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Willy Loman, the troubled father and husband in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," can be classified as a tragic hero, as defined by Aristotle in his works, "Poetics." In Aristotle's text, a tragic hero was defined as one who falls from gra ....

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... but instead, has made a series of mistakes leading to his downfall. We can see that Willy does not purposely create this harmful situation for himself, he is only ignorant that certain actions of his are wrong, which contribute to his self-ruin. Willy Loman thusly personifies the attributes of a tragic hero as proposed by Aristotle. Willy, with a house, a car, a job, two sons whom he adores, and a supportive, caring wife, seems to have everything that any man could ever want. He manages, however, to alienate himself from these things that he loves near the end of the play as he slips into a self-induced state of altered reality. W ...