A Worn Path Essay, Research Paper
Tragedy and the Common Man
An Essay by Arthur Miller
1949
In this age few tragedies are written.
It has often been held that the lack is due to a
paucity of heroes among us, or else that modem
man has had the blood drawn out of his
organs of belief by the skepticism of science, and the
heroic attack on life cannot feed on an
attitude of reserve and circumspection. For
one reason or another, we are often held to be below
tragedy–or tragedy above us. The
inevitable conclusion is, of course, that
the tragic mode is archaic, fit only for the very
highly placed, the kings or the kingly, and where this
admission is not made in so many words it is
most often implied.
I believe that the common man is as apt
a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings
were. On the face of it this ought to be
obvious in the light of modern psychiatry,
which bases its analysis upon classific formulations,
such as the Oedipus and Orestes
complexes, for instance, which were enacted
by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in
similar emotional situations.
More simply, when the question of
tragedy in art is not at issue, we never hesitate to
attribute to the well-placed and the exalted the
very same mental processes as the lowly. And
finally, if the exaltation of tragic action were truly
a property of the highbred character
alone, it is inconceivable that the mass
mankind should cherish tragedy above all other forms,
let alone be capable of understanding it.
As a general rule, to which there may
be exceptions unknown to me, 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, if need be, to secure one thing–his
sense of personal dignity. From Orestes to
Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying
struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain
his “rightful” position in his society.
Sometimes he is one who has been
displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to attain
it for the first time, but the fateful wound
from which the inevitable events spiral is
the wound of indignity, and its dominant force is
indignation. Tragedy, then, is the consequence of
a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself
justly.
In the sense of having been initiated
by the hero himself, the tale always reveals what has
been called his “tragic flaw,” a failing that is
not peculiar to grand or elevated
characters. Nor is it necessarily a weakness. The
flaw, or crack in the character, is really
nothing–and
need be nothing–but his inherent
unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he
conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image
of his rightful status. Only the passive,
only those who accept their lot without active
retaliation, are “flawless.” Most of us are in that
category.