Conscience In The Harsh Reality

Arthur Miller (1915-2005) began his career as a playwright when he was still a university student. After his first great success, All My Sons, in 1949, he wrote Death of a Salesman, which was a great sensation of the year and "the first great American tragedy". Death of a Salesman, brought him Pulitzer Prize, the Drama Critics' Circle Award and Tony Award. Arthur Miller has since ranked as one of the 20^th century's three great American dramatists, along with Eugene O'Neil and Tennessee Williams.Due to Miller's unique concept of tragedy, controversy has never stopped. As Miller's masterpiece, Death of a Salesman depicts the painful conflicts within one common family on the surface and actually tackles larger issues on the life values and the living plight of common people. The play presents a disillusion of American society. Willy Loman's power to rise in face of crisis proves that he, as a "nobody", is a suitable protagonist for tragedy. Miller uses Willy Loman as the tragic protagonist, which reflects author's concern and conscience towards common people.This thesis intends to probe this tragedy theme through four parts. Chapter one gives a brief introduction of Arthur Miller's literary career and background of Death of a Salesman. Chapter two focuses on the formation of Arthur Miller's tragedy concept, especially the influence of his own Jewish, immigrant background and social and cultural background. Chapter three further discusses Arthur Miller's tragedy concept. Debate on the existence of tragedy, protagonist of a tragedy, the causes of the tragedy including tragic flaws and the responsibility of social circumstances, conscience—the reflection of Miller's moral approach to tragedy are discussed. Chapter four concludes that in a materialistic society, a marginalized common man still has a great difficulty in getting his own identity.