A Few Pages Of Purely Salinger - Nine Stories

A canon of the 20th century, J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories is a collection of nine individual short stories that, as a whole, depict the imaginations that dominate and destroy the lives of both children and adults. In these stories, Salinger, a recluse who has ostracized himself from society, attempts to show the rapid deterioration of the societal world as a detrimental ramification of a person’s loss of innocence and humanism, the product of culture’s involuntary but unavoidable embracement of materialism, egocentrism, and emotional attachment. This theme is evident in all nine of the author’s stories, but this critique will concentrate primarily on “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” with a slightly more succinct analysis of “The Laughing Man” and “Teddy” to show the passions and imaginations which control every diminutive action in the protagonists’ lives and ultimately lead to the frustration and disconcertment that is characteristically Salinger.

In discussing the dreams and imaginations of different characters in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, this essay aims to show the author’s cynicism toward the wisdom, knowledge, and culture that is prevalent in

He would see the college and the city around it without thinking of the many good and bad things with which it has been labeled. He would see it without thinking of negative correlations like failed tests and classes, bad cafeteria food, dormitory rape, student suicides, city muggings, or terrorist targets. He would see the city without the framework of language. Without the cage of associations. He would see it without looking through the lens of everything he knew was true about a city.

Tapered, of course, will soon be those passions and imaginations that are the driving force of Sybil. She is too young to understand the story of the bananafish and it is already evident that she is growing into another Muriel, another bananafish. There is no hope. Realizing the helplessness of the situation, Seymour walks back to his hotel room and shoots himself to escape the trap in which his culture has caged him.

Teddy, the child-genius in Salinger’s culminating tale uses the example of a human arm as one of the tell-all clarifications used to explain the previously discussed ideas that were present, but less directly evident, in the other eight stories. For the sake of more closely relating to the readers of this essay, however, the broader example of New York City, rather than that of an arm, will be used.

He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream—clearly coming from a small female child. It was highly acoustical, as though it were reverberating within four tiled walls.

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