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Willy Loman and Shelley Levene as the Examples of a Tragic Hero
Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” and David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” are two American dramas that have sparked fierce debates among analysts, writers, literary critics, scholars, and even readers when it comes to tragic heroes. The major characters and central focus of the two dramas, are Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman” and Shelley Levene in “Glengarry Glen Ross.” In watching these characters, one can perceive the disparities between a modernist tragic hero and a postmodernist tragic hero. Willy and Loman were tragic heroes in their individual capacities because they made decisions and erroneous judgements that ultimately led to their own destruction and according to Aristotle, “A tragic hero is a literary character who makes a judgment error that inevitably leads to his/her own destruction.” One can bet that the arguments that ensue among critics regarding this topic in relation to Willy Loman and Shelley Levene, is because the term hero, standing alone is a positive thing. Hence the prefix ‘tragic’ which differentiates tragic heroes from classical heroes as these two characters were anything but positive. Willy Loman was a 63-year-old fictional character in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman.”
According to Aristotle, “he represents the normal man with whom the audience can identify, as all tragic heroes are expected to be”. He was an aging salesman who had worked for the same company for 34 years and had had to endure so many negative turns in events, including but not limited to a pay cut and getting fired. He was undeniably hardworking made but made multiple suicide attempts because he kept losing the battle to stay relevant and whatever foothold he held in the American middle class world. He was an intelligent salesman no doubt, with sound business knowledge but time does affect how much value you can add to an organization, as well as the strength you need to add said value. Loman was in the business of marketing products, a traveling salesman, and the forces he was combating, led him to become delusional and want to end his life as he no longer found the joy of living in such misery. It also did not help that he was surrounded by people who fueled his delusions. Loman’s idealism and his overreliance on the fruition of his American Dream should have been substantially fruitful but it ended up being detrimental to his success, hence this can be referred to as a tragic flaw, making him a tragic hero.
According to Aristotle, the error of judgment is a common trait among tragic heroes, and as we see in the case of Loman, his inability to accept his past failures and move on was the root cause of his ultimate downfall. Loman was a modernist in the sense that he was anything but realistic in his thoughts and expectations. Loman assumed he was loved by the world, such as when he said to his sons, ‘And they know me boys, they know me up and down New England. The finest people. And when I bring you fellas up, there’ll be open sesame for all of us, ’cause one thing boys: I have friends’. He hallucinated a lot and spent more almost half the play living in his hallucinations, had tons of flashbacks, lived and thrived on daydreams, which are elements of modernists characters, whereby they relive past glories and refuse to come to terms with the present and current happenings. Shelley Levene is a major character in David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glenn Ross.” Like Loman, he is equally an insecure, desperate and struggling salesman, a low down dirty one at that, who would do anything to strike a deal with a client, including barge into a client’s house on a rainy day. In a bid to succeed at work, win a Cadillac, and avoid being fired, he caved into the pressures that welled up around him and opted to play dirty. Levene was in the business of selling real estate and was very dishonest at it and so had become a failure so to speak. Levene was once a powerful and successful salesman but time had caught up with him, hence he was now on a downward spiral plus he had a chronically ill daughter with an unknown medical condition in the hospital. He attempted to charm, coerce, threaten and even bribe the office manager, John Williamson into giving him leads because he was scared to lose his job for lack of sales generation.
Levene was a tragic hero because he made several bad decisions that marred his career, such as when he sold the leads, as this cost him his job. His decision to admit to Williamson that he robbed the office and sold some leads illegally, when he said “I sold them to Jerry Graff,” was an error of judgement that came back to haunt him later on when Williamson was ready to dish out his revenge. Also in response to Williamson’s killing of Roma’s deal, he welcomed the eye-for-eye concept by incriminating Williamson, revealing that he could not watch as realism reigned. He shared similar traits with Loman, that exposed his tragic flaw, one of such being his decision to attain success through unorthodox ways. These major errors, made by the Loman and Levene led to a very significant turn of events and misfortunes, in their respective lives, which according to Aristotle, is another fundamental commonality among tragedies. Loman’s adamancy and inflexibility rendered him poor and unable to sustain his family. He was caught up in his anticipation of the American Dream, to which he refused to put in the work to achieve. Harder work, less talk, and less expectations could have yielded better results but instead he did nothing towards the realization of the goals. He got overly dependent on his obsolete ideology of how things should be done and went on to place more importance on irrelevant things. One of such being his years of loyalty to his company, while also prioritizing his reputation over gaining current knowledge and keeping up with the fast paced world and ever changing ways of doing things. A world where information and technological know-how is increasingly dominating every field, especially business related industries such as the one Loman was in. Knowledge, which Loman seemingly despised, is the backbone of efficiency. Another error of judgement he made was to live in the past and turn himself against the world leading the world to in turn, turn itself against him. He himself acknowledged that there was nothing left for him in the world when he tried to take his life and said, “I am doomed in the modern world”. Another occurrence in the plays was what Aristotle referred to as tragic pride or “hubris” and this manifested itself in the two main characters. At different points in time, when the respective characters attained some level of achievement, they became arrogant and forgot their basic moral obligations hence given room for tragic flaws.
In the case of Loman, he failed to humble himself to his wife despite the love and care that she showers upon him. He treated her poorly severally, even to the extent of cheating on her with Miss Francis. In the case of Shelley, we see his pride, when he attained some fraudulent but substantial success in his salesmanship, he was quick to brag about it to Williamson who eventually shut him down by saying “those leads enjoy talking to salesmen”. The flaw there being that it was his breaking point and final straw. Just like all other tragic heroes, “their fate will eventually be as a result of their actions” (Aristotle). Both characters are real tragic heroes because they come face to face with several fates that overwhelm and shed even more light on their flaws. In the end, Loman gets a lot more than he deserves, though true that he failed to make the necessary adjustments to better his situation, under normal circumstances, the eventual fate that befell him may have been reversed or altogether different. He had a chance at a good life, even though part of what pushed him was the jealousy he felt towards his brother Ben, who was doing way better than him in the diamond mines. His son Happy, perhaps not Biff who was estranged, could have come through for him as even Howard asked him to rely on his sons. His final resort to death was unnecessary, unwarranted, and undeserving. Every financial and emotional issues that his family faced were typical to any regular family; thus, committing suicide was not the best option. When it comes to Levene, even though death was not the final straw for him, he lost his job for sure after the stunt he pulled with the leads burglary, hence he is not at all innocent, his fate was not the most befitting, considering his situation and that of his counterparts. Miller explains in his critique of tragedies, that the hero must be a person that does not accept the realities presented by the status quo. As with Loman, he did not accept the realist world but instead relied on an idealist American Dream, like many other Americans in the real life world. Levene, too, was a go-getter who was willing to go extra miles to achieve his dreams.
Works Cited
- Aristotle. The Tragic Hero http://www.bisd303.org/cms/lib3/WA01001636/Centricity/Domain/593/10th%20english%20Fall/C%20-%20The%20Tragic%20Play/Antigone.Medea/Definition%20of%20Tragic%20Hero.pdf
- Delaney, Bill. Critical Evaluation: Glengarry Glen Ross. Masterplots, Fourth Edition; November 2010, p1-3
- Mamet, David. Glengarry Glen Ross: A Play. Grove Press, 1984. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Miller, Arthur. “Tragedy and the Common Man.”
- www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/12/specials/miller-common.html Sickels, Amy. ‘Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman: History of Criticism.’
- Critical Insights: Death of a Salesman (2010): 76-91.
