Death of a Salesman as a Modern Classic Tragedy - Essay Example

Death of a Salesman is a Modern ic Tragedy According to Aristotle’s theory of Tragedy in the Poetics, there are six elements required, listed inorder of importance: 1) Plot; 2) Character; 3) Thought or Theme; 4) Diction, sometimes now called voice; 5) Song or Melody and 6) Spectacle. The fifth element may seem not to be there in Miller’s classic play, because there is no chorus, but the other characters actually serve this purpose. Spectacle may also seem problematic, because there are no special staging effects, but the spectacle is there in the scope of the plot and the immensity of the tragedy. Even though they have changed a little, all of Aristotle’s elements for tragedy are here. Plot Plot is the most important element discussed in Aristotle’s poetics. He insists that the play must be a construct built upon cause and effect, and that both of these must be within the context of the play, and the cause must precede the effect. The tragedy must be important, showing some universal theme. But the most important of these is the putting-together (? structuring) of the events. For tragedy is a mimesis not of men [simply] but of an action, that is, of life. 20 Thats how it is that they certainly do not act in order to present their characters: they assume their characters for the sake of the actions [they are to do]. And so the [course of] events -- the plot -- is the end of tragedy, and the end is what matters most of all. (Aristotle 21) Death of a Salesman fulfills these requirements very well. If we look at Death of a Salesman, we find several plots within the play and all are complete and flow chronologically from cause to effect. However, the main story centers around the inability of Willy to change, which cost him everything. Willy is an old fashioned salesman in a new fast moving world, and he has been left behind. His dreams for his children are just as passé and unrealistic, as there is no way they can every be realized, and Willy cannot let go of them. He lives in a fantasy world he created, and can no longer separate it from reality. Each of the boys has his own tragedy, life ambitions never realized, because they were never allowed to create their own dreams and could never achieve those of their father. Biff could never get past catching his father with another woman and knowing that his father gave that woman his mother’s silk stockings. Finally, there is Linda Loman, possibly the most tragic of all, because she did nothing. Linda Loman deferred to her husband, even with the boys, so she is totally ineffectual, and because she entrusted her dreams to Willy, she loses by default. All she ever wanted was him and his solution to his biggest problem took that away. Willy achieves his last goal, paying for the house with the life insurance for his death, but this action robbed his wife of everything she wanted, so even in his triumph he is wrong. The chain of cause and effect follows logically from beginning to end. First we see that Willy is really stuck in the fantasy world he created to make himself feel ok. He is planting seeds for a garden where no sun ever reaches. He still believes that his sons can achieve the greatness that he missed when the world changed. By trying to live vicariously through his children, Willy set them on a course of failure. By his unwillingness, or inability, to let these “dreams” go, he has frozen them in place also. Willy’s final attempt at heroism, is the most tragic action of all, because he sacrifices everything and in the process dealt a final hurt to his faithful wife. The one flaw in the plot is that there is more characterization than action. Miller created characters like deer in headlights and showed us the oncoming semi-truck. In this it deviates slightly from Aristotle’s idea of a tragedy. “Miller makes a mistake that has helped blind us to the plays full meaning. His mistake was to seem to emphasize the importance of character over form when his play employs a form in which, as Aristotle points out, the most important element "is the arrangement of the incidents, for tragedy is an imitation, not of men but of action and life, of happiness and misfortune" ( On Poetry and Style). (99) Character Arthur Miller painted the characters of the whole Loman family, even the brother of Willy in his hallucinations. Willy exhibits fatal pride more than anything, and this pride is even misplaced, because he was never the great salesman of his fantasies. Aristotle expected a tragic character to be heroic at some point, to show courage. Though Miller’s characters are exaggerations almost to the point of becoming grotesques, they all have a moment of courage. Biff had gotten stuck in his rage when he discovered his father with another woman, and he never got out of it. He spent his life, so far, trying to steal happiness. Happy, the forgotten son, is reasonably successful, but he is never really acknowledged by his father. He is really the one who cares about Willy, but he has always lived in the shadow of the fantasy of Biff’s athletic success. Linda, in the Aristotelian sense, is the true tragic heroine, even though Aristotle did not really consider women as equal to men and considered that valor was not feminine. However, she actually steps out of her mouse role long enough to upbraid the boys for disrespecting their father. However, she is the one who suffers the most. The end of the play finds her financially set, but broken all the same, as she has lost everything she ever cared about. Some may argue that she cannot be a tragic heroine in the Aristotelian sense, because