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Analysis Of A Perfect Day For Bananafish

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Returning from war Seymour Glass is finding it hard to reintegrate himself into society and his life before the war. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” shows the intensity of the lives of soldiers returning to a world that does not know how to help them come to terms with the brutality of war. After being released from the hospital psychiatrists, being sent there unwillingly to begin with, Seymour’s wife, Muriel, and her family notice a few strange behaviours including the “business with the window,” and “the horrible things he said to Granny about her plans for passing away.” (8) The psychiatrist says, “that Seymour may completely lose control of himself”, but Muriel takes Seymour on a trip. (9) His behaviour was getting …show more content…

(18) His mind is still in the war zone with “so many tigers” running around when there were only six. (21) Seymour then gets mad with Sybil because Sharon Lipschutz is not mean to small, little, dogs, but “Some little girls like to poke that little dog with balloon sticks” referring to Sybil. (21-22) The small little dog is a symbol of Seymour and how he has a narrow body and is smaller than the rest of the “New York advertising men in the hotel” (1)
Bananafish “swim into a hole where there is a lot of bananas . . . Can’t fit through the door. They are a symbol of how one “ordinary looking” person gets into a situation with lots of issues, but once they get there they are inappropriate and “behave like pigs.” They get so full of emotion and confusion they get “so fat” they cannot escape. While searching for Bananafish, Sybil found one, Seymour is the Bananafish she found. After finding and now understanding Seymour, he comes back to reality and asks Sybil if the one she found “has any bananas in his mouth” and for Seymour “six” is a lot of bananas to him. (24) With all his emotions bubbling to the surface, Seymour carelessly and angrily “jammed his towel into his pocket” and started back to the hotel room. (25) Sybil teaches him that he has emotions and he is stuck and cannot move like a Bananafish. In the elevator a woman stares at his feet, which makes Seymour angry because he does not like to be noticed which provokes him into arguing

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