er’s own definition of the tragic hero as defined in his essay, “Tragedy and the Common Man.” From a reading of this essay, supported by citations from Death of a Salesman and other texts, we shall see that from Miller’s definition, Willy Loman represents the quintessential tragic hero.
In this essay, Miller argues that the common man is the subject of tragic heroism just as much as classical thought argues the tragic hero must be of high birth or noble personage. Miller argues that much of modern psychiatry basis its analysis upon classic formulation like the Oedipus and Orestes complexes, however, these situations may have been acted out by classic figures by persons of high place but they are common emotional situations in modern man. Further, Miller contends that if tragic heroism were a phenomenon possessed only by the high-born it is unlikely the tragedy would retain such a high measure of popularity among the masses of mankind. What all tragedy, both classic and modern exhibits is an individual fighting for his sense of dignity in or to arrive at his proper place in society, “tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing – his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his rightful position in his society” (“Tragedy” 2).
Miller contends that sometimes the hero is displaced from his rightful position in society and at other times he is someone who seeks to attain it for the first time, but always the main sling and arrow, so-to-speak, from which the downward spiral of events transpires is “the wound of indignity, and its dominant force is indignation. Tragedy, t
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