The tradition of tragedy, the famous form of drama based on human suffering that invokes an accompanying catharsis, has mostly become an abandoned art. The plays that evoke the feeling of tragedy – the creations of Sophocles, Euripides and William Shakespeare – have not been recreated often, nor recently due to their complex nature. The complexity of tragedy lies in the fact that the plot is the soul of the play, while the character is only secondary. Although the soul of the play is the plot, according to Aristotle, the tragic hero remains extremely important because of the need for a medium of suffering, who attempts to reverse his situation once he discovers an important fact, and of the sudden slowdown in the situation. the hero's fortune. Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman is a modern tragedy about an ordinary man named Willy Loman, who, like Oedipus in Sophocles' Oedipus the King, exhibits some of the qualities of a tragic hero. However, the character of Willy Loman should not be considered a full-fledged tragic hero because, although he has a comparable tragic flaw in his willingness to sacrifice everything to maintain his personal dignity, he is different from a true hero tragic, like Oedipus, because he was in total control of his destiny where Oedipus was not. In both works, each character has an important struggle that they must face, which motivates them to achieve a positive outcome. The prevalence of each character wanting to control their life to avoid the possibility of failure ironically becomes the catalyst for each character's eventual downfall. Willy Loman, for most of his life, attempted to achieve prosperity in a capitalist nation in order to live the American dream. Oedipus, a seemingly noble king, who, like any good king, tries to free...... middle of paper ......the to move on, and instead died seeing himself as a success. Oedipus Rex and Death of a Salesman can both be described as tragedies, Willy Loman is not an example of a traditional tragic hero like Oedipus. To be qualified as a tragic hero, the character must experience anagnorisis, a peripeteia, and must demonstrate pride and hamartia. Oedipus possesses all of these qualities, which makes him an excellent example of tragedy. Oedipus' tragic flaw, his discovery of what he has done, and the resulting destruction due to his discovery are all necessary to qualify as a hero of tragedy. Although Willy Loman has a tragic flaw that is even comparable to that of Oedipus in that it blinds him to reality, he nevertheless has no revelation as to why his demise is inevitable. Without such experience, Willy is not a hero of tragedy.