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... he still has an affair; this hypocrisy is highlighted by the way this line leads on to a scene with The Woman. Despite telling her that she is "the best" he constantly interrupts her and it's obvious that the household revolves around Willy and his two boys - this is symbolized by the three chairs at the kitchen table. We can also see how Willy is mentally "weak" - he confuses the present with his romanticism past. Linda's "strangely rhythmic" sentence "Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a person" suggests that Willy is a potentially tragic figure. He too can be reduced to bad behaviour by circumstances beyond his control.
Willy may not have achieved a great deal, as she points out, but he did have high ideals that he has been unable to realise. "He's a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him... a small man can be just as exhausted as a great man", - this reference to "great" men recalls Aristotle's view of tragedy. This almost seems to be Miller addressing the audience himself, stressing that the "little" people can suffer and strive just a much a the "great. " Biff twice calls Willy a "prince" and asks if Willy's rubber hose is "designed to make a hero out of you... there " ll be no pity for you, you hear it?" One could argue that Willy Loman's hamartia is that typical of many Greek tragedies, his pride and also his refusal to accept reality. Shakespeare's heroes were motivated by high passions such as lust in Romeo and Juliet or ambition as seen in Macbeth, but Miller suggests that these are no more important or admirable than Willy's determination to be well-liked.
Willy's mantra is that personality is the key to business, and we can see this admiration for Willy during Charley's eulogy in the requiem scene- "He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. " It is also Willy's complete faith in the Capitalist system and his determination to see material wealth as the only path to success that causes him to suffer. These loyalties demand that he continues to serve the system and he is bewildered at his lack of success. Some critics argue that Willy lacks the mental ability to be a true tragic hero. But Miller argues that if Willy were unaware of his separation from enduring values he "would have died contentedly while polishing his car... that he had not the intellectual fluency to verbalist his situation is not the same thing as saying that he lacked awareness. " We do see Willy undergo a sort of period of recognition - we see at the end of Act II he comes to realise that his son loves him and as Miller states "he is given his existence, so to speak - his fatherhood, for which he has always striven. " We also see Willy's realisation of what went wrong with Biff during the "flashback" hotel scene. His self-realisation is present, countering those who claim to the contrary.
It is clearly contained in the lines "I'm fat. I'm very-foolish" (of himself) and "I'm always in a race with the junkyard" (of American society. ) However, Willy need not realise his own faults and what they stem from, as they are clear enough to the audience. In fact, Dennis Welland states that "to Miller tragedy brings us both knowledge and enlightenment which it need not do for the tragic hero. " Willy dies, as tragic heroes must do, but his death affirms that the beliefs to which he has clung have ultimately destroyed him. I think Willy's suicide should be interpreted as a noble sacrifice, the only way to help Biff make something of himself.
He still believes that the only true value of a man's worth is how much he is liked and how much he has. It is tragic that a man's death should make him a sacrifice on the altar of the belief that has failed him. When Willy finally realises that Biff loves him, in spite of his affair with The Woman and his "phoney dream", he is both "astonished" and "elevated. " Despite his suicide he is as triumphant as the traditional tragic heroes, for he gains what he truly wants and values, his sons' love. Some critics argue that plays such as Death of a Salesman and The Crucible are not really tragic because they rub our noses in the social mire and depress rather than exalt, because they end with a note of question rather than a feeling of catharsis. Both plays deal with the disappointment of the American Dream, both Willy Loman and John Proctor are victims of the society in which they live (although this applies more literally to Proctor as essentially it is his society which kills him. ) I feel that at the end of Death of a Salesman the audience does feel a sense of catharsis in that Biff Loman has finally found himself, Willy is finally "free" of earthly unhappiness, and the Loman family are finally "free" from Willy's "little cruelties. " The main argument against the tragedy of Death of a Salesman is that Willy is not of high social status, although I feel that, just as Shakespeare adapted Greek tragedy to suit his society, Miller has adapted tragedy to fit into his society, and the play is just as relevant, if not more so, today than when it was written. In my opinion, Willy Loman is a truly modern tragic figure - Miller has bridged the gap between tragedy and the "low-man. " We are no longer "held to be below tragedy - or tragedy above us. " Willy embodies the typical American and as we can relate to him, it is almost as if the tragic events could happen to anyone of us.
As Miller himself says the conduct of kings "no longer raises our passions. "^ 3 If we pity kings we pity them as human beings undergoing hardship just like Willy. Miller himself argues that the common man may also gain "size" by his willingness to "throw everything he has into the contest - the battle to secure his rightful place in the world. " Bibliography Arthur Miller - Time bends Arthur Miller -Tragedy and the Common Man, the New York Times, 1949 Susan Harris Smith - Conceptualising Death of a Salesman as an American Play Dennis Welland - Death of A Salesman Philip Sydney quoted in Arthur Miller and Company edited by Christopher Bigsby
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