| Tragedy has been firmly an established type of drama from the beginning of western literature and theatre. It is one of the most long-lived literary genres. In common usage the word "tragedy" denotes not just a form of drama, but a particular kind of event, a specific experience or even a general view of world-order. The lasting impact of tragedy throughout the centuries can only be explained by the fact that its subject is more than some individual, regrettable misfortune. And great tragedies touch on some fundamental questions of the ultimate cause of human suffering, the origin and nature of evil in man, and the existence of a destructive or benevolent fate, the relationship between human and the society, man and the nature and so on. During the different stages of development, the genre has seen its impressive, however, critical changes. It is upon the basis of classical tragedy and penetrating understanding of the society combined with his rich and varied experiences that Arthur Miller has formed his own theory of tragedy.Arthur Miller is among the great dramatists coming out of the forties. He grew up in the Depression and witnessed his father's business failure and worked at variety of jobs. In the mid-thirties he studied journalism at Michigan University and began to write plays and radio scripts. Arthur Miller's best contribution to American drama is Death of a Salesman (1949), a play about Willy Loman, a salesman, and the values we all have. The staging of Death of a Salesman established his renowned reputation.A typical theme of Arthur Miller's plays concerned the dilemma of modem man in relation to his family and work. What occurred often in a Miller's play was that the hero found himself under a pressure from his society and its ethics, tried in vain to extricate himself from the physical and spiritual quandary into which he had fallen and found release only in death, often in the form of actual or virtual suicide. However, Miller was not completely pessimistic. Reading his plays, one feels a faith in man and in life.From the beginning of known literature, tragedy (as a dramatic form) has dealt with the decline and demise of man. The earliest Greek tragedies included a reversal of fortunes, in which a great or powerful person fell to his ruin from a high position of wealth and authority. From Sophocles' Antigone to William Shakespeare's Macbeth, this scenario had for centuries been the formula for some of the greatest tragedies in our literature.In the old Greek formula of a tragedy, the characters had to be of nobility and the tragic hero had to fall from some high status to a low one because of a tragic flaw in his character. In Aristotle's view, "The tragic hero...should be someone of high fame and flourishing prosperity." (Leon Golden,1968:22)The tragic hero would rise to great heights and then fall to equally great depths. This fall was the central theme of a tragedy and was brought about by fate. The protagonist usually had some "tragic flaw" which led him over the edge and to his doom. It was also important that the protagonist overcame his fate by learning from his mistakes, by overcoming his tragic flaw. In this way the fallen hero was ennobled and proved to be a better person despite of his fate.In the modem era, tragedy as described by Aristotle no longer existed. ArthuMiller wrote in his essay Tragedy and the Common Man that tragedy was not dead to modern writers but that it had to grow and develop to meet the changing needs of modern society. Death of a Salesman, which was considered to be one of the best three plays in the early 20th century, broke the mold of formulaic tragedies of previous eras. It was regarded as the best presentation of the author's views on tragedy.Death of a Salesman was Miller's most successful attempt at creating individual characters with universal significance when it first appeared on the American stage. There have been many debates over whether Death of a Salesman was a tragedy, accordingly, whether Willy Loman, the protagonist...
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