Willy Loman - Will he low man?
The way that we're expected to read literature in my English class reminds me of a state of paranoia, though maybe not quite as insightful. For instance, my teacher asks us to find the significance in the names of the characters in every story/poem/play we read. We were informed that the protagonist of Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, has double significance: Willy as in "will he" (will he kill himself?) and Loman as in "low man," quite literally, a man at the end of his rope. Now, while Arthur Miller is insipid enough to put hidden meanings in the characters names, we were asked to make a similar reading of "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Not that Hawthorne is above using characters names in this way (Dimsdale, etc), "goodman" and "goody" (short for goodwife) were typical forms of address in the early Salem, Massachusetts community, synonymous with today's "Mr." and "Mrs." It does not mean that all of the characters in the story (other than priests or decons) are "good men" and "good wives." Since Hawthorne normally set his stories in Salem, Massachusetts at about this time period, I think it's also safe to say that he didn't chose this time period just so that he could ironically call all of his characters "good men" and "goodies."
I swear you dogmatic English teachers will be the death of me!