April Wheeler As A Tragic Hero

In Arthur Miller’s 1949 New York times piece Tragedy and The Common Man he claims that the most tragic stories are those of the average person “who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing-his sense of personal dignity.” It is often believed that the reason not many tragedies are written today is because there is no tragedy to be found in today’s common man, Miller believes the exact opposite to be true. He believes that “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were.” A novel that shows the journey to selfhood of a tragic hero brilliantly is Richard Yates’ novel Revolutionary Road. Within the novel the character April Wheeler is this so-called tragic hero. Despite seeming to be an average,
They have a nice big house in the suburbs and everyday daddy goes off into the city to work at his nice job at Knox Business Machines. They are by no means the kings of their time, but simply the common folk working every day so that they can have a nice little life with their family. Many of the people April knows will happily keep up the facade until the day they die. But April realizes the monotony and indecency of this life and hatches a plan to extradite herself from the situation. She decides to move to paris and convinces her husband Frank. All seems to be going according to plan, but everything is derailed when she discovers that she has gotten pregnant. She plans to abort the fetus right away but Frank discovers what she is planning on doing and berates her until she concedes and says she won’t have the abortion. But something changes. She realizes that just like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman she must be willing to lay down her life to secure her sense of personal dignity. So, with full knowledge of the risks of a late-term abortion, she attempts to abort the baby. She is successful but dies in the process. And that is what makes her story so tragic. She knew full well that she would be hurting her family and even sacrificing her very existence, but she knew that to secure her sense
Although it is sad that they are losing their life, there is also joy to be found as they are finally fulfilling their destiny even if it mean losing their life. It is similar to sending your children off to college for most parents. They are sending the thing they have poured every ounce of love into from its birth out into the real world. For them it is tragic, but within that tragedy is that same omnipresent sense of pride. That sense of pride is very apparent with April Wheelers story. It had that undeniable feeling that she was losing everything but doing it for a damn good reason. And that is what makes her a