Death of a salesman as a tragedy. Death Of A Salesman As A Modern Tragedy Essay 2022-10-16
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Death of a Salesman is a play written by Arthur Miller in 1949. The play tells the story of Willy Loman, a salesman who is struggling to come to terms with the failures of his life and the futility of his existence. The play is a tragedy, as it shows the downward spiral of Willy's life and the devastating consequences of his inability to accept reality.
One of the key elements that makes Death of a Salesman a tragedy is the presence of a tragic hero. Willy Loman is a complex and nuanced character who is deeply flawed and struggling to find his place in the world. He is a man who has always believed in the American Dream and the idea that hard work and perseverance can lead to success and happiness. However, as the play progresses, it becomes clear that Willy's beliefs are unfounded and that he is unable to adapt to the changing world around him. This inability to adapt and come to terms with his own limitations leads to his tragic downfall.
Another element that contributes to the tragedy of Death of a Salesman is the way in which Willy's flaws and weaknesses are exposed over the course of the play. Willy is a man who is deeply insecure and has always relied on his ability to sell as a way of feeling important and valuable. However, as he grows older and the world around him changes, Willy finds it increasingly difficult to make a living as a salesman. This leads to a series of personal and professional failures that serve to highlight his inadequacies and insecurities.
The final element that makes Death of a Salesman a tragedy is the way in which Willy's family is affected by his downward spiral. Willy's wife, Linda, is a strong and loving woman who is devoted to her husband and tries to support him as best she can. However, she is powerless to stop Willy's descent into despair and is forced to watch as he becomes more and more isolated and unhappy. Willy's two sons, Biff and Happy, are also deeply affected by their father's struggles. Biff, in particular, is conflicted and torn between his love for his father and his own desire to live a fulfilling life.
In conclusion, Death of a Salesman is a powerful and poignant tragedy that explores the themes of failure, loss, and the human condition. Through the character of Willy Loman, Arthur Miller has created a complex and nuanced portrait of a man who is struggling to come to terms with the limitations of his life and the futility of his existence. Despite the many challenges and setbacks he faces, Willy remains a deeply sympathetic and relatable character, and his story serves as a reminder of the importance of acceptance and self-awareness in the face of life's challenges.
A Modern Tragedy: Death of a Salesman
Tragedy, on the other hand, may represent another aspect of existence: the misfortunes of ordinary individuals. A fatal flaw is something which all tragic heroes possess but not necessarily an inherent disadvantage. He is trying to help Willy understand what is important. What can I tell you? The tragedy of Biff throughout the play is that he is trying to live the life his father wants for him instead of living the one he wants. This earthiness is a part of modern realism but Willy is too much a victim of the system to be able to question it. Willy has also tried to pass these ideas of success onto his sons, Biff and Happy. It follows the tragic hero, Willy Loman, as he contemplates whether his family's life would be better if he passed away.
It also shows that he feels like his life is worthless. Always for his boys? His tragic flaw is his false version of how he is supposed to achieve the American Dream. The fact that Willy begins to realize his failures with the American dream is shown when he fantasizes about the past more and more. According to the traditional view, the tragic hero should be a person of a high status or one holding an exalted rank. Willy has not certainly that noble birth to put him on equal footing with such heroes as Oedipus or Hamlet, but still we respond to the sufferings of Willy as we do to Oedipus, Hamlet, Othello and Lear. It contacts, Ben, contacts! There are critics who very enthusiastically plead a case for the play, admitting it in the ranks of finest tragedy.
Also they may loose their love ones as a result. Willy is focused on superficial traits of people and not anything of substance. Throughout the play, it is revealed that Willy has potential of being carpenter as he is talented in it and also enjoys doing it. If death occurred at the end of the story instead of at its beginning, would this make Death of a Salesman more tragic? Many of these flashbacks focus on his brother Ben, with whom he regrets not going on adventures in Africa. It is also represents the theme of American tragedy. Eric Bentley, the unpredictable, stimulating critic feels that the play is not a tragedy. In the play, Miller depicts his central character, Willy Loman as a destitute salesman struggling to rise up the social ladder in a capitalist society, who remains deluded by a 'dream of success ' and takes on a relentless pursuit of happiness that eventually brings his tragic demise.
