Survival as Heroism

Abstract

Key Largo, A Streetcar Named Desire and Death of a Salesman posit heroism in the idealist’s unsuccessful struggle in an essentially materialistic society, a struggle that is seen as conferring dignity on the protagonist. Through their opposition to the system and to social mores, and through their resulting demise, the protagonists validate their otherwise meaningless existence. They find themselves in the valueless world described by such critics as Krutch and Fergusson. It is what might be called a post-heroic world in that it no longer understands heroism or has any need for it. These plays delineate an indifferent or hostile environment from which the hero or heroine nonetheless emerges the triumphant moral victor, if not an actual one, by virtue of his or her estrangement and exile from the materialistic and philistine external world.