A Comparison of Materialism, Communication, and Connection in Death of a Traveling Salesman and Neighbor Rosicky MC Zimmermann 12th Grade

Joint critiques of modern materialism and the resulting void in the life of the everyday man, Willa Cather’s Neighbor Rosicky and Eudora Welty’s Death of a Traveling Salesman illuminate the modernist dilemma of isolation through the characters of Rosicky and and R.J. Bowman, exploring themes such as communication, familial bond, simplicity in life. While both stories ultimately agree that materialism is a direct source of disconnect, leading to isolation and alienation, only Death of a Traveling Salesman negotiates the consequences of materialism and the absence of social, particularly familial, bond as a result of inaction and the inability to communicate. Neighbor Rosicky, in contrast, explores the antithesis: a life lived without regard to material goods, in which happiness is achieved through family life despite poverty. It embodies themes of action and communication as tools to happiness. Harsh and unforgiving descriptions of city life effectively position the city as a metaphor for materialism, or the chief source of emptiness in modern life. Cather and Welty’s stories have a nearly parabal-like quality to them, reading almost as guides on how to live a happy, fulfilled life.

The opening line of Death of a Traveling...