she is female. However, assuming that Aristotle was a man of his time, his opinion would have changed were he living now. Even Willy does not perfectly fit Aristotle’s description of the tragic hero, because he is a common man. However, we may also attribute that to his contemporary culture. "When a vast number of people are divested of alternatives, as slaves are, it is rather inevitable that one will not be able to imagine drama, let alone tragedy, as being possible for any but the higher ranks of society." (Bloom 39) Thought (or Theme) The overwhelming theme of this play is dreams, and how useless they are if not followed by action. If all one has is fantasy, reality will eventually show fantasy dreams to be false and unreal. Miller’s tragic character is stuck in his own unrealistic view of the world and misses or actually refuses other opportunities. Just as Willy refuses a job, because he cannot admit he is a failure. Progress running over people is another panoramic theme as change seems to happen faster than most of Miller’s characters can deal with, even the successful ones. The house is a wonderfully poetic representation of progress running roughshod over civilization. The coldness of modern business is well represented by Willy’s boss, the son of the former owner. The old man had kept Willy on out of charity, but there is no place for charity in the new world of profit. Thought also encompasses dialogue, that it is appropriate to the character and shows the character’s traits. Miller uses an appropriately informal syntax and many casual repetitions to suggest an all-American quality. It is hardly relevant to claim, as does George Steiner, that "The brute snobbish fact is that men who die speaking as does Macbeth are more tragic than those who sputter platitudes in the style of Willy Loman." 3 (Bloom 50) In fact, the dialog is one element which makes Miller’s characters so memorable and real. Diction While one might think that this is the use of dialogue, it is more the use of linguistic constructs like metaphors and similes, and of the creation of the symbolic. In Death of a Salesman, the play is structured like a poem using images, such as the silk stockings, which symbolize prosperity, just as mending them symbolizes poverty. Darning socks was something middle or lower class women did to save money, while upper class people did not bother mending such inexpensive items. The play is full of symbols for masculinity in sport or the ability to fix things, like the roof. Song, or melody This portion is assumed by many to be missing in most modern plays. However, the chorus is still present, but their function has been placed within the action and words of a secondary character. In the case of Death of a Salesman, the chorus is played by the hallucinatory characters. They point out contradictions, failings, meanings and plans of action, just as Aristotle’s chorus did. They serve the function to explain and argue with the main character, much like a conscience. They also fill in information which impacts the play, in this case the rich brother character which serves to make Willy feel useless. Spectacle This is generally special effects etc. of the staging, for example the use of scrim curtains in The Miracle Worker and Fiddler on the Roof. No such special effects are used in Death of a Salesman, but there is spectacle all the same in the panoramic scope of the play. It covers a whole adult life and more, since they have been paying on the house for thirty years. It spans an era where a lot of change took place, and this is part of the play. The universality cannot be denied. For Vernant, the answer lies in the mythical or fictional dimension of tragedy that removes it from a strictly realistic or historical context and "lays bare the network of contradictory forces that assail all human beings," an emotional uniformity (p. 247). The final denouement in this play is definitely cathartic, as Willy learns truly how ineffectual he is, and that is part of the tragedy, Biff frees himself from the conscripts of his anger, and happy is shown to be the truly devoted son. The final scene presents a moving catharsis for the audience as we are drawn into Linda Loman’s grief and her final ability to cry at the grave, her final admission that Willy is really dead. At this point she has stopped denying the loss and we know she will begin to heal, but the pain will remain forever, just below the surface, and the blow struck to her is nearly soul destroying. Willy was her whole existence, so her universe has done a paradigm shift. Her final tears of release releases the audience from the spell of Arthur Miller. "The enactment of his suffering, fall, and partial enlightenment, provokes a mixed response: that anger and delight, indignation and sympathy, pity and fear, which Aristotle described as catharsis." (Bloom 107) The final scene in the graveyard is cathartic for the entire audience and releases the pent up emotion from the play. References Aristotle, On Poetry and Style Aristotle. Aristotles Poetics. Trans. George Whalley. Ed. John Baxter and Patrick Atherton. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1997 Arthur Millers Death of a Salesman. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House, 1988. Bloom, Harold, ed. Willy Loman. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. McManus, Barbara, 2009, Outline of Aristotles Theory of Tragedy in the POETICS, http://www2.cnr.edu/home/bmcmanus/poetics.html Vernant Jean-Pierre, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece [ 1972, 1986]. Trans. Janet Lloyd. New York: Zone Books, 1988. Read More