“The proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it.”-Walt Whitman

I’ve been trying to decide which is a more potent metaphor for the death of the American dream: an aging salesman who, recently dismissed from his job of 40 years and coming to terms with the fact that his life is a sham, drives himself off the highway to his death, or, a wreck-loose journalist who personifies a culture of political subversion, excess and general badassedness taking a .45 and blowing off the top of his head.

To be both honest and obvious, most of us hadn’t thought much about what it is to be American or what patriotism means until about three years ago when those two definitions became the most complicated and important of the decade — perhaps of our generation.

But what does that have to do with The Death of a Salesman’s lead character, Willy Loman, you might ask?As many are aware, the great American playwright Arthur Miller passed away just weeks ago as a result of a heart complication. Last Sunday night, gonzo journalist and prophesier Hunter S. Thompson took his life Ernest Hemmingway-style with a handgun.

What has followed is a series of eulogies heralding the work of these authors and a reexamination of their influence and what it means for the world today. Miller, posthumously declared by Charles Isherwood as the most American of American playwrights will be remembered for bringing the domestic reality of the 1950s to the stage. Through Willy Loman, Miller defined the modern tragic hero as the common man.

Representing both the era of naturalism on the American stage and the classic sensibility of the golden generation, Miller felt a moral responsibility to bring politics and the struggles of daily life to the stage. Many were quick to draw links from Miller’s famous anti-McCarthyism play The Crucible to the current political climate, warning of the supposed religious fervor of the right and the mob-hysteria created in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. Some likened Miller’s death to the death of a type of moral seriousness in art.

In weeks to follow there will undoubtedly be shouts of the End of Gonzo Journalism, a certain strain of ’70s drug culture or the dominance of counter-culture politics in the media. Then again, the death of Hunter S. Thompson may only come to represent the death of a drug-crazed Rolling Stone contributor.

Thompson had a clear vision of what was sick, fascinating and beautiful about America and its people. Writing in the late ’60s and ’70s, Thompson set out as a madman correspondent looking not only to snort whatever was available and break as much shit as possible on the trail, but really to get at the heart of what this America place was all about. He achieved this by experiencing and writing about the news first-hand without the professional pretense of objectivity. What has resulted is a chronicle of the absurdities and viciousness of American counterculture, politics and life. Towards the end of his career, Thompson may have seemed dried-up, old-hat and more of a nuisance in aviator glasses than a cultural icon, but few would deny his influence on American journalism and culture.

I’m not actually trying to suggest that the death of these two figures signifies a death of some American spirit. The self-execution of an aging 1970s maverick does not symbolize a failure in the American Dream, nor does the end of Arthur Miller’s life mark the end of an era. The cultures represented by these two men have long since passed into history. But to examine each as an influential social critic of his own time is to examine what voice is needed for today’s world. There is a need for a fresh look at America and there is a need for a voice to define these words with which we struggle.