Tragedy and the Common Man by Arthur Miller
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 modern 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 classic 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 high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable
that the mass of 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 struggles 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. But there are among us
today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them,
and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear or insensitivity or ignorance is
shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the
seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us--from this total examination of the "unchangeable"
environment--comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy.
More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn.
And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past
thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy.
, Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is really but a
clinging to the outward forms of tragedy. If rank or nobility of character was indispensable, then it
would follow that the problems of those with rank were the particular problems of tragedy. But
surely the right of one monarch to capture the domain from another no longer raises our passions,
nor are our concepts of justice what they were to the mind of an Elizabethan king.
The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being
displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what or who we are in
this world. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is
the common man who knows this fear best.
Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself
justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is
precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the
enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.
The tragic night is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower
and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his
love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the
enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The
revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man
debarred from such thoughts or such actions.
Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern
literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our
miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic
action, is obviously impossible.
And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be
so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views
can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else,
tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.
No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when
he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In
the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is
that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that
tragedy must preach revolution.
The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness
of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a
moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this stretching and tearing apart of
the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is
spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on
that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure
his rightful place in his world.
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 modern 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 classic 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 high-bred character alone, it is inconceivable
that the mass of 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 struggles 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. But there are among us
today, as there always have been, those who act against the scheme of things that degrades them,
and in the process of action everything we have accepted out of fear or insensitivity or ignorance is
shaken before us and examined, and from this total onslaught by an individual against the
seemingly stable cosmos surrounding us--from this total examination of the "unchangeable"
environment--comes the terror and the fear that is classically associated with tragedy.
More important, from this total questioning of what has previously been unquestioned, we learn.
And such a process is not beyond the common man. In revolutions around the world, these past
thirty years, he has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy.
, Insistence upon the rank of the tragic hero, or the so-called nobility of his character, is really but a
clinging to the outward forms of tragedy. If rank or nobility of character was indispensable, then it
would follow that the problems of those with rank were the particular problems of tragedy. But
surely the right of one monarch to capture the domain from another no longer raises our passions,
nor are our concepts of justice what they were to the mind of an Elizabethan king.
The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being
displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what or who we are in
this world. Among us today this fear is as strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is
the common man who knows this fear best.
Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself
justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is
precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the
enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.
The tragic night is a condition of life, a condition in which the human personality is able to flower
and realize itself. The wrong is the condition which suppresses man, perverts the flowing out of his
love and creative instinct. Tragedy enlightens and it must, in that it points the heroic finger at the
enemy of man's freedom. The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The
revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies. In no way is the common man
debarred from such thoughts or such actions.
Seen in this light, our lack of tragedy may be partially accounted for by the turn which modern
literature has taken toward the purely psychiatric view of life, or the purely sociological. If all our
miseries, our indignities, are born and bred within our minds, then all action, let alone the heroic
action, is obviously impossible.
And if society alone is responsible for the cramping of our lives, then the protagonist must needs be
so pure and faultless as to force us to deny his validity as a character. From neither of these views
can tragedy derive, simply because neither represents a balanced concept of life. Above all else,
tragedy requires the finest appreciation by the writer of cause and effect.
No tragedy can therefore come about when its author fears to question absolutely everything, when
he regards any institution, habit or custom as being either everlasting, immutable or inevitable. In
the tragic view the need of man to wholly realize himself is the only fixed star, and whatever it is
that hedges his nature and lowers it is ripe for attack and examination. Which is not to say that
tragedy must preach revolution.
The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness
of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right and end in submission. But for a
moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this stretching and tearing apart of
the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is
spuriously attached to the royal or the high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on
that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure
his rightful place in his world.
