Arthur Miller's Views On Tragedy And The Common Man
1. In Arthur Miller’s “Tragedy and the Common Man”, he states the common man is “as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” because the common man truly understands fear. Miller writes, “The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster in being torn away from our chosen image of what or who we are in this world. Among us today this fear is as strong and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who truly knows this fear best” (Miller 2). This means, that through the common man’s familiarity and understanding of fear, they are apt for tragedy. Miller believes that the common man’s tragic flaw, the desire to attain personal dignity and the fear of being outcast, will lead to their downfall and inevitable tragic end. In opposition to other definitions of tragedy, such as those of Aristotle, where the character had to be of noble stature in order to experience misfortune, Miller believed that the common man is suitable for such demise.
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According to “Tragedy and the Common Man”, “the tragic feeling” is evoked in us as viewers of a play when a character is willing to sacrifice everything in order to preserve personal dignity; through a characters effort to gain a position in society, tragic events occur. Arthur Miller writes, “I think the tragic feeling is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who is ready to lay down his life, in need be, to secure one thing—his sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggles that of the individual attempting to gain his “rightful” position in his society” (Miller 1). Thorough our sympathy for the character, we are able to relate to such passion, resulting in the “the tragic feeling” Miller
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