Social Responsibility In Ernest Hemingway's Death Of A Salesman

Our narrator, Fuckhead, is a drug addict who is waiting by the side of the road for someone to pick him up. He gets in three cars through his journey which is an indispensable number not to mention and not to look at. Also, the way he experiences the last car is a focus point in the story.
As we start to read the story we immediately get drawn to Fuckhead’s drug-induced state. “The downpour raked the asphalt and gurgled in the ruts. My thoughts zoomed pitifully. The traveling salesman had fed me pills that made the linings of my veins feel scraped out. My jaw ached. I knew every raindrop by its name.” (Johnson 3-4) He is a hard drug addict who is probably an outsider. Clearly, he did not fit into his social circles, not even with whom he did

drugs. Probably these events lead him to be an addict as an article demonstrates this: “…by showing the reader these occasional flashes of insight, Johnson conveys Fuckhead’s strong desire, yet inability, to connect with other humans.” (Farrar) In the story he mentions that he wanted to die and that he did not care about his life. It was when he was sitting in the car and all of his bags on the other side saying that he did not care whether he lives or dies. “And I piled my sleeping bag against the left-hand door and slept across it, not whether I lived or died.” (Johnson 4)
The narrator “…is basically summarizing the day’s events and with whom he was with.

Because he does not name the people, and instead he describes them by appearance (“the salesman,” “a Cherokee”) it can be assumed that he does not know these people personally, and was probably only with them because of the alcohol or drugs that were associated with them.” (Lazzaro) The first car he is in is the salesman’s car who is taking him to Kansas City “in his luxury car”. (Johnson 4) They are taking a huge amount of drugs on the way with whiskey. It is obvious that he is not interested in anything else except the drugs because once the salesman starts to talk about how he cheats on his wife and how he falls for that new girl but he can’t just leave them, Fuckhead stops listening. “She ran a furniture store, and I lost him there.” (Johnson 5) He didn’t care about anything except the drugs. The narrator continues with waking up in a Volkswagen with a collage man who took him out of the city. He was full of hashish and unconscious. He only realized himself when he was “…in the middle of a puddle.” (Johnson 6) He was left alone, outside like a dog, on the highway. This dark sadness appears when he is in these cars that there is no way out just going deeper in the mud. It is a way down to hell with drugs. “Almost all of the imagery and description Johnson uses in the story is crafted with a strong sense of contrast, and sadness and despair are consistently part of the equation.”

(Farrar)