Cozy Narrative in The Death of a Salesman by Eudora Welty

My continuing series of graduate critical essays is back once again with some analysis of Eudora Welty and the craft of narrative in The Death of a Salesman.

In The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, we see a variety of narrative styles. Her stories are mostly narration with very little dialogue. Her characters are busy inside their heads. Stories can range from a third-person perspective like “The Death of a Salesman” to first-person like “Why I Live at the P.O.” From this collection, I was especially drawn to the stories with tight perspective and cozy narration. Even a story like “Curtain of Green,” which is told in the third person, has the cozy nature of the other two. 

       One of the overarching themes from this collection is the focused nature of the storytelling. Many of these stories are set in the South, often with people in poverty. Because these are short stories, she does not waste our time with too much setting; it is something with which we should already be familiar. 

       Why I Live at the P.O. is a story about a young girl and her desire to leave her difficult family for more peaceful surroundings. It is a story of escape. Although we don’t know exactly why she is escaping, other than her family situation, the style is singularly focused on a first-person perspective on the main character. We know much about her own internal thoughts, and her family is just sort of cardboard cutouts she stands up against. A desire for independence throughout the storm makes for a compelling theme. 

       In “A Curtain of Green,” the narrative is about Mrs. Larkin above all and through her struggle, threats of murder, and her release of her anger at life and the death of her husband. In this story, the rain falling in the garden becomes its character. This is an excellent use of setting without beating the reader around the head with it. Even so, the story is inextricably about Mrs. Larkin. Her feelings, her murderous thoughts, and her sense of the rain carry us through the story. Jamey isn’t even a factor other than an object of her anger at the world. 

       The Death of a Salesman features a tight perspective between three characters, and the story takes place mainly in a shotgun house at the end of a lonely road. How she describes the shotgun house lends a cramped feeling to the story. Although the story begins on a lonely road and features a sojourn to a buried whiskey bottle, the deck is not expansive. It is small, cramped, and intimately focused on the main character’s experiences, R.J. Bowman.

       I think this narrative is unique because it is very cozy. It takes place with only three characters in a small environment. The story is reminiscent of a cozy mystery (like Murder on the Orient Express). Everything happens with a set group of people. Although we aren’t told it is Sonny who shoots him, it is heavily implied. From the title, we know that the salesmen are going to die; we just don’t know-how. That is a mystery that the reader discovers as the story goes along. 

       Another aspect that makes this narrative cozy is Bowman’s focus on his internal organs. Eudora evokes a feeling similar to the Tell-Tale Heart, where his heart is pounding in his ears. She repeats this feeling three times throughout the story, and it is incredibly impactful at the end. The beats of his heart sound like shots. His tell-tale heart beating almost muffles the actual sound. The brilliance of this move is that it shrinks the perspective of the work to an even more minor degree. Now, it’s not just the desolation of the environment, the shotgun house, or the characters; we almost inhabit Bowman. His heart is beating in the ears of the reader. 

       It is a gripping narrative decision that we don’t know precisely why Sonny decides to shoot the salesman. Is it because he left in the night? Is it because he left money for them? Is it because he simply knew too much? It is a mystery. His anxiety was well-placed, although we don’t understand. It is masterful storytelling because we are left with a specific feeling without being told. 

       In my creative pages, I’ve been working on description and narration, and this collection gave me some new tools that I tried in my creative pages for this packet.