he greatest tales in all literature of continuous, full-scale exploration purely for the sake of the adventures to be had. Ulysses' odyssey took him wherever the winds blew, with the carefree recklessness of youth. Tennyson imagines the aging king's longing for the excitement he once experienced as a universal yearning "to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" (576). Tennyson's poem speaks to every adult who remembers, however unrealistically, an earlier, more exciting time.
Willy Loman, the traveling salesman in Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," is also longing for his glory days. He tells his boss, "In those days, there was personality in it, Howard. There was respect, and comradeship, and gratitude in it. Today, it's all cut and dried, and there's no chance for bringing friendship to bear - or personality" (1079). His wife Linda asks him, "Why must everybody conquer the world?" (1081), but Willy has never been able to become the successful salesman of his aspirations. In his youth, he looked up to men who seemed to be confident, powerful, and admired. When he started on the road, they were his role models. However, faced with the grueling pace of the road and increasingly impossible sales quotas, Willy has been worn down. He is beginning to see that the men he once looked up to may not have been all they appeared to his young eyes, and, even if they were, their example may be impossible to duplicate in the cold, modern world. He looks at his neighborhood and no longer recognizes what he sees: "The grass don't grow anymore, you can't raise a carrot in the back yard" (1042).
The past haunts Willy, sometimes quite literally. He holds conversations with people from his youth, and these spells in which he appears to be talking to himself terrify his family. He revisits the safety of his past because this was the time when he understood who he was and could look forward to what was to come. He is confused ...