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Willy Lom Aristotle's Definition Of A Tragic Hero

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If we compare Death of a Salesman with what Aristotle's definition of a tragic hero, Willy Loman classifies as a tragic hero. His biggest downfall is the loose grasp of reality. He has all his “perfected dreams”and tries so hard to get away from the surroundings around him. Instead of being satisfied with the reality of his life, he continues to chase all of this fantasies. At this point he gets so happy when he is stuck in his fantasies that he ignores reality and do anything to not go back to facing the current family. He keeps this up with living the fantasy moments that he doesn't move forward with his life and stays miserable when he does come back from those little moments..That type of tragedy is called Hamartia. A good example of him being stuck in one of those moments was when he was thinking about what Ben ( the brother of Willy) said to the boys : “ Why boys, when I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God, I was rich.” That shows that Willy wants to take that knowledge and achieve it for himself, then his son Biff. He believes that in order to live by …show more content…

He wanted to see this American Dream so badly, that he looked at this all the wrong way. He strives to be successful, even if that means to be miserable and look away from reality. He doesn’t see the wrong in him but can see it in others and points out all the wrong in them. He imagines this high class man when all he is is a “common man”. With him not recognizing all his flaws even when he was reaching his deathbed, he still couldn’t see his wrongdoings and that is what lead him to his ultimate downfall. Even though Willy Loman did have a tragic flaw, reversal of fortune, and having as his fate being death, his failure to recognize reversal caused by his own actions as well as striving to achieve your "rightful" position in society classified him to be a modern tragic

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