从人物关系的角度来分析《推销员之死》的悲剧色彩

An Analysis of the Tragic Elements of Death of a Salesman from the Angle of Humans’ Relationships

Contents

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................................. i Abstracts in Chinese ................................................................................................................................ ii Abstracts in English ................................................................................................................................. ii

I Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 1

1.1 Arthur Miller and his play of Death of a Salesman .................................................................... 1

1.2 The Main Content of the Play .................................................................................................... 2

II Relationships among people ................................................................................................................ 5

2.1 The Relationship of Family Members ....................................................................................... 6

2.1.1The Relationship Between Willy and His Father ............................................................. 7

2.1.2 The Relationship Between Willy and His Elder Brother ................................................ 7

2.1.3The Relationship Between Willy and His Son Biff ......................................................... 9

2.1.4The Relationship Between Willy and His Wife Linda ................................................... 12

2.1.5 A Brief Summary of This Chapter ................................................................................ 14

2.2 The Relationship of Social Members ....................................................................................... 15

III Literature Review .......................................................................................................................... 4

3.1 The definition of values ........................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

3.2 Values in Tragic Destiny of Willy Loman ................................................................................ 18

IV Conclusion ................................................................................................................................... 19

4.1 A General Summary of the Thesis ........................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

4.2 Limitations and Expectation .................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

Works Cited ........................................................................................................................................... 21

Acknowledgements

First of all, my deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor, who has done a great favor to my thesis writing. From the planning of this thesis structure to the revision of it, she has walked me through all the stages with helpful guidance and encouragement. Without her consistent instruction, this thesis could not have reached its present form.

Besides, I would like to give my thanks to my dear teachers who gave me assistance during my writing process, including Professor, Lecturer Huang Shan. They guided me into the paradise of literature research and offered me valuable suggestions.

Last my thanks would go to my beloved families and roommates. When I was writing this thesis, they urged me to complete the thesis regularly and discussed difficult problems with me. On account of these, I can finish my thesis on schedule.

感谢词

首先，我要向我的论文导师致以最诚挚的感谢。感谢她在论文写作的过程中给予我的种种帮助。从论文的开题报告到修改，她一直陪伴在我的身旁，给予我指导和鼓励。如果没有她一直以来的指导，这篇论文不会顺利按质按量的完成。

同时，我还要感谢在此论文写作过程中帮助过我的各位老师。他们分别是黄世香老师….。他们指引我走进文学研究的殿堂，给了我许多有价值的意见。

最后，我要感谢我深爱的家人和舍友。在论文写作期间，他们敦促我按时写作并且与我共同讨论难题，才使得此论文得以按期保质的完成。

从人物关系的角度来分析《推销员之死》的悲剧色彩

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摘要 《推销员之死》是阿瑟米勒的代表作，其具有高超的艺术价值和深刻的社会意义。该剧捕获了美国战后一代寻找人的心。尤其是主人公威利洛曼的悲剧命运相当典型，引起了观众和评论界的强烈反响。因此，许多人认为《推销员之死》反映了小人物的悲剧人生，他们把这部剧作解读成美国梦的破灭或犹太异化，许多人也从美国社会文化的、文学剧作理论，以及象征主义等角度研究过该作品的特色。但从人物关系角度研究该作品的悲剧色彩的甚少，无论从什么方面解读改作品，毫无疑问，这部作品人们的震撼是共同的。人们在对威利深表同情之余，产生深度的思考和探讨该剧的悲剧情节，它那悲剧史诗般的地位，证明了它在美国现代戏剧和现代社会学上无可替代的作用，所以，《推销员之死》的成功是悲剧的极大成功，本文基于悲剧理论，其中，主要运用亚里士多德悲剧理论来解释家庭人物关系和现代悲剧理论来解释社会人物关系，指出若从“人物关系”的角度反观《推销员之死》中主人公的命运，可以发现他的一生是悲剧的一生。从而得出此剧的悲剧色彩给人们以极大的启迪和悲剧的意义所在，引导人们树立正确的价值观，对人生的价值、人类的命运和人际关系不断进行思考和探讨，使人类能够走向更加完善的境界。

