Abstract

Arthur Miller is acknowledged as a heavyweight in portraying ordinary life’s tragedy in twentieth-century America. He believes that tragedy is no longer confined to the kingly man placed aloofness from others; he denies rigid definitions of traditional Greek tragedy and enriches them to keep abreast of the times in modern society. Most Miller scholars, unfortunately, are still preoccupying themselves with Death of a Salesman. Available criticism of these two plays is scant and not extensive. This paper studies both the ostensible structures of standardized Greek tragedy and the hidden ideas of modern tragedy as they are intertwiningly applied to the two texts to see how Miller expresses his idea of modern tragedy behind the shield of Greek tragedy and how it gives a new lease on the life of antiquated classical tragedy in modern society.

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