Comparison of Child Characters in Salinger's 'Teddy' and 'A Perfect Day for Bananafish'

Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.” – James Baldwin. “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J.D. Salinger, and “Home” by George Saunders depicts the search the protagonists, Seymour and Mikey, go through to retrieve their innocence that they once lost while fighting in the war. Fighting in any war is absolutely terrifying and can leave permanent damage on someone forever—emotionally and mentally, thus leading them to lose their innocence. The effects that the war has left on them and how it impacts their lives are visible in multiple ways. Both short stories “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Home” demonstrate the criticism against the materialistic world, the barriers to effective communication and the elusive search for childhood and home.

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.

J.D Salinger’s stories always have an array of distinct and intriguing character’s however, in his collection of Nine Short Stories, the male protagonists stand out. They always tend to play of a nice, caring, person but they’re twisted in one way or another. Another unique characteristic about the male protagonists are their relationships with the young children in all of their stories. The relationships they have with the children are unlike most adult-children relationships, yet besides in a “Perfect Day for Banafish” their is no perversion involved, the men just seem to get along with children better. The male protagonists in these short stores want to preserve their innocence as a means of coping with their life. Those two aspects, the

When encountering the title of this scholarly journal, "Psychoanalysis, “Gothic” Children’s Literature, and the Canonization of Coraline", I was excited to delve into the gothic terrain of the subconscious. However, Chloé Germaine Buckley’s paper does not give us a straightforward analytical reading, but instead challenges the dominant modes of interpretation when dealing with children’s literature. Buckley engages with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, challenging some of the critical responses to the book, as well as drawing in some foundational literary criticism authors and thinkers such as Sigmund Freud, Roland Barthes and Lewis Carroll. Buckley’s intention with this paper is to oppose restrictive interpretations of Coraline, as she posits the book to be far more complex than most examples of children’s literature.

The last of the "Nine Stories," Teddy is a complex and philosophy-rich testament to Salinger 's own Eastern leanings. The eponymous protagonist is the obvious source of this deep thought, as he believes himself to be in the later stages of Enlightenment, and speaks freely of his own ideas and sentiments. However, the plot, as well as the style in which it is written, also speak of convoluted ideas and symbols. The interplay between character and theme is constant and can be interpreted in myriad ways, especially given the frustratingly vague ending. All of these aspects work together to form a work of fiction which has caused significant controversy and confusion over the years.

In 1948, J.D. Salinger published the short story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” in the New Yorker. This event was a major step in his literary career. First, it brought Salinger serious critical acclaim. Second, it established a working relationship between the author and The New Yorker. The magazine offered Salinger a right of first refusal contract, and he subsequently published his new work almost exclusively in the New Yorker. Third, it marks the first published appearance of Seymour Glass, the oldest sibling in the Glass family. Salinger would go on to chronicle the lives of the Glass family siblings in a series of short stories and novellas.

Searching for innocence is difficult, though engaging for a time, is a usually fruitless pursuit. It almost seems, at times, like searching for a mythical being. In “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” the character, Seymour Glass, goes on a search, through the ocean, with a child named Sybil Carpenter, for bananafish. Seymour makes fantastical claims to Sybil, such as, “some bananafish … swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas." He also references “banana fever” which kills bananafish after they eat those bananas in the “banana hole”. The whacky lunacy of these statements is so childlike, that they almost seem like a

The characters in Salinger?s ?A Perfect Day for Bananafish? seem to exist in opposite worlds. On one hand, Salinger creates Muriel to represent materialism and superficiality and on the other hand, he creates Sybil to provide justification of the child-like innocence rarely found in society. Salinger?s main character, Seymour, is aware of the superficiality expressed in Muriel?s world and chooses not to be apart of it. Seymour wants to be a part of the simple immaterial world that Sybil represents. Nevertheless, Seymour find himself trapped between two worlds unable to regain the one he desires. Therefore, Salinger bases ?A Perfect Day for Bananafish? on Seymour?s

