Death of a salesman as a modern tragedy

 

Death of a salesman as a modern tragedy

 

Arthur miller is  prominent American modern dramatist well renowned for his realistic  tragedies such as Death of a salesman, All my sons and Crucible. All his works focus on the post first world war modern life based on the tragic death of the middle class characters.

The great Greek philosopher and literary critic Aristotle gave a perfect definition for a tragedy in his well known critical work poetics. It is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

It can be summed up as:

Every tragedy is an imitation of a serious action, it must have a proper beginning, middle and end and a reasonable length as well, it must evoke the two essential emotion such as pity and fear and finally a perfect tragedy shall purify the emotion. All this essential components of a tragedy is discernible in the modern drama Death of a salesman.  Thus, it is undoubtedly a tragedy.

 

According to Aristotle a perfect tragedy should consist of a complex plot as it contains the moment of anagnorisis and peripetia. Anagnorisis is a moment in a play in which the central character realises or discovers the truth. In the earlier phase of the drama Willy recollects his past and he himself believes that he was a successful salesman and achieved greatness in life moreover well liked by the society. He finds time to boast by explaining his own tiny achievement. Later he himself realises the fact that everything is an illusion even his own family itself longing for his death.

Peripetia is a sudden reversal of fortune or change in circumstances. Having realised that he is a burden for his family even he sons too scorn him, eventually he commits suicide accepting the fact that his death will be a kind of relief for his family.

Modern tragedy follows some patterns of classical tragedy with certain experimentation and deviation.  A classical tragedy focuses on the life and death of a noble person with superior or royal position, whereas the modern tragedy focuses the life of a lower middle class person. As Arthur miller remarks a common man is the apt subject for tragedy.

 

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In fact Willy loman is a modern tragic hero. There is a fundamental opposition between a classical tragic hero and a modern tragic hero as far as Aristotle is concerned a tragic hero is a noble person belongs to a superior or royal status in the society. Not at all a common man. While the modern tragic hero is unscrupulous, corrupt, immodest and morally degenerated. Here willy deceives his own family and his wife.