DOAS & Aristotle's Theory of Tragedy & "Tragedy and the Common Man"

I really appreciate the way that Arthur Miller talks about hamartias in characters of a story in his essay “Tragedy and the Common Man”:

The flaw, or crack in he character, 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”.

Although in an Aristotelian tragedy, plot would be considered the most important aspect of the play, I believe that what makes this play so tragic is the struggle between Willy’s GREAT hamartia of being unable to see the reality of himself and his family and all of the other characters, especially Biff, who try to either appease Willy or make him understand what is true. I think Willy’s stubbornness and pride blinds him and makes him act as strangely as he does. Just as Miller says, Willy sees things like the stockings and Biff’s presence as challenges against his “rightful status” and therefore shows “active retaliation” through his fits of unexpected anger. The stockings serve as a reminder of Willy’s act of adultery and how he was found out by Biff who called him a “phony little fake”. Biff himself is also a reminder of this to Willy but there is more to Biff that angers Willy. Willy starts to conclude that Willy’s act of adultery caused Biff’s success and popularity in high school to decline and blames himself for Biff’s shortcomings. He is unable to see that Biff is a “nothing” and that his values of being well liked by people aren’t things that are valued by the world anymore. Yet, he is unwilling and unable to show this weakness in front of Biff and he claims that Biff is full of “spite”, continuously bringing up whose “fault” it is. Willy’s dignity prevents him from giving up his “phony dream” and to realize that firstly, his son isn’t amazing, and that, secondly, the world doesn’t value how people present themselves to be anymore, like how they talk or look like. Willy couldn’t even realize this back in the 1920s when he was talking to Linda about how people “seem to laugh at [him]” when he traveled as a salesman. He blamed it on “[joking] too much” and being “fat”, but it was just that the world was changing to come to accept people more like Bernard. People with intelligence are actually appreciated and valued because of their knowledge. It is even sadder that Willy can’t seem to recognize this after seeing how Bernard has grown.