Hamartia in the Death of a Salesman and Oedipus Essay Example

an incomplete revelation of reality. While he accomplishes an expert comprehension of himself and the central way of the business profession, Willy neglects to understand his own disappointment and disloyalty of his spirit and family through the carefully developed artifice of his life. He can't get a handle on the genuine individual, passionate, spiritual comprehension of himself as an exacting "loman" or "low man." Willy is excessively determined by his own "willy"- ness or unreasonable "willfulness" to perceive the inclined reality that his desperate personality has forged. Still, numerous faultfinders, concentrating on Willy's entrenchment in a mess of untruths, delusion, and self-deception, overlook the critical achievement of his incomplete self-acknowledgment.

Willy's inability to perceive the anguished adoration offered to him by his family is critical to the peak of his painful day, and the play introduces this inadequacy as the genuine disaster. Notwithstanding this disappointment, Willy makes the most extreme sacrifice in his endeavor to leave a legacy that will permit Biff to satisfy the American Dream. Ben's last mantra—"The wilderness is dull, yet brimming with diamond" transforms Willy's suicide into a metaphorical good battle, a last skewed desire to understand his full business and material limit. His last demonstration, as indicated by Ben, “not likes the appointment at all" but rather like a "precious stone . . . rough and hard to the touch." Without any genuine level of self-learning or truth, Willy can accomplish an unmistakable result. In some appreciation, Willy experiences a kind of disclosure, as he at last comes to comprehend that the item he offers is himself. Through the fanciful counsel of Ben, Willy winds up completely trusting his prior declaration

to Charley that "after all the highways, and the trains, and the arrangements, and the years, you wind up worth more dead than alive."

In a rundown, Willy has a few blemishes to look over however they all come down to a basic defect in his reasoning. He is constantly preoccupied with his own dreams and longings, to such an extent that he denies and disregards anything in opposition to his convictions. Willy trusts that the measure of a man's prosperity is the amount of riches he has gathered and that these riches are picked up by being all around enjoyed. He is persuaded that fame is sufficient to prompt achievement and this in the end prompts his fall. At the point when Willy settles on committing suicide by intentionally getting into a car crash this doesn't feel like a character perceiving his deadly flaw however once we comprehend the reason that he does it then there is a touch of conclusion.

Miller said, "I think the disastrous feeling is evoked in us when we are in the nearness of a character why should prepared set out his life, if need be, to secure one thing- - his feeling of individual nobility."

This is the reason that Willy Loman is a heartbreaking hero. He understands that his life is one disappointment after another and that he never added up to what he thought he ought to be. In this last demonstration, he could get the insurance agency to pay $20,000 to his children with the goal that they could seek after their dreams. In spite of the fact that he does this to secure his dignity, it is

never uncovered on the off chance that he did this as a last demonstration of childishness or on the off chance that it was really his conviction this was the one good thing he could accomplish for his children. In the event that we trust that he trusts this is his one winning arrangement and that he doesn't understand that his desire depended on error, then he has demonstrated this to be his lethal flaw.

Hamartia in the Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex

In some essence, the Sophocle’s Oedipus Rex, it can be seen that the tragedy comprise of the heroic act of the protagonist in exhibiting goodness and superiority. Detailed by the instances where Oedipus as the main protagonist, makes tragic flaws and this erroneous in his own judgment that brings his own downfall. A tragic to be precise underlines the main thematic of the main character to know the circumstance that he unconsciously helped his adversaries to bring own ruin with the absence of freewill concerning the tragic hero’s life (Freud et al 45)
In this tragedy, Oedipus is portrayed as a good ruler, having the qualities of being sympathetic, compassionate, and just ruler. An illustration is when the priests of the Thebes sought his hand, requesting to be helped on behalf of the Thebes people who are undergoing family and rampant cases of death due to this. Due to his compassionate, King Oedipus agrees and make a promise to them that he is going to tackle their problem. Before we deep engulf ourselves in the whole story, it is important to be aware of one basic truth, “Oedipus” in the ancient time was a renowned Greek Tragedy

that typified the basic case of hamartia. His ‘hubris’ leads him to attempt a trial as he attempt to challenge the prophecy made the early gods that his ultimate ending was to end up carrying out what he feared most. “The Oracle of Delphi” had instructed him that in the forthcoming months he would end up killing his father and weirdly wed his mother. Trying to avoid this bad omen, he tries to flee from his home town “Corith” heading towards the “Thebes.” During these adventures he kills an old man in his way as they are involved in a conflict and as prophesied he end up wedding the queen of “Thebes.” This is after Oedipus is made the king of the city because of his Heroic act of saving the city from the deadly “Sphinx.” The blasphemous sins that Oedipus commit all out of his ignorant and in some sense we can say that he deserve this punishment because of his action to attempt to rebel for the cause that he was called to serve. The reversal of proceedings is brought by his own actions that in some degree are blasphemous.

Oedipus representing the tragic protagonist as a character in Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, considering the all-encompassing pattern in his decision making, makes graves mistake that portrays the protagonist flaws in predicating them. These flaws are developed because of egoism that has engulfed him since being made a king, for instance, in one of the lines he states that “Here I am myself, you know me, and the world knows my fame: I am Oedipus”. This pride is the start for several related difficulties towards

himself, such as recklessness, stubbornness and disrespectful (Britton 342).

The two vices, recklessness and being disrespectful are displayed throughout the play, take for instance when he make his proclamation followed by no confirmation from the audience, instead of displaying wisdom and patience, he loses focus and rushes onward getting his curse. After a short span of time, he loses temper and talk to Tiresias, “You. You scum of the earth…out with it. Once and for all!” followed by another statement that “Enough! Such filth from his? Insufferable, what, still alive? Get out faster, back where you came from, vanish!” (Steiner & John 543).
Conclusion

This is the real play depicting hamartia the best way possible as illustrated by the event of the main character. As many tragedies illustrate the concepts of hamartia, it is good for the readers to draw the themes that the author wanted to pass and learn from the action of Oedipus and the death of a salesman. The theme of egoism, recklessness and being disrespectful serves to illustrate that pride only serves to bring down fall.

Work Cited

1. Britton, Ronald. "The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex." The Oedipus complex today: Clinical implications (1989): 83-101.
2. Freud, Sigmund. "The dissolution of the Oedipus complex." Standard edition 19 (1924): 173-179.
3. Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2015.
   Sharma, Pawan Kumar. "Emergence of Middle Class Protagonists in the Plays of Arthur Miller." Mahesh Londhe (2013): 2013105.
4. Steiner, John. "Turning a blind eye: The cover up for Oedipus." International Review of Psycho-Analysis (1985).