[关键字] 人物关系 悲剧 价值

An Analysis of the Tragic Elements of Death of a Salesman from the

Angle of Humans’ Relationships

[Abstracts] Death of a Salesman is the masterpiece of Arthur Miller，which is full of excellent artistic value and profound social significance. The play describes that the

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post-war generation were looking for the human’s heart. In particular, it is fairly typical to the tragic fate of the fate of the hero Willy Loman, which has caused a strong reaction from views and the critics. Therefore, some people, who thought that Death of a Salesman reflected the tragic life of common people, interpreted the play as the collapse of the American Dream or the alienation of jewishness. Many people also studied this play from the angle of American social culture or literary theory of drama or symbolism, but there were a few people who analyzed this play from the aspect of humans’ relationships. Nevertheless, no matter from what aspect to interpret this work, it is no doubt that the shock bringing to people in this play is common. Its status of tragic epic proved its irreplaceable role in American modern drama and modern sociology. Apart from people’s showing deep sympathy to Willy’s tragedy, they will also have a deep thinking and get a lot of enlightenments from it. Therefore, through tragic theory, this essay will study and explore the tragic plots of the play and, through the view of character relationship, point out the hero’s destiny in Death of a Salesman, by the way, the relationships of family members is on the basis of Aristotle tragic theory and the relationships of social members is based on modern tragic theory, then, people can further find his life, entirely, is a tragic life, especially, people will learn a lot from it and understand the meaningfulness of tragedy. It can also lead people set up correct values, take a new look at life’s value, humans’ destiny and interpersonal relationship so as to reach a more perfect realm.

[Key words] humans’ relationships; tragedy; value

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I Introduction

1.1 Arthur Miller and Death of a Salesman Arthur Miller was one of the greatest playwrights in 1940s. He was born in a Jewish family in October 1915. His Father was a clothing manufacturer who went bankrupt in 1929 during the Great Depression. After Miller witnessed his father’s business failure, he engaged in various proletarian jobs so as to earn enough money to support him to attend university of Michigan as journalism major, starting to write plays and broadcast scripts.

His first important play was All My Sons (1947), which described an illegal businessman of faulty military products and analyzed the influences of family relations made by opportunism. Besides, this strongly reflected that Ibsenian playwrights had a great effect on Miller’s writing, especially，the Ibsenian themes were often appeared in his following playwrights. Then, the enduring appeal of his masterpiece in his whole life should be attributed to his works Death of a Salesman (1949), a tragic version of American Dream, recognized as his magnum opus.

Meanwhile, in February 1949, the play was performed in New York’s Broadway 742 times in succession. Consequently, he won a Tony Prize and a Pulitzer Prize with Death of a Salesman reaching an international reputation.

In addition, a typical theme of Miller’s plays was that he concerned the dilemma of modern people in relation to their families and jobs. What described mostly in his plays was that the heroes were often under great pressure made by both their families and society. They tried in vain to save themselves out from their own physical and spiritual

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predicament. On the contrary, they fell deeply into the dilemma, finding the form of suicide, as the only method, to release them.

Arthur Miller’s latest works include: The Last Yankee (1991), The Ride down Mt. Morgan (1991), The American Clock (1993), and Broken Glass (1994).

1.2 The Main Content of the Play The hero, Willy Loman, was a sixty-three-year-old traveling salesman who had a deep faith in the American Dream in American society, that is, people believed that even the most impoverished person, through hard work and determination, could finally work their way to the upper class and achieve great success and get national reputation.

After rushing around the country for many years, Willy realized that he was neither a responsible husband nor a good father. According to his criteria and others’ evaluation, his two sons were not outstanding. Now his career nearly came to an end, so he had to escape into the past dreamy memory which he had longed for.

