Tragedy And The Common Man Essay

In his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man”, Arthur Miller explains that the genre of tragedy is commonly associated exclusively with nobility or those in the highest social classes, and as a result, the genre is assumed no longer relevant. He seeks to return our conceptions of tragedy to what he considers the true definition of it, which is applicable to the “common man”. Miller presents a more optimistic view of tragedy in that he explains that it demonstrates one’s “indestructible will” to achieve his or her humanity. He defines a tragic hero as someone who dares to question absolutely everything in an effort to achieve actualization and, because this mission is prone to end in disaster, the tragic hero suffers greatly at the limitations and flaws of their own human condition. Miller says that we associate this heroic questioning with nobility because the tragic hero assumes a “tragic stature” that gives the hero a grandiose quality that we normally wouldn’t apply to a “common man”. He says that the “common man” is instead the perfect medium for tragedy. Miller says that the reason tragedies shake us so deeply is that we all experience the inevitable fear of displacement that comes from challenging the very nature of our existence, and that this fear is strongest in the “common man”. He proves this with his own “common

He is a salesman, and to make him even more unremarkable, Miller never even mentions what Willy sells. What makes this unremarkable “common man” a tragic hero however, is his tragic flaw: delusion. Willy is a failure by his own definition, and as much as he doesn’t want to, he can’t help but constantly question everything about himself, and to cover this up he distorts the reality he experiences and lies to himself. Through these distortions and lies we can see the problems that Willy finds within himself, and we can see the suffering that has come to Willy through his dysfunctional world-views and