Welty, Eudora (Vol. 105) - Nancy B. Sederberg (review date Fall 1983)
Nancy B. Sederberg (review date Fall 1983)
SOURCE: "Welty's 'Death of a Traveling Salesman,'" in The Explicator, Vol. 42, No. 1, Fall, 1983, pp. 52-4.
[In the following review, Sederberg analyzes the different symbolic associations of the name Bowman in Welty's "Death of a Traveling Salesman."]
The name R. J. Bowman in Eudora Welty's "Death of a Traveling Salesman" evokes meanings beyond those suggested either by Welty herself or prior critics. In a recent reminiscence, "Looking Back at the First Story," Welty recalls a real-life prototype for Bowman, Mr. Archie Johnson, a neighbor who in the 1930's traveled remote Mississippi roads as a Highway Department inspector and land buyer. On a literal level, the name Bowman is probably a transposition of his given name, Archie, into an equivalent surname, Bowman. Yet Welty is aware of the symbolic associations of names as well, as evidenced by her changing the antagonist's name from Rafe in the...
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