Furthermore, at the beginning of the play, both of his sons came home at the same time. After having a talk with their father Willy, they worried about his irrelevant conversation and they feared that their mother could not bear such great pressure from Willy. However, actually, their mother Linda believed that she understood completely his husband Willy, knowing that his strange behaviors were stemmed from the wide gap between his unpractical dream to be a rich man and the disappointing reality. Therefore, Linda persuaded her elder son Biff to find a good job in order to let Willy feel proud. Actually, both Biff and Happy wanted to please their father, so they invited him to have dinner in a restaurant. But during the dinner, it was at that moment when Biff told Willy the truth about his failure to find a job that Willy felt his dream was absolutely broken. Willy went into the washing room bemusedly. Then, the awful memory in the past was

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pouring into his mind, that is, Biff had gone to Boston for Willy’s help because of his failing’s college entrance examination. Nevertheless, Biff happened to see that his father stayed with a mistress in the hotel. Only when Willy came back to the reality did he realize that he should be responsible for Biff’s disillusionment and idleness. Next, when he went back the dinner table, he just found both his sons left him with two mistresses. In this way, Willy had to go home alone with humiliations. Then, he had a fierce quarrel with Biff who was about to run away from home. During the quarrel, Biff not only revealed that he had been in prison for three months but also he ruthlessly laughed at Willy’s unpractical dream. At that moment, the old man, Willy, was driven to the edge of desperation and felt extremely sad for his illusion was entirely broken. As a result, he chose to commit suicide so that Biff could get his insurance money(20,000dollars) to continue to fulfill their unrealistic dream.

1.3 Thesis Structure and Research Methodology

In Chapter One,, the author introduces some important points and achievements of Arthur Miller. Then the author states the main content of the famous play Death of a Salesman, giving readers a brief understanding about this play. The third part of Chapter One is the thesis structure and research methodology.

In Chapter Two, there is one part. The author states the definition of value, former studies about this play and explains objectives and significance of this study, telling readers why tragedy in play is meaningful.

Chapter Three is an important part of this thesis. It is going to research relationships among this play. This Chapter includes two parts——one is to analyze each relationship of family member separately, including the relationship between Willy and his father,

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between Willy and his elder Brother Ben, between Willy and his son Biff, and between Willy and his wife Linda. And the other is to state the relationship of social members.

Chapter Four is to discuss values in tragic destiny of Willy Loman.

Chapter Five is a conclusion of the whole thesis. The author will give a general summary of the topic and help modern people to set up correct values.

Literature research method, Aristotle tragic theory as well as modern theory are used in this thesis.

II Literature Review Generally speaking, Values can change people’s life and have an influence on a person’s beliefs. Albert has ever noted that “a value system represents what is expected or hope for, required or forbidden. It is not a report of actual conduct but is the system of criteria by which conduct is judged and sanctions applied” (1968). His words showed the significance of values. And then, what are values? Different people may have different opinion upon this question. According to Rokeach, values are “a learned organization of rules for making choices and for resolving conflicts” (1973, p.161). It means that people’s making choices are affected by the rules that organized in their minds. So there is next question---How are the rules established? “Values are shared ideas about what is true, right, and beautiful that underlies cultural patterns and guide society in response to the physical and social environment.” Nanda and Warms said (1998, p.48). It’s said that sharing ideas is a basic way to build the rules. When most people agree certain ideas, those ideas become common values. And what’s the relationship between tragedy and values? Tragedy and values have a tight connection. They influence everyone’s view. Tragedy usually possesses the hopes for a better life, brings knowledge or enlightenments to human being, and helps people to set up correct values.

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Death of a Salesman demonstrated the theme of the conflict between dream and reality, the difference between success and failure, as well as the “American Dream” which paid too much attention to money; finally, the tragic death of Willy Loman represents the disillusionment of “American Dream”. Therefore, some people, who thought that Death of a Salesman reflected the tragic life of common people, interpreted the play as the collapse of the American Dream or the alienation of jewishness. Many people also studied this play from the angle of American social culture or literary theory of drama or symbolism, but there were a few people who analyzed this play from the aspect of human’s relationships. Nevertheless, no matter from what aspect to interpret this work, it is no doubt that the shock bringing to people in this play is common. Its tragic epic status proved its irreplaceable role in American modern drama and modern sociology. Apart from people’s showing deep sympathy to Willy’s tragedy, they will also have a deep thinking and get a lot of enlightenments from it. Therefore, through tragic theory, this essay will study and explore the tragic plots of the play and, through the view of character relationship, point out the hero’s destiny in Death of a Salesman, then, we can further find his life, entirely, is a tragic life. In addition, we will learn a lot from it and it also lead us take a new look at life’s value, human’s destiny and interpersonal relationship so as to reach a more perfect realm.

