A Worn Path Essay, Research Paper

Calamity and the Common Man

An Essay by Arthur Miller

1949

In this age few calamities are written.

It has frequently been held that the deficiency is due to a

dearth of heroes among us, or else that modem

adult male has had the blood drawn out of his

variety meats of belief by the incredulity of scientific discipline, and the

epic onslaught on life can non feed on an

attitude of modesty and discretion. For

one ground or another, we are frequently held to be below

calamity & # 8211 ; or tragedy above us. The

inevitable decision is, of class, that

the tragic manner is antediluvian, fit merely for the really

extremely placed, the male monarchs or the kingly, and where this

admittance is non made in so many words it is

most frequently implied.

I believe that the common adult male is as apt

a topic for calamity in its highest sense as male monarchs

were. On the face of it this ought to be

obvious in the visible radiation of modern psychopathology,

which bases its analysis upon classific preparations,

such as the Oedipus and Orestes

composites, for case, which were enacted

by royal existences, but which apply to everyone in

similar emotional state of affairss.

More merely, when the inquiry of

calamity in art is non at issue, we ne’er hesitate to

property to the well-placed and the exalted the

really same mental procedures as the lowly. And

eventually, if the ecstasy of tragic action were genuinely

a belongings of the highbred character

entirely, it is impossible that the mass

of

world should care for calamity above all other signifiers,

allow entirely be capable of understanding it.

As a general regulation, to which there may

be exclusions unknown to me, I think the tragic

feeling is evoked in us when we are in the

presence of a character who is ready to put

down his life, if need be, to procure one thing & # 8211 ; his

sense of personal self-respect. From Orestes to

Hamlet, Medea to Macbeth, the underlying

battle is that of the single attempting to derive

his & # 8220 ; rightful & # 8221 ; place in his society.

Sometimes he is one who has been

displaced from it, sometimes one who seeks to achieve

it for the first clip, but the fatal lesion

from which the inevitable events spiral is

the lesion of indignity, and its dominant force is

outrage. Tragedy, so, is the effect of

a adult male & # 8217 ; s entire irresistible impulse to measure himself

rightly.

In the sense of holding been initiated

by the hero himself, the narrative ever reveals what has

been called his & # 8220 ; tragic defect, & # 8221 ; a weakness that is

non peculiar to expansive or elevated

characters. Nor is it needfully a failing. The

defect, or cleft in the character, is truly

nil & # 8211 ; and

demand be nil & # 8211 ; but his inherent

involuntariness to stay inactive in the face of what he

conceives to be a challenge to his self-respect, his image

of his rightful position. Merely the passive,

merely those who accept their batch without active

revenge, are & # 8220 ; flawless. & # 8221 ; Most of us are in that

class.