Troubles or Enlightenment

It’s interesting that, in both the first and last story of Salinger’s Nine Stories, the theme of death seems to play a key role. In the first story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, Seymour decides to take his life at the end. There are many theories as to why Seymour took his own life, in fact, it’s considered one of the most highly-debated short story questions over the years since the book has been published. There are dozens of theories, and we really can’t be sure which one of them is “right”, since Salinger made it so ambiguous. It could be that he wrote the story with some specific reason in mind, or that he intentionally left it open to interpretation. One theory has to do with the war. Seymour’s mental troubles are the result of the war, suffering with what today we would call post-traumatic stress disorder. (This term wasn’t around when Salinger was writing). We can infer that Seymour has witnessed some awful things during his military service and that he’s having a hard time readjusting to being home. He is no longer comfortable interacting with most adults and so he retreats into his own world. Sybil offers him a glimpse of the world as he would like it to be--innocent, curious, and pure--but his interaction with the woman in the elevator reminds him that the adult world is actually nothing like this. Unable to cope with reality, and unable to function normally, Seymour turns to suicide. But, like I said, this is just a theory.

Another theory, one that is far less satisfying, is that Seymour is a pedophile. He’s attracted to Sybil and even goes so far to kiss her foot. He is then filled with shame at his action and so kills himself, preserving Sybil’s purity in the process. This theory is a possible one, and is one that a lot of people in our class jumped to when initially reading the story. Many critics believe it to be unlikely reasoning behind Seymour’s death, but it still possible.

Finally, there is one more commonly thought of theory that would help tie the whole book together. This particular theory makes more sense when studying “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Teddy” side-by-side. As hinted in the epigraph, “We Know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?”, there is a common theme of Zen Buddhism in Salinger’s work. The first and last story of Nine Stories both deal with this theme. In “Teddy”, the young child genius is somewhat of a Zen master. He discusses his relationship with enlightenment in a previous life and he casually foretells his own death.

It’s interesting to note that both “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Teddy” end with death of the main character (or so we assume is the ending of “Teddy”). At first, the tone of these deaths may seem very different. Teddy calmly accepts his accidental death as a step on the road to enlightenment, and there is tranquility even in the jarring ending. But, is Seymour’s death also calm and accepting? Well, in “Teddy”, the title character explains that death is in many ways like waking up. So, it’s no coincidence that Muriel is sleeping in the bed nearby when Seymour puts the gun to his head. He’s waking up; she’s still asleep. If one considers the idea of the bananafish, we could see that the gluttonous creature may represent the material obsessions of people. Seymour doesn’t want to be like the bananafish, pigging out on physical desires, so he kills himself. He ends his physical existence, but not, many argue, his spiritual one.

All in all, these are all just theories. I believe that Salinger intentionally left his endings ambiguous so, as readers, we can come up with our own reasons why. This method definitely allows the readers to have somewhat of a say in the storyline, seemingly giving it almost a “Choose Your Own Adventure” vibe. Assumably, Salinger may have had his own reasons behind his endings, but he leaves it up to the reader to figure it out or come up with their own.