III Analysis of Relationships among people

When Nietzsche, a great philosopher, said the God had been dead, the Western society began to search for the new spiritual faith. In order to produce the greatest tragic effects, the hero tended to be thrown into the complicated people’s relationship, suffering great frustration and even losing his own life, which gave people a chance to take a new

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look at the social value (2007). Besides, according to Aristotle, the main purpose of tragedy is to stir up the audience’s mercy to the hero and their fear for the unknown fate so that their morality will get sublimations. Then Miller not only said yes to what Aristotle had held but also he had his further understanding bout this point. For one thing, he held that tragedy ought to be evoked pity and fear in audience’s mind and striking power should be produced in audience’s potential fear. After the characters in the play have faced a battle that they will never win in it, people will show mercy to them. For another, he also thought that not only shall tragedy transcend the simple mercy but also it need to try the best to create a world where they will never give in to the evil. What’s more, tragedy must possess the hopes for a better life and bring knowledge or enlightenments to human being.

The reason why the hero Willy in Death of a Salesman faced tragedy should be partly attributed to the relationship of his family members and the relationship of social members. This will give a new look of human’s relationship. Next, we will explain it separately.

3.1 The Relationship of Family Members

Aristotle, a philosopher in ancient Greek, once defined tragedy in his Poetics: Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action which is serious, complete, and of some

magnitude, in embellished speech, with each of its elements used separately in the various parts of the play and represented by people acting and not by narration, accomplishing by means of pity and terror the catharsis of such emotions (1999). In his Poetics of chapter 13, he made a further definition of tragedy character. A tragedy character is neither good nor bad, but between the two kinds of them. These people don't have wonderful virtue, and are not very fair. And they are suffered misfortune, not because of the sins or evil made by themselves, but because they have made mistakes. There are three features embodying on them. Firstly, tragedy characters can usually be kind. Secondly, tragedy

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characters must have mistakes. Thirdly, tragedy character can usually be alienated from others and influenced by others. Meanwhile, Aristotle also pointed out that tragedy consists of six parts, namely, plot, character, thought, speech, aria and scene. Among them, plot is the basis of tragedy and the soul of tragedy. Then, the importance of character ranks second. Hence, in the following several parts, we will use some tragic plots in Death of a Salesman to illustrate the relationships of the family members, which made Willy fall in tragedy.

3.1.1The Relationship Between Willy and His Father It was the lack of fatherly love that Willy formed the character of loneliness. When Willy was a little boy, his father left the whole family and went to Alaska to make a living by wandering from place to place. Hence, there existed a bad psychological effect on Willy’s inner heart because of being alienated from fatherly love. Willy insisted to believe all the way that his father was a successful founder, but the memory of his father was from his elder brother Ben who even may not be a real person but a creature in his illusion. From this point, it can be pointed out Willy could be pretty traumatized for lack of paternal love. As a result, as a father, he did not know how to perform the educational rights to his two sons only to pay much attention and offer an excess of love to them for fear that they could not get enough love from him just like his childhood.

In this way, the early leaving of his father had a negative influence on him, which caused his uncommunicative and eccentric disposition.

3.1.2 The Relationship Between Willy and His Elder Brother

Ben Loman was Willy’s elder brother, who was a successful representative of American Dream. When Ben came on the stage the first time, the writer Miller described him by

