The Tragic PursuitAmerica was once viewed as the ¨promised land¨ or the ¨land of opportunity¨ where people came to pursue their fantasies and chase their dreams. That pursuit which was once a source of hope and success for many has in reality become a tragic pursuit. This tragic pursuit entails failed dreams and tragedy in the face of success. Tragedy has evolved in America. The American idea of chasing the dream is now a tragic pursuit where the tragic impulse has taken over many.
------------------------------------------------------------"Tragedy and the Common Man", Arthur Miller (excerpts) "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 . . . 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 . . . 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. |
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American essayist Arthur Miller wrote an essay titled “Tragedy and the Common Man” in which he describes the tragic hero and the tragic impulse. Miller argues that today’s modern tragedy has become a simple story of a common man who does not end up better off in the end. Miller claims a tragic hero is “a character who is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing--his sense of personal dignity . . .the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his ‘rightful’ position in his society” (Miller 1). Miller also claims that the tragic hero has an “underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of who and what we are in this world” (Miller 2). Here, Miller defines the tragic hero as someone who responds when their self-image or personal dignity is at risk and someone who feels their personal image is not how the world sees himself, so s/he is constantly trying to prove himself. Arthur Miller asserts that tragedy comes about in “[t]he thrust for freedom” (Miller 2). Arthur Miller’s definition of the tragic hero and the modern tragedy extends the American Experience and the traditional idea that America is the ¨land of opportunity¨ where people come to pursue their fantasies and chase their dreams. That pursuit has in reality become the tragic pursuit which Arthur Miller describes in his essay.