Tragedy in Drama

Yet these two characters were precise different from one another, although both tragic in their make ship canal. This paper will compare Oedipus and Willy Loman and explore the different ways that they are tragic figures.

Oedipus is considered one of the best examples of a tragic figure since he appears to have everything, yet loses everything. As the process opens, the audience learns that a plague has settled upon the city and the priest of Zeus, as well as others in the city, have get hold to Oedipus for help. Although it is recognized that he is not a spiritual leader, the race see him as intelligent and able to fix arduous situations. As the priest states,

Therefore, O King, here at thy domicil we sit,

I and these electric shaverren; not as deeming thee

A new divinity, only when the first of men;. . .

Art thou not he who coming to the town

of Cadmus freed us from the tax we paid

And now, O Oedipus, our peerless king,

all(a) we thy votaries beseech thee, find

Some succor, whether by a voice from heaven

Whispered, or haply known by human wit (lines 35-49).

So it can be seen that Oedipus is a man of high thought (king) who is esteemed by his people. He is not only ruler, precisely also husband and father. Therefore he fits Stagg's first unavoidableness of macrocosm a character of enough stature to image that his suffering will be significant.

The gods have decreed that the child of Laius and Jocasta will kill his father and marry his mother. Walton (1995) po

Other than that, he is married and has children. He is a salesman who is always involved with all sorts of schemes that will help him get to his ends. However, his memories and dreams are more like delusions than actual fact on the one and or attainable ends on the other, so the schemes ne'er turn out as he has pictured them and his memories of aside "good-times" are far from the truth. In fact, he is one self-deluded, self-promoting, self-defeating soul, which is tragic in itself, for he is having difficulty merging his individual(prenominal) beliefs and ideals with the realities of modern life, which are not carrying him as close to his dreams as he would like.

In this instance, it could be said that Loman is very frequently like Oedipus, as he wants more than what is "fated" to be given to him. He wants to avoid what the American gods have decreed for him. However, when an individual is striving in conflict to the direction that his or her society is going then thither is "a bit-by-bit realization of conflicts within the individual that both mirror the large conflicts in society and define a core of trait in the characters themselves" (Rollyson, 1985, p. 1337). This is the "tragic flaw," the self-defeating fight against what is for what the individual insists that there is. Therefore, just as Laius, Jocasta, and Oedipus strove to transmute the gods decree for their lives, so Willy Loman strives to change history by changing his memories.

And on the murderer this swan I lay

(On him and all the partners in his guilt):--

In addition to being in a position to fall tragically from large(p) heights, Oedipus is his own instrument for destruction. It is Oedipus who sends Creon to the Oracle at Delphi and it is Oedipus who later announces to his cosmos the need to find the man who killed the former king, Laius.

Rollyson, C. E., Jr. (1985). "Arthur Miller." decisive Survey of Drama: English Language Series, Authors. Vol. 4. Ed. Frank N. Magill. Englewood Cliffs: sale
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