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saying: He is a stolid man, in his sixties, with a moustache and an authoritative air. He is utterly certain of his destiny, and there is an aura of far places about him (2004, p.530). When Ben was seventeen years old, he went to the African jungle and eventually became a millionaire who had possessed a lot of diamond through cruel competition at the age of twenty one. Before he went to Africa, he had invited Willy to go with him to fossick there, but Willy refused it with a consideration of his own family, choosing to be a salesman in the city to earn money to support the whole family. Now that Ben succeeded, he started to become an idol and a good example of Willy. In Willy’s description, he expressed his regrets several times for not following Ben to African jungle. Next, he still decided to stay in the local city to look for the key to wealth, which was quite different from Ben’s. He still held that even the poorest, through hard work and determination, could eventually work their way to upper class and fulfill their American Dream. Although Willy took pains to work hard, he did not succeed like Ben. Consequently, he planned to commit suicide to get 20,000 dollars to realize his American Dream. After he addressed this opinion to Ben, Ben said, “Yes, outstanding, with 20,000 behind him”(2004, p.602) In the second act, Ben lured Willy again and again by telling him, “The jungle is dark but full of diamonds” (2004, p.603), “One must go in to fetch a diamond out” (2004, p.602), “And it does take a great kind of a man to crack the jungle” (2004, p.603). At that minute, Ben evolved entirely Willy’s inner worship. He determined to commit suicide.

From the plots mentioned above, Ben’s success had a great influence on Willy who had absorbed his false world views that one would succeed through daring and courage. However, Ben’s idea about success ran in opposite directions with Willy’s, that is, as a salesman, Willy needed to depend on the city’s life and run around the city. But Ben’s idea to achieve success was only to go into the jungle to bear hardships there through bravery. In Ben’s opinion, people in cities could only convey empty talks, but those

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who lived in jungle would achieve success through a series of battles. Therefore, Willy’s career dreams completely ran counter to Ben’s wealthy theory in jungle. Nevertheless, Willy regarded Ben’s achievement as a criterion to measure his orientations and deeds, especially, Ben, who was like a ghost, always hovered around Willy’s mind and gave him some wrong ideas, depriving Willy’s happiness as well as quietness. As a result, Willy can not help falling in himself.

3.1.3The Relationship Between Willy and His Son Biff The most essential relationship of family members that caused Willy’s death could be the disharmonious father-child relationship. This chapter will convey human tragedy through the development, change of father-son relationship. Father and son are originally not only a whole but also the opposite sides. The son’s growth process will inevitably break up his father’s leading balance state as he is the leader of the family, thus creating new conflicts in the family. When Biff was a little kid, Willy had high expectations on him; especially he was good at sports. His neighbor’s children were fond of playing ball with him as soon as he came home from school.

Unfortunately, Willy often educated Biff with wrong, unreasonable notions. He had a false tag that someone would get everything as long as others liked him and considered the only way to succeed was to be popular with others and to have a wonderful appearance regardless of practicality. He cultivated Biff with the foolish tag continuously. When one of his neighbors named Bernard advised Biff to have a remediation of math. Neither did he urge Biff to study nor did he thanks for Bernard’s advice. He even laughed at Bernard in front of Biff.

What’s more, once upon a time, after knowing that Biff had stolen a rag, neither did Willy criticize, educate him nor did he ask him to send the rag back. It was even worse that he defended him and laughed with him at the theft, “Sure, he’s gotta practice with as

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a regulation ball, doesn’t he? Couch’ll probably congratulate you on you initiative! (2004, p.517) ”. Obviously, he knew it was wrong for Biff to steal things from others, but he still connived his cheating behaviors again and again. Gradually, Biff got into the bad habit of stealing things, including plagiarizing Bernard’s test paper and stealing materials in construction sites. Unluckily, upon the college entrance examination, he had no way to cheat in the exam and did not pass the math exam, then, he felt very disappointed and went to Boston to ask for help from his father. However, his father’s wonderful image in his mind immediately was broken by the moment when he found Willy’s disloyalty to his mother. From then on, he began to lose faith, discard courage towards life, gave up the chance to take the exam again, and ran away from home several times. There were also many quarrels and contradictions between his father and him. Every time when Biff came back home, he would have a quarrel with Willy. Biff even gave Willy a back talk, despised him, and laughed at him. The following words between Biff and his mother Linda could reflect their bad relationship.

Linda: I know, dear, I know. But he (Willy) likes to have a letter. Just to know that there’s still a possibility for better things.

Biff: He’s not like this all the time, is he?

Linda: It’s when you come home he’s always the worst.

Biff: When I come home?

Linda: …Why are (Willy and Biff) so hateful to each other? Why in that?

Biff [evasively]: I’m not hateful, Mom.

