30 pages • 1 hour read
Eudora WeltyDeath of a Traveling Salesman
Fiction | Short Story | AdultA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
R. J. Bowman
The protagonist is a man named R. J. Bowman, presumably in his thirties or forties. Welty doesn’t directly give his age, but he “for fourteen years traveled for a shoe company” (108). A major trait of the character is that he is ill after a month-long bout of the flu, and though he is barely recovered, Bowman feels “there was no use wishing he were back in bed […] By paying the […] doctor his bill he had proved his recovery” (108). He’s unable to slow down and rest—profitable work is the main source of purpose in his life. In fact, Bowman often slips into sales-speak, sounding more like a salesman than a full person.
Bowman is single and quite lonely after years of focusing on his career. A modern figure influenced by commercialization, the man is committed more to his profit than to his spiritual and emotional life. The narrative follows this isolated, driven, ill character through a series of events during which he wrestles with himself as his own antagonist until his innermost desire—to love and to be loved, to be in communion with fellow humanity—is revealed to the reader. Whether Bowman fully embraces that desire, however, remains ambiguous.
Bowman’s name has been the subject of critical review. As Bowman drives and occasionally pokes his head out of the window to peer up the dusty road, he has “physical sensations of the winter sun pushing his head down” and, thus, is in a bowing position—he is a bowing man, or, Bow-man (Kállay, Katalin G. “Impish Throbbing—Impulses and Imperatives in the Heart of the Story: A Reading of Eudora Welty’s ‘Death of a Traveling Salesman.’” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, vol 18, no. 1/2, 2012, pp. 227-37). The motion of bowing signifies reverence toward something, and in the salesman’s case, that reverence is for profit. When such reverence supersedes the more human elements of life—like relationship with oneself and others—it becomes a kind of worship and a lifestyle devoid of meaning. This simple detail further characterizes the protagonist—and the modern isolation he embodies—as spiritually astray.
Sonny
A static character and a foil to Bowman, Sonny is married to the woman and is a farmer or farmhand. Similar to the woman but a bit more developed, Sonny functions largely to propel the narrative and contrast Bowman’s traits. Where Bowman is weak, sick, and emotionally lost, Sonny is strong, virile, and clear-minded. He’s a simply drawn archetype of a traditional American farmer: a man of action and few words who tends the earth by day and enjoys simple pleasures by night. He is “a big enough man, with his belt slung low about his hips […] He was strong, with dignity and heaviness in his way of moving” (112). And when he enters the home, his “step shook the house” (114). When the woman asks Sonny to retrieve Bowman’s car from the ravine, an indebted Bowman can merely shrug as both a request and an apology. Without many words or fanfare, Sonny goes with his mule to retrieve the car—he is confident and effective in a way that Bowman struggles to be.
Lightness as a motif is woven through Sonny’s character; when he wants to warm and light the house, he heads to a nearby farm to “borry some fire” (115). It was, in fact, this very phrase inspired Welty to write the story—“a remark repeated to me by a traveling man […] to whom it had been spoken while he was on a trip to Northern Mississippi […] The words, which carried such lyrical and mythological dramatic overtones, were real and actual” (Welty, Eudora. One Writer’s Beginnings. Harvard University Press, 1984). Bowman offers Sonny matches, but Sonny and his wife prefer an older method: literally borrowing fire from a neighbor. Sonny returns from Mr. Redmond’s farm with a torch that brightens the house with light and warmth. The community that Sonny belongs to and cares for as an active member means that he is never alone and never has to go without. For even the most basic human need—light and warmth by fire—Sonny can lean on his community. When Bowman realizes that Sonny and the woman are married and expecting a child, the juxtaposition between Sonny—healthy and wed—to Bowman—ill and alone—emphasizes that Bowman’s solitary, transient way of life has cost him greatly.
The Woman
Though she is never given a name, the woman is characterized by a pleasant but direct and quiet demeanor. She is ultimately a static and symbolic figure, basically unchanging—though she does change completely from Bowman’s perspective—and without a development arc of her own. When Bowman reaches the home and sees her standing on the porch, “he saw at once that she was old,” that she was a “big woman,” and that “she wore a formless garment of some gray coarse material” (110). However, near the end of the narrative, when Bowman can see more clearly by the light of the fireplace, he realizes that the woman is young and pregnant.
Though her character remains mysterious, the woman is the main catalyst for Bowman’s spiritual awakening, and she indirectly exposes his emotional incompleteness. Consistent with her narrative importance, it is she who first causes Bowman’s heart to hammer, and her presence flusters him more than anything else in the story. When she sits in the dim house with him, waiting for Sonny’s return, Bowman finds her quiet attentiveness agonizingly enigmatic, unable to comprehend that she is merely showing him hospitality: “He wondered over and over why the woman did not go ahead with cleaning the lamp. What prompted her to stay there across the room, silently bestowing her presence upon him?” (111). That Bowman can barely tolerate the woman’s simple relationality speaks to the stultifying effects of his chronic isolation. It is as though human connection is a foreign language to him. In his conversation with her, in which she mentions the farmer Redmond, Bowman’s discomfort at the thought of strangers further announces his stuntedness.
Bowman’s interactions with the woman—sitting with her, later learning she is pregnant—are turning points at which he is flooded with the feeling of loss and regret that he has pursued neither love nor a family. The woman therefore represents what Bowman has lost by prioritizing profit above all else. She is also indirectly characterized by an object she holds when Bowman first approaches her: “She had been cleaning the lamp, and held it, half blackened, half clear, in front of her” (110). As the motif of lightness and darkness draws a deeper symbolic meaning of togetherness versus isolation, the lamp—and therefore the character of the woman—take on significance as well. She both focuses on the task at hand, grounded and self-assured, and brings connection to her family with her commitment and love.
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By Eudora Welty
