РефератыИностранный языкA A Worn Path Essay Research Paper Tragedy

A Worn Path Essay Research Paper Tragedy

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

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


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.

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