Linda: But you no sooner come in the door than you and your father are fighting! Biff: I don’t know why, I mean to change. I’m trying, Mom; you understand? ……

Linda: Biff, dear, if you don’t have any feeling for him (Willy), then you don’t have any feeling for me.

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Biff: Sure, I can. Mom.

Linda: No, you can’t just come to see me, because I love him. …… You’ve got to make up your mind now, darling, there’s no leeway any more. Either he’s your father and pay him that respect, or else you’re not to come here. I know he’s not easy to get along with-----nobody knows that better than me------but…

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Biff: People are worse off than Willy Loman. Believe me, I’ve seen them. (2004, p.537) Besides, Biff had no job and permanent income but still depended on his family when he was thirty years old. After a great many quarrels, Willy, eventually, realized that he was not a responsible father and his false educational methods as well as his wrong values had a negative effect on Biff. He considered that he had done nothing meaningful to Biff who had not been adoring him any more. In terms of this, he felt endlessly guilty. Hence, in order to leave something valuable to Biff and recover Biff’s inner idol on him as before, he chose to commit suicide so that Biff could get 20,000 dollars to reach the upper class. At the end of the act, Willy once assured with rising power:

Oh, Ben, that’s the whole beauty of it! I see it like a diamond, shining in the dark, hard like an appointment! This would not be another damned-fool appointment, Ben, and it changes all the aspects. Because he(Biff) thinks [Straightening up.] Ben, that funeral will be massive! They’ll come from Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire! All the old-timers with strange licence plates-----that boy (Biff) will be thunderstruck, Ben, because he (Biff) never realized----- I am known! Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey----- I am known, Ben, and he’ll see it with his eyes once and for all. He’ll see what I am, Ben! He’s in for a shock, that boy! (2004, p.597)

Literary works, on the development of the relationship between father and son, often follow the process that is from harmony to contradiction, then from contradiction to harmony. Hence, it is by the destruction and quarrel between father and son that the

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family’s harmony is broken, which is the common characteristic in this kind of relationship. Besides, once the contradiction is deepening, it often leads to the individual to fall into the plight of despair. Death of a Salesman reflected the expansible contradiction of father-son relationship and regression to harmony with death of Willy. Willy almost put Biff as his own ideal image, regarding Biff as his inheritance and continuance, and showing his love to Biff on every occasion. However, Biff gradually understood Willy’s hypocrisy and unrealistic aspects, then, their contradiction constantly expanded with a lot of quarrels. Finally, the family came back to its harmony through Willy’s death.

3.1.4The Relationship Between Willy and His Wife Linda In Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller described Linda as a gentle, considerate woman who was full of sympathy. Not only was she a good housewife but also she was an excellent mother. She understood his husband Willy, encouraged him and comforted him whenever he was in bad mood. She also loved her children. Though she knew thoroughly their character weakness and bad behaviors, she blamed them frankly and gave them well-meaning advice patiently.

What’s more, at the beginning of the play, before Linda came on the stage, Miller introduced her by saying, “She more than loves him, she admires him, as though his mercurial nature, his temper, his massive dreams and little cruelties, served her only as sharp reminders of the turbulent longings within him, longings which she shares but lacks the temperament to utter and follow to the their end. (2004, p.502)”

Although Linda was a quite excellent wife and mother, Willy’s tragedy was partly caused by Linda. If she had not infinitely comforted Willy in all aspects, she might have made his behaviors, thoughts be more mature and helped him to take a new look at himself. From the beginning, she knew clearly he had had the idea of suicide, but

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neither did she dare to point it out nor did she try her best to stop his foolish notion. On the contrary, she was even willing to allow him to do what he wanted, even though it was not good for him. She understood his arduousness, gave every care to him, and did everything possible to comfort, flatter him as well, such as, “You’re get too much on the ball to worry about (2004, p.537)”, “Well, next week you’ll do better.” “But you’re doing wonderful, dear. (2004, p.540) ” “You don’t talk too much, you’re just lively, (2004, p.602) ” “Willy, darling, you’re the handsomest man in the world,(2004, p.550)”. “To me you are. [Slight pause] The handsomest (2004, p.552)”. “And the boys, Willy. Few men are idolized by their children the way you are (2004, p.602)”. All of these words from Linda gradually fostered his boastfulness. For instance, after Linda told him about her having sold some household machines in order to supply their household spending, she quickly asked him, “Did you sell out the goods?” From the several words, we can make out that Linda once tried to help him keep a clear head. However, she immediately began to rekindle his inner absurd belief as soon as he expressed his sadness caused by the family’s economic difficulties.

