He hardly brought it on himself. He was a lost man consumed and spat out by the cruel capitalist society, in which the staging extending past the proscenium arch and onto the apron clearly states that we, the audience, are all cogs in this capitalist machine and thus, we are to blame. Willy is a brilliant combination of the tragic victim and hero, he is the common man, dying for his cause. In fact, in the requiem Happy is the perfect exemplification of the next common man to be polluted with the unreachable facade of the american dream. Just like Charley, our sage, states a salesman must dream. Death of a Salesman is definite modern tragedy filled with the dark reality and social strains and pressures of men in the late 1940s.