Tragically Flawed
Last week in summing up the differences in dramatic genres for Introduction to Theatre, the discussion turned to the absence of tragedy in the modern world. Though Death of a Salesman purports to fill the bill as a tragic work for the modern times it points out many of the problems that Tragedy has in gaining resonance today. Part of the trouble of Miller’s play is the way it attempts to place the blame of Willie Lowman on the “Capitalist System” and the false promise of the American Dream. Lowman’s Suicide at the end of the play is not born of his personal choice but a last effort to find some kind of dignity, something akin to a samurai performing sepukku, but where the insurmountable humiliation of failure is really no fault of his own but that of the system. Miller disputed in the preface to his play that one of the key ingredients to Tragedy is the fall of a great heroic man, hence Lowman or Everyman can become tragic if only they face an insurmountable force. What is truly missing in Miller’s play is not the dignity of the leading role but the responsibility of that character to take account of their actions and act with understanding with a pursuit toward greater knowledge. Actions can only rise to the level of Tragedy if characters take responsibility for the actions. Without responsibility, the chief results of tragedy are pity alone. We are not prompted to fear the fate of the protagonist who does not take responsibility because they are not as self aware of their problem than we are of theirs. To fear the tragic consequences of heroic action is to see ourselves in the hero, self aware of the implications of action and inaction. The Modern world lacks the certainty to attribute responsibility because, in many ways, we are more aware of the complexity of actions, layers of motives and influences that exist outside anyone’s full knowledge. Nonetheless, there is an unmistakable cowardice in the way leaders use that ambiguity to their advantage to deny any culpability. The consequences of our Tragedy-free world is not that terrible events are reduced in scope to accidents, but by avoiding responsibility for failure we have lost the genuine pursuit of self-knowledge.
