“The flaw, or crack in the tragic character,” Miller writes, “is really nothing—and need be nothing—but his inherent unwillingness to remain passive in the face of what he conceives to be a challenge to his dignity, his image of his rightful status. Only the passive, only those who accept their lot without active retaliation, are ‘flawless.’ Most of us are in that category.” Miller goes on to point out that the quality in a tragedy which shakes us “derives from the underlying fear of being displaced, the disaster inherent in being torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in this
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