Tragedy and the Common Man

“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 Oedipus and Orestes complexes, for instances, which were enacted by royal beings, but which apply to everyone in similar emotional situations.”

Here, Miller both states his thesis, supporting the essay's primary theme of The Common Man as Tragic Hero, and provides his first argument to support it. By evoking these conditions from modern psychiatry, which derive their names from Greek tragic heroes, he appeals to logic and points out that society already accepts the notion that people of high stature can have the same emotional states as common people.

“From Orestes to Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying struggle is that of the individual attempting to gain his “rightful” position in his society.”

Miller notes that all tragic heroes possess the same underlying desire to fight for their personal dignity, and by extension tragic stories all deal with the same underlying emotions. By alluding to specific tragic heroes and comparing Greek heroes (Orestes and Medea) to Shakespearean heroes (Hamlet and Macbeth), Miller highlights that this quality of tragic heroes is universal. By including Medea, he also references a famous tragic heroine; although he writes of the “common man,” this more likely reflects the male-default literary diction of the day than his deliberate exclusion of women from his theory.

“Tragedy, then, is the consequence of a man's total compulsion to evaluate himself justly.”

To “evaluate himself justly,” the tragic hero acts against a society that he believes has treated him unjustly. This compulsion, Miller argues, is the defining trait of a tragic hero, and all the story’s events unfold as a result of this compulsion.

“The flaw, or crack in the characters, 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.”

This passage explores the concept of the “tragic flaw” in works of tragedy. Miller presents this flaw not as an inherently negative trait but simply as a refusal to remain passive in the face of a threat to one’s dignity, and he points out that it is this defiant action that separates a tragic hero from the rest of his society.

“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 of 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.”

This passage speaks to the theme of Tragedy as Societal Critique as Miller argues for what he believes is tragedy’s function and purpose: to examine commonly accepted social structures. The emotions that tragedy is meant to evoke in the audience—fear and sympathy—come from this challenging of the previously accepted environment and social order.

“In revolutions around the world, these past thirty years, [the common man] has demonstrated again and again this inner dynamic of all tragedy.”

By referring to “revolutions around the world,” Miller includes all of global humanity in his theory of tragedy and heroism, and his left-wing beliefs are alluded to here, and what he sees as the heroic personal and artistic urges to change society for the better.

“The quality in such plays that does shake us, however, derives from the underlying fear of being displaced… Among us today this fear is strong, and perhaps stronger, than it ever was. In fact, it is the common man who knows this fear best.”

This fear of displacement from one’s rightful place in society, Miller insists, is stronger in mid-20th-century common people than perhaps any other time in history. At the time of the essay’s publication (1949), Miller’s generation had seen two world wars and the US had experienced a devastating economic depression. His essay leans into the fact that the ordinary person in the 1940s knew what it was like to have their personal freedoms diminished by social and economic forces. Throughout such hardships, Miller argues, the common people of the mid-20th century exemplified the traits inherent in the tragic hero—that is, fighting for one’s sense of dignity in the face of a flawed society.

“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.”

Miller goes on to develop his theme of tragedy as societal critique here. Classical and Renaissance thought held that the tragic hero is responsible for his own downfall as a result of his actions, but Miller asserts that it is society who is partly to blame for his destruction.

“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 “enlightenment” that Miller references here is akin to the idea of “catharsis” Aristotle coined in Poetics. This experience results from witnessing a character’s downfall due to a flaw either in himself or his society. Miller states here that, through tragedy, the evils of a society are illuminated and moral law is revealed.

“The thrust for freedom is the quality in tragedy which exalts. The revolutionary questioning of the stable environment is what terrifies.”

Tragedy has long been thought to provoke a feeling of sympathy and fear in the audience. Here, Miller identifies the source of that fear: the questioning of previously unquestioned institutions.

“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.”

Modern psychiatry was developing quickly during the 1940s. In this passage, Miller points out this modern tendency to medicalize human thoughts and emotions, which, he believes, leads to a division between theories that find causes in the nature of an individual’s psychology and those that find them in societal factors. As Miller argues that tragedy must tread a balance, this dichotomy is a threat to the function of tragedy in the modern era.

“The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws.”

Tragic plays were attended by entire communities in ancient Greece. They often probed complex questions about human nature and society, but as Miller notes here, the purpose of these plays was to quell rather than encourage dissent, by allowing for a communal, ritualized means to explore transgressional behavior.

“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 the world.”

Miller continues to develop his argument for the common man as tragic hero here. He asserts that a hero, or someone of heroic “stature,” is anyone willing to fight for their personal dignity, regardless of class or social status.