A perfect day to dissect JD Salinger’s banana fish
JD Salinger’s classic 1951 tale, “A Perfect Day for the Banana Fish,” features Salinger’s favorite character, Seymour Glass, only to be killed several pages later. The story begins in an elegant hotel room by the sea, where we hear Glass’s wife on the phone with her mother discussing Seymour’s mental health. From there, we head to the beach, where Seymour is hanging out with a four-year-old girl named Sybil and telling her stories about the elusive “banana fish.” The story ends with Seymour returning to his hotel room and shooting himself in the head.
Seymour Glass, or, as Sybil calls it, “see more glass,” is a hotly contested short-story character in American literature, which gives his transparent name even more irony. People seem to disagree on what the boy is like, why he is always dating young children, or, most importantly, why he decides to commit suicide. There are three main theories on this.
Theory one: Seymour is a banana fish. Not really. In Sybil’s description, bananas are fish that swim in holes and gorge themselves on so many bananas that they get stuck and die. According to some, this is Seymour’s unorthodox but fitting metaphor for the materialistic consumer mentality of post-WWII American society; not that we know anything about it today. This, of course, begs the question: what does Seymour’s suicide mean? Is going back to your fancy hotel room and committing suicide the human equivalent of diving into a banana hole and eating yourself to death? That could explain why Sybil thinks she sees a banana fish; He could be talking about Seymour. Or, perhaps Seymour’s suicide is a way of overcoming the material world: by leaving it entirely.
Second theory: Seymour is a pervert. Yeah, all that befriending, swimming, and storytelling stuff is just his way of getting close to little girls. You’ll notice, for example, that Seymour grabs Sybil’s ankles when she’s lying on the beach, and then again when he pushes her through the water. When he reaches out to kiss the sole of her foot, even four-year-old Sybil is freaked out enough to yell, “Hey!” probably remembering something you heard in preschool about a “red light touch.” Embarrassed and / or frustrated, Seymour immediately ends his playdate, returns to the hotel, and commits suicide out of embarrassment. The fact that sexual abuse is an ambiguous but recurring theme in JD Salinger’s other works, especially The Catcher in the Rye, supports the possibility that something is wrong with Seymour’s libido.
Theory 3: Everybody’s Got Too PC One touch isn’t necessarily inappropriate, a kiss isn’t always sexual, adults and kids can hang out in non-creepy ways, and literature doesn’t always have “erotic undertones.” Seymour is drawn to the innocence and innocence of children because his experiences in WWII have disillusioned him with the adult world, not to mention that talking to Sybil allows him to indulge in her creative side. Seymour makes up a great story about the life and behavior of the banana fish, and tickles it pink, in a non-sexual way, when Sybil follows suit. Unfortunately, you have trouble getting rid of this mischief when you return to the hotel. He jokingly accuses the woman in the elevator of “looking” at her feet and, in a trick that only an adult would do, the woman takes offense at the innuendo. The argument escalates until Seymour actually gets mad instead of pretending to be mad, and the woman runs away from the elevator. Realizing that he no longer adjusts to adults, Seymour gives up hope of being happy and ends his life.
With so many “Perfect Day for Banana Fish” questions unanswered, it’s no wonder Salinger featured Seymour in four more stories, the most important in the two-part one. “[Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction]. In these two novels, Seymour’s devoted little brother, Buddy, takes on the challenge of putting Seymour on paper. The fact that his writing is often incoherent, disjointed, and impossible to follow suggests that perhaps he is simply not supposed to. let us know.
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