Re: Jumping in

Face Inthecrowd (facethecrowd@hotmail.com)
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 21:07:35 -0400 (EDT) 

Hello, I'd like to jump into this discussion, too, if you don't mind.  Are 
Salinger's characters always fish out of water?

Well, Seymour certainly seemed to be out of his element.  He's pale at the 
beach and he can't stand the prospect of anyone staring at his feet.  
Considering that most everyone stares at people's feet, if I'm correct in my 
interpretation of that as a symbol for judging people, I'd say that 
qualifies Seymour as a maladapted youth, probably because his boyhood was so 
different than the mundane world, or maybe he was born as a fish out of 
water, which would suggest that people with natural intelligence are fish 
out of water from the get-go, which would be incorrect since intelligent 
people are supposed to be more adaptable and potentially fitter than their 
lessers.  To suggest that intelligent people can't cope in this day and age 
is preposterous.  So Seymour had a very different upbringing and was exposed 
to generations of truth by interacting with people, reading books written by 
people who are wiser than him, and theorizing about life.  Maybe when he 
moved out of home, when he got married, he found that his knowledge didn't 
help him to taste the cruelty that the world can offer.  So he was raised in 
a different environment, and, by sequestering himself from his family and 
mentors, became a fish flopping out of water on the ignorant lands, was 
forced to adjust to a world he didn't want to adjust to, the camel's back 
broke, and he shot himself or dug his gills in the sand.

My two cents.  Holden isn't a fish out of water though.  He's different 
because he's honest with himself, not because he was born with some unique 
quality.  Anyone care to argue with that?

Japhe




>From: Jonathan.Moritz@utas.edu.au (Jonathan Moritz)
>Reply-To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
>To: bananafish@lists.nyu.edu
>Subject: Jumping in
>Date: Tue, 26 Oct 1999 12:42:49 +1100
>
>I know what you mean, Lauren, about the difficulty of "jumping in" to these
>conversations which don't seem to have much to do with Salinger anyhow.
>It's Nice to allow digressions when people are getting all fired up, but
>it's even Nicer when one can follow the thread and it's relevance to our
>common interest on this group, Salinger.
>
>How about this...
>_____
>Someone said to me, "There are plenty of fish in the sea."
>But I don't want to live in the sea.
>_____
>
>Are Salinger's characters always "fish out of water" ? What do we
>Bananafishers think?  Seymour was contemplating taking the plunge, Teddy
>watched the orange peel on the seas and someone screamed over the empty
>pool, Boo Boo and Lionel stays afloat in the dinghy but that key-ring of
>Seymour's sunk. But Zooey was in his element in a bathtub, with his knees
>as little islands.
>
>
>

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