Nine Stories
Nine StoriesJ D Salinger wrote Nine Stories with the same brilliance as Catcher In
The Rye. His style is so unique and complex that all of his short
stories are truly enjoyable. Two of those stories are ^A perfect day
for a bananafish^ and ^For Esme with love and squalor.^ The main
characters in both of these stories, Seymour and Sargent X, have served
in World War II, and the fighting has taken its toll on them. Their
physiological well being was sacrificed and as a result they are no
longer the same people they were before. Both feel alienated from the
people in their life, the same people they had loved before the war.
The isolation the war has caused is carried over into their lives, and
it caused these men to search for new forms of comfort and security, in
the respective forms of Sybil and Esme.
In ^A perfect day for a bananafish,^ Muriel and her husband
Seymour have different perspectives of life. Muriel is a
carefree and complacent person, while her husband is quite
strange and slightly paranoid. His paranoia is illustrated when
he looses it in the hotel elevator, ^I have two normal feet and
I can^t see the slightest God-damned reason anyone should stare
at them.^ Muriel, however, is unacquainted with Seymour^s wild
breakdowns. She is rather confident that Seymour is perfectly
sane as she reports to her mother on the telephone. Muriel
doesn^t know about this side of Seymour because he has become
alienated from her after the war. Their personalities don^t
match anymore, if they ever did, and he is seeking some sort of
understanding that he knows Muriel can not provide. Seymour^s
relationship with Sybil is making up for Muriel^s shortcomings.
Seymour is looking for the understanding of a child and the
love of an adult. He wants someone who will not judge him. He
rea! lizes the impossibility of his desires with Sybil when he
gets a loud reaction from her after kissing the arch of her foot.
Seymour has no one who understands him, which causes his feeling of
isolation. He can no longer relate to the world...
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