Arthur Miller

The essay "Tragedy and the Common Man" (1949) by Arthur Miller is available here. Although this transcription has more than a few minor errors, I would urge you very emphatically to read it. It is an uplifting piece of work.

The essay is relevant to contextualising Death of a Salesman as a tragedy. (Note that the essay was published around the same time as the play) Some of the key points Miller makes in it are as follows:

1. Tragedies are not written as frequently as they used to be in the ancient times. Why? - "paucity of heroes among us"? Or was it because scepticism (also the Second World War, the rise of existentialism?) had shaken humanity's conviction in itself so badly that it was impossible to conceive of a tragic hero.

2. Either way, tragedy is assumed to be above the common man, in some way:

· This (Miller contends) is not true. e.g. Psychiatric evidence proves that complexes like the Oedipal, although drawing their names from the actions of kings, may be exhibited in the commonest of men and women.

· Also, when the question of "Tragedy" (as a genre) doesn't arise, it is not hard to accept that a corporate tycoon or a daily wage labourer should respond to similar emotional situations in similar ways.

· Finally, if Tragedy were truly only the domain of the "high-bred", then such mass popularity of the form would be unlikely.

3. Miller suggests that the “tragic feeling” is evoked in us when we see that the character is willing to “to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity.”

· For example: Orestes, Hamlet, Medea and Macbeth were all looking to regain their rightful place in society.

· It may be that either s/he has been displaced from it or is looking to acquire it for the first time – but the motivation behind their tragic actions is that of “indignation” (Latin dignus meaning worth or worthiness – therefore the feeling of being denied worth?).

· Therefore, since the hero’s fall is initiated by the hero himself/herself – the plot of the tale reveals the hero’s “tragic flaw” (hamartia).

4. The tragic flaw may not by itself be a drawback – it may be just an “inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are flawless.”

5. The average person therefore is (by Miller’s definition) “flawless” – only the few who risk questioning every accepted statute of life can be deemed heroic. And the fright or terror associated with classical Tragedy is evoked because of the frightening nature of this “total examination of the unchangeable environment.”

6. From this heroic process of reorienting the world – the hero learns. And this learning from experience, from unceasing inquiry is not limited to nobility alone.

7. Insistence on the rank of the hero is obstinate clinging to the outward, superficial formal aspects of Tragedy. But, even the formal definition of Tragedy is obsolete – our notions of justice have changed radically from the classical age when these rules were established.

8. (Imp: The crux of the argument) The “tragic night” therefore is the state of human existence that is most conducive to its progress – suppressive, unquestioning existence is wrong. The tragic, dynamic world where nothing is taken for granted, even at the risk of falling – is the true freedom humanity must pursue.

· This revolutionary questioning of the world is what is terrifying (see pt. 5) – and no common person is debarred from doing this.

9. Extending this view of tragedy, its lack in the present (Miller’s immediate context) time could be accounted for.

· Literature had largely moved towards incorporating either a sociological or a psychiatric worldview.

· Adhering only to the sociological perspective would mean taking away all individual agency from the character – also, if society were to be blamed solely then the protagonist, the tragic hero, would have to be entirely blameless. And thus, an invalid character.

· Similarly, if a purely psychiatric view of the world were to be maintained then everything wrong with the world would arise and die in our minds alone – heroic action, tragic action would cease to exist.

10. Therefore, the tragic plot cannot arise in a world where any institution is above question – “everlasting, immutable or inevitable”.

· (Imp.) But tragedy need not necessarily preach revolution – the questioning may only reaffirm the hero’s initial beliefs but for the moment that the world is being questioned, everything is in flux.

· During this flux, the character gains “stature” – the stature that is wrongly attributed to nobility, can actually be gained by any average person during this dynamic state of risk and inquiry (make sense?)

11. Another misconception (that Miller tries to refute) is that tragedies are necessarily pessimistic.

· Tragedies are commonly accepted as “stories with sad ends”

· This is the exact opposite of what Tragedy actually asserts – Tragedies are actually more optimistic than say, Comedies.

· Tragedy assumes that human will is actually “indestructible” – that it can take on the collapse of the world as it exists, in the hope of finding what is real, what is true.

· “The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy” – where the entire battle is pathetic, where the hero had no chance of winning, the work is pessimistic. But in tragedy, the distance between the potential of the hero and the ultimate outcome (his/her fall) is narrower.

12. Because of this belief in the “perfectibility of man”, tragedies have been revered over the centuries. And this belief is grounded, and should remain grounded in the common man.

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I am including two passages from the text that relate to points 10 and 11 respectively, because whether or not you read anything else, you must must read these lines:

“The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this stretching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in his world.”

“For, if it is true to say that in essence the tragic hero is intent upon claiming his whole due as a personality, and if this struggle must be total and without reservation, then it automatically demonstrates the indestructible will of man to achieve his humanity. The possibility of victory must be there in tragedy. [...] And it is curious, although edifying, that the plays we revere, century after century, are the tragedies. In them, and in them alone, lies the belief--optimistic, if you will, in the perfectibility of man. It is time, I think, that we who are without kings, took up this bright thread of our history and followed it to the only place it can possible lead in our time--the heart and spirit of the average man.”