Death of a Traveling Salesman

“Death of a Traveling Salesman” is Eudora Welty’s first published short story, which, upon its release in 1936, put her on the literary map and introduced her readers to her uniquely Southern and Modernist voice. As part of the Southern Renaissance movement, Welty’s writing spanned from the 1930s to the 1970s and included critiques of industrialism. Her 1972 novel The Optimist’s Daughter won the Pulitzer Prize, and she was awarded the National Medal for Literature (1979) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1980).

This guide cites the 2019 edition of The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, published by Mariner Books at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt with an introduction by Ann Patchett.

The story begins with the protagonist, R. J. Bowman, driving down a country road in Mississippi. He has just been released from a hotel doctor’s care after a long bout of the flu, and though he is still weak and feverish, he is steadfast in his desire to get back to work as a traveling shoe salesman. This has been his profession for the last 14 years; he perpetually drifts from hotel to hotel, his solitary life a blur of small rooms and lonely furniture.