A Perfect Day For Bananafish Short Story

I was never a huge fan of children. I was never the girl to babysit all of the kids on my block. I was never the girl to spark up a conversation with a little girl or boy. I am the younger sibling and I have no younger cousins; I was the baby of the family, so I never really had to deal with children growing up. I never know what to say when I am talking to children because they do not understand the world the same way I do. Up until now, I never thought of that as a good thing. Seymour, a character from A Perfect Day for a Bananafish, is in a similar situation after returning from war with a severe case of PTSD. He talks to the children because they do not understand all of the tragedies of the world. Seymour has an easier time communicating

Sometimes our everyday experiences can strike us in ways that will influence our thinking in ways that might forever alter the way that we view our lives. In the short story “Fish Story,” Rick Bass primarily uses conflict, symbols, and the changes in a character to present a central theme reflecting the inevitability of our maturing thoughts and growing responsibilities that come incrementally with age. Gullason (1982) shares, “A short story represents a prose narrative usually concerned with a single aspect of personality changing or revealed as the result of conflict” (p. 222). We might interestingly find both of these dynamics within our weekly discussion’s short story assignment. Pigg (2017) explains, “The theme of a work of fiction is as much a creation of readers as it is for the writer because the user’s knowledge and beliefs play a part in determining the theme(s) they will recognize” (Attend Topic 4 Unit 2 [Video]). The writer of this week’s short story was likely to have known the theme that he intended to communicate while also recognizing the diversity of human thinking that gives us a myriad of perspectives. The “’Fish Story’s’ narrator is a 10-year-old boy in the early 1960’s living in rural Texas with parents who run a service station while their customer brings a 86 pound catfish creating a task to keep the fish alive until time to cook it” (Bass, 2009, pp. 1-2). As we recall our childhoods, most can likely remember how our imagination and fantasies began to collide with the realities of life, and this overreaching concept might allude to the theme of this piece of work. The narrator tells us how “He grew dizzy in the heat and from the strange combination of the unblinking monotony and utter fascination of his task until the trickling from the water hose seemed to be saturating and inflating the clouds as one would water a garden” (Bass, 2009, p. 2). As the narrator embraces the mundane task, his daydreams seem to symbolize the innocence of his youth. Later the story’s narrator “speaks less of childhood than of the general nature of the world in which we live, while contemplating that those days were different – we had more time for such thoughts, that time had not yet been corrupted”

The Fish, by Elizabeth Bishop, is a story about a fisherman and the fish he or she catches. Throughout the whole poem, Bishop uses diction and imagery to capture the image of the poem and express the meaning behind it. In the beginning, the speaker described how he or she caught the fish, and developed a series of reflecting moments. At first, the speaker was proud of his or her victory over the fish, but then realized it was a wrong thing to do. Bishop wrote about how the speaker shifts from seeing the fish as food, to something else beautiful. The speaker’s attitude towards the fish has changed throughout the poem.

Some tales are very hard to read because of the boring plot, clichés and obvious outcomes. The characters are also not as appealing and interesting, so they are not able to attract the reader and make the story entertaining itself. Thus, the authors often use various methods that help them to engage the reader and make the narrative catchy and readable. Two short stories that are going to be compared are “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman and “Riverboat” by Stephen Ross. The narratives are unique on their own and contain special devises that help the author to attract the reader and make an emotional connection between the book and the person.

A short story is a work of literature that is shorter than a novel. Although some may believe the length may not be enough to develop a noble story, in these few pages an author can pack a tight punch that will leave one in awe, disgust, or utter sadness. Whether there is a moral of the story or it is simply for the reader’s enjoyment, each author has their own style of conveying a message through their work in very diverse ways. Through Flannery O’Connor and Chuck Palahniuk’s works we can see this very evidently.

“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is a fictional short story which includes a few characters, but most importantly Seymour Glass

The 1940’s were a significant period in American history. By 1939, The Great Depression was coming to an end and there were new changes being made in society. In entertainment, for the first time there were color motion pictures, and singers like Frank Sinatra were influencing and bringing together a younger audience. There was a sense of positivity that was coming back to America. All of that changed on December 7th 1941. Japanese planes attacked Pearl Harbor crippling the Pacific fleet and sending the United States into World War II. Fueled by the attack, many young men enlisted to join the U.S. Military. There was a sense of pride and dedication in many of those men. They felt it was their obligation and duty to serve their country, and to some extent, bring justice. They found out that war is hell. Many soldiers came back from World War II as completely different people. The carnage, conditions on the battlefields, and the emotional drains of war were elements these men had to carry with them. How were they able to cope with these psychological changes once they got back home to their families? In J.D. Salinger’s short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” we get a glimpse into one