Jerome David Salinger was an influential writer in the 1950’s. He reflected his own personal life in all his fictional stories and several of Salinger’s fictional characters appear to be alter egos at various stages of his life. The autobiographical fiction “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is a reflection of Salinger’s own war experience and his marital infidelity. The story focuses on the main character Seymour Glass, who is a veteran of World War 2 and consequently a victim of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. As a result of the traumatic event he had encountered, Seymour Glass grew feelings of detachment and estrangement from the society that surrounded him. In “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” J.D. Salinger ingeniously uses

The majority of his works, J.D. Salinger has implemented many replicated themes. Love is possibly the most prevalent throughout all of his writings and is displayed in such works as “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “The Laughing Man,” “For Esme—With Love and Squalor,” “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” “Teddy,” and “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut.” Salinger uses the element of Love to bring about more meaning in the stories and depth to the each of their plots, and does so by displaying the element of Love in the characters and their situations in the stories. “…The doctrine of love he preaches represents a valid and necessary response to the world and suggests the author’s putative answer to the problems seen

“Experience, which destroys innocence, also leads one back to it.” – James Baldwin. “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J.D. Salinger, and “Home” by George Saunders depicts the search the protagonists, Seymour and Mikey, go through to retrieve their innocence that they once lost while fighting in the war. Fighting in any war is absolutely terrifying and can leave permanent damage on someone forever—emotionally and mentally, thus leading them to lose their innocence. The effects that the war has left on them and how it impacts their lives are visible in multiple ways. Both short stories “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Home” demonstrate the criticism against the materialistic world, the barriers to effective communication and the elusive

Over the moderately artistic life of Salinger, a large portion of his stories concern different encounters of the anecdotal Glass family over the mid-twentieth century in New York City. The film focuses on the Glass family 's seven intelligent and savvy youngsters, Seymour, Buddy, Zooey and Franny, every one of whom show up in scenes of the film Pari (Salinger). The suicide of Seymour Glass, the most established and most magnetically splendid of the Glass kids, is depicted in Salinger 's A Perfect Day for Bananafish, the story that propelled Salinger to fame. Parts of this story, however in modified shape and set later in time, are delineated in Pari. Be that as it may, generally, Pari mirrors the two stories, Franny and Zooey, which Salinger set near one another in time. Together, those two stories relate the improvement of Franny 's strange world. Franny has long and close relationship with her sibling Zooey (Salinger). In spite of the fact that Seymour had kicked the bucket seven years prior, significant reference is made to his solid scholarly impact on both Zooey and Franny in those two stories. Exchanging a composed anecdotal story into film regularly displays issues to the movie producer, especially regarding how to introduce the

The portraying of the negative aspects of life results in social tensions and ambigous attitudes towards children’s fiction. Books are criticized for being inappropriate for children, and consequently attacked for their improper values. However, “together with the changing attitude to childhood, the legacy of children’s literature is established with the works of the following writers: Lewis Carroll and Edith Nesbit, Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain” (Hunt, 2001:13).

J.D Salinger is a very known american writer whose literature became very popular. His books revolved around many ideas such as his view on children. Children in many of his books have an innocence that Salinger grasps onto and makes adults corrupt. Also, he shows how children are teachers to adults but can still be foolish.

As a result of some psychological trauma, Seymour has behaved strangely around his wife Muriel and her family. While Muriel is talking on the phone with her mother, the two discuss Seymour’s “funny business,” his new nickname for his wife (“Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948”), and the doctor’s comment that “Seymour may completely lose control of himself.” The author introduces Seymour’s fragile and potentially hostile state in this conversation. He also brings attention to the soldier’s rejection of other adults: Muriel tells her mother that Seymour avoids conversation at the bar by playing piano while his wife socializes, he makes no effort to tan his pale skin unlike the other guests at the Florida hotel (to which her mother responds: “My goodness, he needs the sun. Can’t you make him?”), and he lays on the beach by himself with his robe on. This peculiar behavior, which is very different from the behavior of the other adults, demonstrates Seymour’s difficulty with readjusting to