INTRODUCTION
Aristotle’s Poetics records extensively on the form known as tragedy. In Aristotle’s postulations, however, it is found that tragedy is the exclusive preserve of a certain class. For him, the tragic hero must come from the class of nobles. In Poetics tragedy is given to be “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude… through pity and fear, effecting the proper purgation of these emotions” (S.H. Butcher’s translation). In classical drama which provides the material for Aristotle’s analysis of tragedy, there are several elements of drama, one of which is the influence of the supernatural. Therefore, “Whereas the supernatural does not alleviate suffering yet, often it imbues pain with meaning. Relationship with a divine power enables the protagonists of classical tragedies such as Aeschylus’ Seven against Thebes or Shakespeare’s Hamlet to acquiesce nobly to an otherwise wretched existence.” (Brueck, The Redemption of Tragedy 3). Down the line, such elements as the existence of the supernatural are no longer prerequisite for tragic drama to be born. Several critics have refuted Aristotle’s streamlined notion of tragedy, one of the greatest being Arthur Miller’s 20th Century essay, “Tragedy and the Common Man” which has at its center the claim that the common man is as fit a subject for tragedy as the nobles. Miller’s arguments set out to establish his protagonist, Willy Loman, as a tragic hero, even though he is a “low man.” For Arthur Miller, “the common man is as apt a subject for tragedy in its highest sense as kings were” (1).
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