The Tragic Hero In Arthur Miller's Death Of A Salesman

Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, established the ideas that led to the development of modern science, the Industrial Revolution, and the creation of the United States. He laid the foundation for reason by creating the basic principles of scientific epistemology, which is the role of senses and abstraction, the laws of logic and of reasoning. Furthermore, Aristotle kept the Greek theatre alive through his analysis of poetry in his book Poetics. Poetics is the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory and the first philosophical book that focuses on literary theory. Through this, he created the tragic hero and states, “a man doesn’t become a hero until he can see the root of his downfall.” According to Aristotle, the hero must endure a reversal of fortune (peripeteia) due to his tragic flaw (hamartia). They must then discover their mistake (anagnorisis) and receive their harsh fate. Arthur Miller’s play, Death of a Salesman, mostly portrays Willy Loman, the main character, as a tragic hero. Willy believes wholeheartedly in the American Dream, influenced by his successful and wealthy father and brother. However, Willy is unsuccessful in achieving his goals due to the major industrialization around him, his excessive pride, and distorted
reality, thus characterizing him as a tragic hero. Arthur Miller portrays Willy as mostly a tragic hero through his hubris and unfortunate fate. Willy spends his whole life believing that he will become wealthy like his brother Ben through hard work and charisma. However, Willy’s blind faith and excessive pride leads him to his unprosperous life forcing him to fight for his dignity. He fails to realize until the end of the play that his age is failing him and he is unable to support his family. Willy’s values stay the same, while the country around him is evolving theirs into more industrial, which leaves him behind blindly believing in the American Dream. His wife, Linda, realizes what is happening and supports him as much as he will allow her. However, when their sons come home and disrespect him, she tells them off, telling them the truth about their aging father; “Instead of walking he talks now… what goes through a man’s mind, driving seven hundred miles home without having earned a cent? Why shouldn’t he talk to himself? Why? When he was to go to Charley and borrow fifty dollars a week and pretend to me that it’s his pay?” (Miller 57). Willy’s mind is failing him due to his exhaustion. Everyone around him is losing respect for him, except his wife. Linda protects Willy in the house by pretending nothing is wrong and keeps a careful eye on him to protect him. His whole life he has lived in a hopeful delusion that he will one day become successful and well-liked, and able to support his family. However, his excessive pride leads to his hamartia, therefore making him a tragic hero. Willy’s excessive pride causes him to avoid reality, avert his problems, and live a delusive life. What Willy doesn’t realize is that people achieve the American Dream through hard work like Bernard and with luck like Ben. At the end of the play, Biff is tired of the secrets and yells at his father screaming, “we never told the truth for ten minutes in this house!” (Miller 131). The whole family hides the truth from each other and live in a fictional world with a successful father, loving wife, and hard-working sons. Biff attempts to force Willy to see the reality they have been avoiding the whole time and admit the truth. Despite Biff’s effort to help his father, he gets blatantly ignored because Willy is stuck in his past with Ben. While Willy evades Biff’s attempts at bringing him into reality, he does come to the realization that he is finally able to help his family by killing himself. When realizing this, Willy mentions to himself, “Funny y’know? After all the… years, you end up more dead than alive” (Miller 98). This is Willy’s anagnorisis, the realization that his downfall was created by his own actions and he must face the consequences. His anagnorisis is what categorizes Willy as a tragic hero, and leads to his death. Arthur Miller describes Willy as a tragic hero due to his fall from a successful salesman to living on commission and being fired, which is caused by the character’s hubris and distorted reality.
Willy dreams of the future in which he will be well-liked and achieve his goals of being rich and maintain his job. However, his mind is so involved in the past and longing for the future that he does not focus on the present reality. This causes his life to no longer be prosperous, leading to his hamartia. This consequently leads to Willy Lomans tragic death after the realization of the reality he has been avoiding. Willy’s enduring of the hamartia and anagnorisis due to his hubris leads him to be characterized as a tragic
hero.