The Search For Meaning and Life

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Albert Camus once stated, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” In Eudora Welty’s, “Death of a Traveling Salesman”, R.J. Bowman, the main character and notorious “traveling salesman”, is in a constant, internal battle about the roads in which his life choices have led him down. As Bowman travels he gets lost physically and emotionally, he finds himself in the middle of nowhere with two bizarre people who may just cause him to realize, that what he once considered truth, may in fact be false, and that maybe life isn’t measured by the questions one answers, but by the things that make you ask questions. In this work of art written by Eudora Welty, the reader goes on a emotional ride with Mr. Bowman to discover that: looks can be deceiving, there may be no true definition of life, and sometimes emotional pain and sickness can take a physical toll on the body and mind. Welty uses her imagination to “transform a seemingly trivial anecdote into a meaningful and significant work of fiction” (Makowsky 141) about a man who is on “a journey of errand or search (for some form of the perfect life)” (Sederberg 54).
The story starts by introducing Mr. R.J. Bowman as a salesman who is recovering from an illness and lost in the hill country. As he drives down the road and soon into a ditch, the reader starts to understand that Bowman is very sick and disoriented. Having just recovered from influenza, Bowman is still weak and partially delusional. As Bowman wanders from his car and to a nearby house, he has flashbacks from his younger years. Bowman dreams of his grandmother and other women he has known, all of which he never kept in con...

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...sons to the people of today and hopefully lessons for future generations.

Works Cited

Flower, Dean. “Eudora Welty and Racism.” The Hudson Review (2007): 325-332. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Friedman, Walter A. “Editor’s Note.” Business History Review 82.4 (2008): 665-670. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
Goodman, Lenn E. “Supernovas: The Dialectic of Celebrity in Society.” Society 47.6 (2010): 510-515. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Makowsky, Veronica. “Welty’s Golden Imagination.” Southern Literary Journal 37.2 (2005): 141-144. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.
Minus, Ed. “PEOPLE IN ROOMS.” Sewanee Review 116.4 (2008): 651-654. Academic Search Premier. Web. 2 Apr. 2014
Sederberg, Nancy B. “Welty’s DEATH OF A TRAVELING SALESMAN.” Explicator 42.1 (1983): 52. Academic Search Premier. Web. 24 Feb. 2014.

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