Jerome David Salinger, better known as J.D. Salinger was the renowned author of the short story, A Perfect Day for Bananafish and The Catcher in the Rye. A New York native born on January 1, 1919, J.D. Salinger began to get published in 1940 before entering what would change his life and writing forever, World War II. J.D. Salinger's writing can be seen as distant due to the events throughout the time he served in World War II. The trauma, locations, and time periods presented in, A Perfect Day for Bananafish has extremely similar composition therefore, the way Salinger writes is influenced with his experience in the war. As seen in, A Perfect Day for Bananafish one of the main characters, Seymour Glass is told to embody J.D. Salinger.

Short stories are defined as pieces of fiction in literature which can easily be read in one sitting. Each short story tends to have a certain meaning or theme behind it, followed by structural elements. These themes and structural elements are significant in impacting one’s reading experience. Each short story is created with the author’s willingness to make you reflect, or think back on your own experiences. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, A Rose for Emily, and The Things They Carried,” are all short stories which involve these specific characteristics.

The human mind, only able to withstand so much pressure before losing control, is like a volcano. The harsh truths that accumulate throughout the course of one’s life can lead to devastation, the eruption of the mind’s volcano. American twentieth century author, J.D. Salinger, illustrates the devastating consequences caused by a buildup of emotions and a lack of communication in his short story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.” Salinger “has become, in biographer Ian Hamilton's phrase, ‘famous for not wanting to be famous’ ” (Stevick). In this short story, Salinger details the interactions of the main character, Seymour Glass, with Sybil Carpenter, a young girl. Through these interactions, Salinger provides the reader with a glimpse into

Do you know about the bananafish? Deep inside someone's conscience they might be insane and unstable. They might be crazy and you might not even know it. Throughout the story of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” Seymour’s true self is unveiled. The author of the wonderful story is a man named, J.D. Salinger. J.D. Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 and died on January 27, 2010. He was known for his stories that took place in metropolitan settings and had characters that were sensitive. Through the use of symbolism, characterization and foreshadowing, J.D. Salinger creates a tell-tale storytelling style of the story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish.

Untainted from the world’s horrors, children are used to counter the lives of adults in J. D. Salinger’s “For Esmé – with Love and Squalor” and “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”. While “For Esmé” and “Bananafish” share distinct differences, Salinger explores the effect of children on war-inflicted soldiers in both. “For Esmé” recounts a soldier’s encounter with a young girl named Esmé days before D-Day and the cost of the subsequent victory on his wellbeing. “Bananafish” delves into the mental hardships of a veteran following his return to society and his interactions with a girl named Sybil. Salinger uses the innocence of youth as a form of reprieve and escape from the horrors of war for both Seymour and X.

As time transitions from one century to the next, countries change and advance socially, and economically. However, this change is not always a positive one. In Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for a Banana Fish”, the protagonist, Seymour Glass, struggles to find his place in society after coming back from the Second World War. Seymour, battle-scarred, developed Post Traumatic Stress Disorder while serving in the war and comes back to find that society has grown materialistic. By looking at Salinger’s use of irony and dialogue, readers can see miscommunication, negligence and alienation stemming from materialism in mainstream culture, which most readers do not see; this is important because it builds up the tension that will inevitably lead to Seymour’s decision to commit suicide.

A Perfect Day for Bananafish takes place at a hotel resort in Florida. The story begins with Muriel Glass, a young woman who has been married to Seymour for five years. Muriel is on the phone with her mom. Muriel's mother worries that something is wrong with Seymour, and that her daughter is no longer safe with him. Since his return from World War Two, he has been acting unusual. He seems to be incapable to function in social places as he tends to isolate himself from other adults. The story then takes place at the beach outside of the hotel. There, a little girl around the age of four years old is waiting for her mother to finish applying sunscreen to her back. Sybil kept repeating "See more glass" to which her mother could not understand the meaning.

In “The Catcher in the Rye”,by J.D Salinger, Holden Caulfield, a troubled 16 year old boy who constantly gets kicked out of every school takes it upon himself to become “The Catcher in the Rye”, in reality not being real occupation but an idea he chose to adopt for himself after he heard a little boy singing in the street. The catcher in the Rye can be described in Holden’s perspective as a person, almost like a hero that helps children in the attempt to keep their innocence. “ Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around- nobody big, I mean-except me .And i’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do , I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the