that he is in an "unchangeable environment...[and from that he derives] the terror and fear that is classically associated with tragedy," and makes him lose confidence in the rest of the world (Tragedy 228). He almost loses faith in the idea that he is "not a dime a dozen," but chooses rather to die before his veiled sense of reality shatters and he is exposed to what is really happening to himself (Death 132). Although his environment always tried to repress Willy, he continues to force his way towards the top, and towards his dreams. Willy Loman is aging and losing his mental stability. This is clear to many of the people in his environment. They begin to conceive him as useless and degrade him to a lower standard in society. Willy refuses to realize that he deserves nothing more than to
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Approximate Word count = 839
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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