Re: Seymour's Suicide
Marco Alberto Cabassi (mac2@cornell.edu)
Tue, 15 Jul 1997 14:03:12 -0500
i think people should concentrate more on the actual story (a fine day for
bananafish) then on what salinger was up to when he wrote the story...
i agree with the poster who said the catcher in the rye and the bananafish
story were realy the same story... seymour ended up with a bullet in his
head / the fish got stuck somewhere / holden was put in a sanatorium until
considered sane...
what i find most interesting is the part when the little girl claims to
have seen the bananafish... i agree with a previous poster that that
particular incident is what might have pushed seymour over the edge- to see
such a young girl already lying just to be cool... i never particluarly
liked the little girl anyway though (if my memory does not fail me) since
she used to pick on a dog and hated this other little girl just because
seymour had let her sit on his lap... i think that maybe seymour just
realized he was not going to be able to protect all the 'innocent children'
(i'm starting to hate the expression)... this one was living proof of
that...
i think the same thing happened with muriel.. he thought she was an
'innocent child' and then turned out to be like the banafish seeing
child... thus seymour had nothing left to live for.. this would also
explain why he had no compunction about blowing his brains out in a room
with her...
just my 2 cents (i apologize for the absence of the now obligatory eastern
philosophy comments... but i hate writing about whatr i know practically
nothing about)
-marco
ps- are there other exaples in salingers works of people seeing
someone/something that wasn't really there? (the girl who sees cary grant
or someone in the catcher in the rye comes to mind)