Willy Loman is merely a middle class salesman. He even tries to become a businessman for Willy. Only Linda offers him support and dotes on him in spite of all his shortcomings and whims. This pattern supports the idea that a tragedy can occur in In his paper, he demonstrates that it should be possible for everyone to be able to identify with the Willy does not consider this normal and severely regrets such failures such as raising his children poorly, as he sees it, not doing well in business, though he wishes he was, and cheating on Linda, showing her to be a commodity of which he takes advantage. Willy is a victim of a social evil, but he is too weak to meet the challenge and thus, though the evil is man-made and hence remediable, weaklings and nonentities like Willy cannot remedy it.
The Tragedy of American Exceptionalism in Arthur Millerās Death of a Salesman
Consistently throughout the play, Willy drifts in and out of a dream. In our daily life we cannot escape from the inescapable failures of life. . In Death of a Salesman, the main character Willy Loman is brought low by his own pride and self-delusion. Willy is too afraid to accept that his career is over and that the company has no need for him anymore.
When Willy is made to face brutal realities, it is too much for him. In the modern parlance, the play would definitely be regarded as a modern tragedy. And flashes of momentary courage cannot lead anyone to self-realization. He instills this idea in each of his sons. Tragedy is shown in both of the characters Willy and Biff Loman. The whole play is characterized by an intellectual muddle and a lack of candor that regardless of Mr. At the centre of each play is the tension between little people and big issues, and each play confirms our belief that little people cannot live up to big standards.
But we should now be careful and not be swept away in the inundation of reputation. His unwillingness to submit passively to the established order and values takes him down. The tragic flaw that leads to his downfall is his pursuit of the American Dream in a way that makes it unattainable to him. As we go through the play we see that he does not violet the properties of the universal grammar of a tragedy. Each of these plays is constructed to expose a pattern of guilt, to find out who is guilty and to impose the penalty of death.
As he gets older he realises that his life is diminishes away when he is still far away from achieving his dream. Arthur Miller, one of the prolific writers in America. . He has become so much part of the system of false value in a materialistic world that he dare not even deign to think of himself as apart from it. What about the order in Illinois? Death of a Salesman is a tragedy because it follows the traditional Greek model of a tragedy. Death of a Salesman takes an interesting twist at this point because usually the conflict only continues to escalate to the point where it finally ends with the death of the protagonist.
He seeks to achieve the American Dream, but when measuring his life according to those standards, he falls short and feels like a failure because he is not rich or popular, which are the two standards of success in the United States. Willy, who had yet to fill out his dream, put all his hopes into his son. The worst part is that he does not move from a position of ignorance to a position of knowledge but remains in utter ignorance throughout his life and dies with his illusions. According to Aristotle, a tragic should be a noble and admired individual. Miller himself was often hesitant to categorize the play as a pure tragedy. This suggests that in modern tragedy, it is the common man who endures and suffers while in Multiple plots and more than one central character in Modern Tragedy: Greek tragedies have one integrated and unified plot and a central character around which the entire tragedy revolved.
He wants to succeed without effort. Like a traditional tragic hero Willy also has a tragic flaw, which brings upon his downfall. Sadly, suicide leaves behind the pieces, like Linda and the boys, unable to make their own decisions and left hanging by their dependence on Willy. Death of a Salesman is an excellent example of how tragedy can begin at any point within a story; even though it may seem that everything was going well for Willy up until Howard Wagner fired him, this is not true. This character is usually a good person at heart, even if he or she is seriously flawed, so their fall is supposed to produce a cathartic release for the audience. According to the traditional concept of tragedy, the protagonist should be noble and a character of high status or rank. He also has flashbacks of incidents that haunt him in other areas.
