What Makes Loman a Tragic Hero?

Arthur Miller is one of the advocates of a modern conception of tragic hero. His fall from happiness to misery arouses pity and fear in the audience and brings about the purgation of such emotions.

Willy Loman differs in several ways from a traditional tragic hero. The main difference is that he is not a man of high stature; he is a mere salesman. Miller says that the common man can be a proper tragic hero if his story engages issues of importance, such as the sense of Personal dignity, the survival of the race, or the relationships of Man to God. As a hero Willy does not fully fit into the traditional pattern, but in some respects he comes out as a tragic hero.

 

Loman a Tragic Hero

According to Aristotle, a tragic hero is neither too good nor too bad and Willy is not thoroughly good or thoroughly bad. He wants to see his, sons in great positions. But at the same time he has a secret relation with a woman. Thus he combines both the good and bad qualities. But once-again the elements are very modern in nature. The extramarital affair is certainly a modern problem.

Like a traditional tragic hero Willy also has a tragic flaw, which brings about his downfall. His flaw is that he lives in a dream world and has strong belief in American Dream. He cannot face reality. He has always had excuses for his own failures and has ruined Biff’s life by indulging him in any whim including theft. He believes that he and his sons are well-liked and surely will achieve success because of their personal attractiveness. This wrong conception leads him to the act of suicide. His “hubris”, his arrogance, lies in his thinking that he could reach the top in that society. So, Willy dies at the hands of his tragic flaws. 

According to Aristotle, tragic heroes also have a moment of recognition, or anagnorisis. This is supposed to be a moment where the hero realizes his terrible mistake and usually moans about it a lot. Willy has a small realization near the end of the play. He never says it directly, but at some point-probably after Howard fires him-he must realize that he is just never going to succeed in business. If he didn’t come to this realization, then he wouldn’t decide to kill himself so Biff could use his life insurance money. 

Thus, though Willy Loman does not fulfill all the requirements of the classical tragic hero, we can call him a modern tragic hero. Through Willy, Miller creates a “tragedy of the common man”, in order to show that the sorrows of a common 'man are just as Worthy, of dramatization as those of kings.