SONG OF THE UNSUNG ANTIHERO: HOW ARTHUR MILLER'S DEATH OF A SALESMAN FLATTERS US

Abstract

The sober treatment of a lowly, unheroic protagonist in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman flatters the audience. The more obvious way that it flatters us is by alienating us from the protagonist in his downfall so that we watch his destruction from a secure vantage point. Less obviously, the form of the play, like other modem tragedies of its kind, romanticizes the protagonist with whom we identify, romanticizes him through what I call the audience's paradox, that tension created when a serious work or literature employs an obscure, lowly character as protagonist and so makes that obscure person the centre of our attention, makes him famous. Many nineteenth and twentieth century writers seek to convey the experi ence of a lowly character chafing against his obscurity. But how can an author convey such an experience when the very attention of a readership confers upon the character social significance and dignity, even fame? Exactly how obscure can Jude be when he has a four hundred page novel written about him, and written by Thomas Hardy no less? This is a problem I call the audience's paradox, a special form of the observer's paradox. In essence, the audience's paradox is the tension created when a lowly character, chafing against his obscurity, serves as the protagonist of a work of literature and so becomes the centre of the audience's attention, becomes famous. The paradox is endemic only to post-Enlightenment tragic literature. Pride stands as a pivotal human imperfection in both the Ancient Greek and Judeo Christian traditions; in contrast, the metaphysics of a debased form of romanti cism valorizes pride, both hubris and narcissism, while denigrating humility. In America, the roots of this tendency can be seen at least as early as Walt Whitman. The title of his 'Song of Myself' signals a poem unblushing in its swelling praise of the poem's speaker, and even if we insist that the speaker is not Whitman the man but a cosmic Whitman joined to all humanity by