WAS that the ghost of Willy Loman I spotted in Zuccotti Park the other day, swapping grievances with the spirits of Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie? Probably not. Willy, the title character of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” went to his grave paying lip service to — and perhaps even still half-believing in — the American dream. Anyway, being part of a public protest would have embarrassed a guy who put his trust in the conquering power of a smile and a shoeshine and who wanted, above all, to be well liked.

But it was hard not to hear the voice of Willy’s widow, Linda, among the motley sign carriers in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, as they sounded their disparate watchwords. You remember Linda. She’s the one who said of her husband, who seemed to have turned invisible to himself after he lost his job, “Attention must be paid to such a person.” And whatever you say about the lack of formal demands and strategies within the viral movement known as Occupy Wall Street, you can’t deny that its participants are unified by one overriding desire: They want attention paid to them.

When “Death of a Salesman” returns to Broadway next year, in a new production starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Willy Loman may emerge as even more a man of our time than he seemed to be of his when the play first opened in 1949. And if the current state of New York theater is any indication, he’ll have lots of company on other stages. Willy, after all, remains the American drama’s most poignant example of a man driven to despair when he loses his job and is made — to use a word more in fashion now than then — redundant. As Miller portrays him, Willy out of work is Willy stripped of dignity, weight and even identity.