Arthur Miller writes "Tragedy and the Common Man" as a response to the classic interpretation of a tragedy. He defines tragedy not just with a sad ending like many people, including myself, thought, but involving a protagonist with the fatal flaw of not giving up in the face of danger in order to rightfully claim their status in the community. Miller hypothesizes in the book that we have a lack of tragedies in the modern era due to a lack of great heroes in our society. I disagree, and think that the reason we have less tragedies is due to a value shift since the times of the Elizabethan era. The optimism the audience is supposed to feel is due to the persistence of the human spirit, even in certain death. But we can see that as we have become more educated, we have become more cynical of this concept. We see this through the removal of the draft and the declining enrollment in the military; the values we teach in our children and the values we have in raising our children. A large section of the population feels that the human cost in a tragedy is greater than any threat posed, unless the protagonist is successful. In this way, little optimism is felt from tragedies, and so tragic stories that are successful today don't incorporate these elements. The new literary formula is similar to tragedies, but the protagonist is able to overcome or fix their flaw, not fall to it. Our lack of traditional heroes among us isn't the cause of the lack of tragedies, but instead, both are symptoms of a greater value shift throughout the modern era.