Salesman and the King
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The Salesman and the King
In literature, tragedy is a word that can have various meanings and implications; the question is what the word tragedy means to a reader. On a basic level, a tragedy is a sad or terrible event of a magnitude that greatly affects the main character or characters in a piece of literature. In Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, we look at two plays that while they are very different in setting, they both still tell tales of tragedy and while they have many differences they also have some key similarities that make them tragic. The reader of a tragedy often is told a story where something happens that is well beyond the power of its central characters to control. What is it about a tragedy that makes two plays written about 2400 years apart comparable, and what exactly do the similarities and differences of these two stories mean?
Of history's greatest scholars, philosophers, and authors, Aristotle is one of the best known literary figures of his time. His theories are the basis for many of today's ideals and principles. Because of this, the plays and stories he wrote are often keen insights into human nature. Aristotle wrote numerous literary pieces and plays, but Oedipus Rex or Oedipus the King, as we now call it is probably one of the most famous. What could be more tragic than a man who runs from a prophesized fate of killing his father and marrying his mother, only to come full circle and ,unknowingly, end up fulfilling it?..