In addition, on a Monday night, Willy came home, tired and agitated. Although Linda felt frightened after he saw the horror visible look in his face, she still showed her patience, appropriateness and consideration for him. Even if it was very hard to please the depressed Willy, she had never been being angry. She helped him to take off his shoes and tried by every means to resume his inner confidence. However, Willy showed a hotter temper to her than before and answered her questions bitingly. What’s worse, when Linda passed on a new kind of American-type cheese to him, he showed his unreasonable anger.

Linda [trying to bring him out of it]: Willy, dear, I got a new kind of American-type cheese today. It’s whipped.

Willy: Why do you get American when I like Swiss?

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Linda: I just thought you’d like a change—

Willy: I don’t want a change! I want Swiss cheese. Why am I always being contradicted?

Linda [with a covering laugh]: I thought it would be a surprise.

Willy: Why don’t you open a window in here, for God’s sake?

Linda [with infinite patience]: They’re all open, dear. (2004, p.506)

From the going discussion, obviously, it was unreasonable for Willy to criticize and blame Linda, yet, the worst point was that Linda should not have indulged in him infinitely. Willy’s tragic fate has been regarded as an inevitable end of illusory dreams. Regarding to the tragic fate, Aristotle considers that it is more likely to strike people’s heart from the favorable circumstances to the adverse circumstances, thus, only the noble can become tragic protagonists. On the contrary, Arthur Miller pointed out in his work Tragedy and the Common Man, “From the highest sense, it is very easy for both kings and ordinary people to become the leading role of tragedy (1998).” Hence, Willy’s tragedy came from his ordinary. Willy, like ordinary people, had his own profession, a whole family and a wife who loved him deeply. Being a gentle, considerate woman, she obeyed Willy’s whole words and meekly accepted humiliations. However, Linda, who looked like a weak woman, made up an unrealistic dream for Willy with her deep love, manipulated Willy’s thoughts, words and deeds, and finally led to the tragedy of Willy’s death.

3.1.5 Summary of This Chapter

Aristotle consider that the most perfect tragedy depends on a few family stories, and the purpose of tragedy does not lie in the imitation of people’s characters but the imitation of some action (1999). People’s personality in the play is decided by their “character” which is shaped by those people around them. Besides, their happiness and misfortune

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attribute to their action. The reason why the tragic persons fall in misfortune is not because of the crimes they commit but their mistakes caused by their own or others. Therefore, we can make out that the most perfect tragedy takes place among relatives or families, which is also caused by their own action and mistakes. This kind of tragic conflict can be explained as internal conflict, then, the tragic persons derive from the domestic contradictions which come from their families, relatives as well as their various paradoxical actions (1999).

In Death of a Salesman, Willy’s tragedy mostly resulted from his domestic contradictions and a variety of tragic conflicts in the whole family, that is, the alienation between Willy and his father, the distance between Willy and Ben, the prejudice between Willy and Biff, as well as the lack of mutual understanding between Willy and Linda. First of all, Willy’s character of loneliness rooted in his father’s leaving the whole family and his going to Alaska when Willy was a little child. Besides, Willy imitated Ben’s successful way, hoping that, through hard work and great ambitions, he would have a wonderful life with his children in upper class. In addition, Willy loved Biff very much and had a high expectation on him, but Biff hated Willy for his unfaithfulness to his mother and they were always quarreling with each other. Last but not least, Linda paid too much attention and care to Willy, yet, neither did Willy understand Linda’s support and care nor did Linda know Willy’s inner real view.

3.2 The Relationship of Social Members

The central theme of modern tragedy of the West is interpersonal alienation in the capitalist society and their disappointment for their value and dignity which has been ruined and can not be redeemed (2007). Besides, it is the relation of alienation and

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