The Semi-Tragedy of a Salesman

We sort of touched on the idea of this play being a tragedy–I think–but now that I have read the “Tragedy and the Common Man” essay I don’t think I want to write about anything else. I am not sure if I am convincing myself that we talked about tragedy so I can blog about it, or if we really talked about it in class, but regardless, I am going to talk about it in this blog.

*Also, I was wondering if anyone else feels this way, I am always mad at myself at Sunday blog time because every week I say to myself, “Robert, don’t say all of your thoughts in class or you will be left idea-less when blog time comes.” Every week I fail. Every week I say all of my ideas in class and then I sit down at the computer devoid of ideas at blog time.

I am similar to a sponge that has squeezed all of its water onto a table to clean it out of enjoyment and the kindness of his heart, and then when the sponge really needs to clean something it is all dry and useless because it spent too long cleaning the table. But I plan to continue telling all my ideas in class anyway.

So here we go.

I think the more important part of this play is not the actual death of the salesman, Willie, but the culmination of his death. This tragic culmination, as it were, is true the “death” of Willie. By the time his physical death takes place, Willie, and everything Willie stood for, hoped for, and dreamed of was dead.

After reading Arthur Miller’s essay I agree with what he says without saying. What he says without saying is that the Death of a Salesman is a tragedy. I am sorry Arthur, but I semi-disagree. I think the play is a Semi-Tragedy (and yes I will coin my own term for this idea and refer to Arthur in the vocative as if I am on a first name basis with him).

His essay is very good, but the only thing I didn’t think he had good support for was the idea of the “fall.” Although he argues that the flaw makes the fall into just losing what he “conceives to be…his image of his rightful status” (Arthur 1833). I think that is unfortunate to lose one’s image of one’s rightful status, but I do not think that loss constitutes a fall. What it constitutes is a trip that one stumbles from but gathers oneself and stands once again. Willie does not stand, but he definitely gathers himself. Maybe Arthur was not very athletic and struggled with this gathering-falling concept.

I think the fall of the protagonist in a tragedy is so important to the effectiveness and definition of a tragedy. What makes Death of a Salesman a less effective tragedy is that Willie hardly falls. In the play Willie’s past is left ambiguous by Arthur on purpose. This ambiguity is effective to show the confusion in Willie’s mind, but it also harms our ability to recognize a true fall in the protagonist. It seems fully possible that Willie has always been this unsuccessful as a salesman and as a person. It seems more likely that he was at least a little bit better than he is at the end of his life; however, this small difference between earlier Willie and Willie at his death shows evidence of the minimal fall Willie has made as a character.

Although Miller is a modern Aristotle in discussing tragedy, I think that because of the lack of a true and large enough fall in the Death of a Salesman it is not actually tragedy, but only a Semi-Tragedy. (633)