Who Is J. D. Salinger's A Perfect Day For Bananafish

Salinger’s use of the literary device of diction supports his message of craving maturity versus acting upon it. On pages 116 to 117, Salinger uses words such as “blood,”

the characters. The story reminds his audience that a man is more than a father. He is

This is a very important part of the book because it shows the reader that the

Authors write to be understood and to show others their beliefs. They want to color a picture for you in the words they are writing. John Steinbeck used word choice, parallelism, and foreshadowing in Of Mice and Men in the same way a great artist creates a scene.

of the themes in the novel easier to see and decipher. Using the archetypes that he did

authors stories can have a different meaning than what the author had intended for it to have. In

The author mainly conveys the theme through these three symbols but these are not the only uses of symbolism that the author uses in the novel. Salinger also uses several other symbols that don't quite convey the message in the same manner that these symbols do. By being able to not only use these three main symbols, but also the other symbols throughout the entirety of the novel Salinger is demonstrating the ability to control his style of writing and use tools like symbolism and other means of getting his message across to get his central idea across to the

instructional tone by telling the reader what to do in order to create the image in their

because through his first person narrative, the reader is drawn to his sensitive nature, his

J.D. Salinger (Jerome Davis Salinger) was said by some people to be one of the best American Authors of past century. Salinger’s works reflects the many experiences he had as a child. One of the more common focuses tends to be his fascination with protecting the innocence in children.

Often forgotten in the literary world, Salinger is most highly recognized and remembered for his novel, The Catcher in the Rye. J.D. Salinger’s short stories and writings are

Style: The author's words and the characteristic way that writer uses language to achieve certain effects

J.D Salinger believes society turns each and every person into bananafish. In his short story A Perfect Day For Bananafish he expresses some of his views on the American society and the problems that he has with it. He believes Americans put too much value in material possessions and that their lives, shaped by a constant bombardment of advertisements and new products that are bigger and better than the last, are harmful to them, and the people around them. Salinger uses his short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish to represent the materialism and consumerism of American society.

Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” incorporates a variety of symbols such as color to represent the personalities of characters in the story. Salinger describes that “Seymour wears a blue bathing suit (and tells Sybil that ‘if there’s one thing’ he likes, it’s a blue bathing suit) and swims with Sybil in the blue waters of the Atlantic (where, presumably, he is moved by the spiritual purity of his young companion)” (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish”). The author is uncovering the idea that Seymour likes the color blue because blue represents innocence. Seymour tells Sybil Carpenter that he likes her blue bathing suit, when in fact Sybil is wearing a “canary-yellow two-piece bathing suit” (6). Sybil corrects him, and tells him the actual color of her bathing suit; but to him Sybil’s suit may as well have been blue, in the light of innocence she embodies. Salinger’s addition of “his trunks were royal blue” (7) suggests that although Seymour has been stripped of his innocence, he likely pretends that some part of it is still within him. This links with blue and innocence because Seymour is trying to maintain his corrupted

make his theme apparent. His use of metaphors allows for a deeper meaning to the text to develop,