[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 Manuscript version to Sonny in the book. She comments:

I had got sensitive to the importance of proper names, and this change is justified: "Sonny" is omnipresent in boys' names in Mississippi and is not dropped just because the boys grow up and marry; "Sonny" helped make the relationship of the man and the woman one that Bowman could mistake at the beginning; and at the same time it harked back to the fire-bringer…. Prometheus [who] was in my mind almost at the instant I heard Mr. Johnson tell about the farmer borrowing fire.

Likewise, William M. Jones asserts that the name Bowman is an allusion to Hercules, the archetypal archer of antiquity. He then proceeds to analyze how the weak Bowman functions as a sort of anti-Hercules figure, foil to the strong Herculean Sonny, doer of muscular deeds and bringer of fire and potency. According to Jones, in rejecting the mythical symbolism of Sonny and his earth-mother-wife, Bowman refuses to undergo the necessary process of individuation described by Jung and hence degenerates into psychic debility and death. And so he does.

Yet, two complementary bow-man associations also seem applicable. The first is to another ancient archer—Cupid. This reference appears particularly apt as Bowman's troubles are, both metaphorically and physically, of the heart. To strain an allusion, one might say that his heart veritably quivers like a bow (it leaps and expands like a rocket and a colt, falls gently and scatters like an acrobat and ashes) out of its lonely need to achieve communion with his hosts and humanity. The bow imagery is reinforced by the tableau of the mule turning its target-like eyes into his. But Bowman averts his eyes and at the conclusion becomes the hunted, slain by his own self-destructive heart/weapon, rather than a potential wooer.

The second association is suggested by Bowman's strange symbolic gesture as he approaches the threshold of the cabin:

He stooped and laid his big black hat over the handle on his bag. It was a humble motion, almost a bow, that instantly struck him as absurd and betraying of all his weakness. He looked up at the woman, the wind blowing his hair. He might have continued for a long time in this unfamiliar attitude; he had never been a patient man, but when he was sick he had learned to sink submissively into the pillows, to wait for his medicine. He waited on the woman.

Later, when confronted by Sonny's potent presence, Bowman "knew he should offer explanations and show money—at least appear either penitent or authoritative." Both responses, however, falsely polarize his options. As Robert Heilman notes, "he cannot be either humble or dominant, that is, practice even the one-sided relationships that substitute for genuine mutuality."

The term bow, though, offers a complex continuum of connotations. Most neutrally, bowing is a ritual act of courtesy often offered in greeting (the Manuscript text significantly reads "almost a curtsey" for "almost a bow"). Negatively, bowing refers to debasing obeisance, as in "bowing and scraping," or an unwilling act of acquiescence to another's will or authority. It also suggests being bowed down by the burdens of life. In a more positive sense, bowing expresses degrees of acknowledgment and acceptance, compliance and consent, and, finally, reverence for a power superior to oneself. The posture of prayer is, after all, a form of bowing.

The woman before whom Bowman awkwardly bows is also a complex and ambiguous symbol. She is both ancient and youthful to evoke simultaneously the Uroboros or archetypal Great Mothers from Bowman's grandmother back to Rhea as well as an actual procreative mate. She also symbolically links the cycle of birth and death and functions as a guide: a priestess with a lamp before the dark passage of her temple/cabin, which combines elements of a womb and a tomb, or perhaps a medium (the earlier version contains a suggestive reference to Bowman's heart pounding "profoundly, like a medium at a seance"). Far from the weakness and passivity Bowman sees in his unconscious urge to embrace this primordial female principle, it represents a positive acceptance of life-giving sources and an act of faith. One is reminded of a similar gesture in "A Still Moment" in which the evangelical preacher, Lorenzo Dow, escapes from the Indians by acquiescing immediately and unhesitatingly to the internal command, "'Incline!'" Though Dow also is too quick to devise his own salvation instead of waiting upon Providence's "less hurried, more divine" protection, he at least is open to the vision which the heron offers. Bowman, in contrast, fails to heed the command, for "he had not known yet how slowly he understood" what the couple represents.

Welty relates her approach in "Death of a Traveling Salesman" to a recurrent motif in her fiction: "the journey of errand or search (for some form of the secret of life)," which she asserts also underlies "A Worn Path," "The Wide Net," "A Still Moment," "The Hitch-Hikers," and the entire collection The Bride of the Innisfallen. She seems to be suggesting by the multiple associations of the name Bowman that people need to learn how—out of strength not weakness—to bow before mysteries beyond our human control or even knowing.