Room: Off the Pages and on to the Big Screen

So, I know this isn’t related to this short story class, but last year in Hero's Journey, we read Emma Donoghue’s Room. I have written blog posts pertaining to this novel in the past, but if you don’t want to scroll back (I won’t judge), here’s a brief synopsis of the book: The book is told in the perspective of a five year old boy named Jack, who lives with his Ma in Room; a secured single-room garden shed containing a small kitchen, bathtub, wardrobe, bed, and TV set. Jack was born in Room, so he believes that only Room and the things it contains are real. The two are constantly visited by their captor, Old Nick, who brings them necessities every Sunday. Nick kidnapped Ma when she was only seventeen years old, and has kept her imprisoned for the past seven years; Jack is the product of Old Nick’s rape of Ma. The book begins at Jack’s 5th birthday where Ma begins explaining to Jack that there is an entire world outside of Room. She then devises a plan to get Jack out of Room so he can get help. She pretends Jack is sick when Old Nick visits, but he just tells her that he will get medicine. So, when he comes back with the drugs, she pretends that Jack has died and needs to be buried somewhere far away from Room. Jack, who has been rolled up inside of a rug, is then transported into the back of Old Nick’s truck, and taken away from Room. Per Ma’s instructions, Jack then rolls out of the rug and runs to the nearest person, who then contacts the police. In spite of his fear, confusion, and inability to communicate effectively, Jack directs the police to Room to free Ma. The two and then taken to a mental hospital, where they receive medical evaluations and a temporary home. Ma and Jack are then reunited with Ma’s family as they struggle to learn (relearn in Ma’s case) how to interact with the larger world. Jack feels overwhelmed by new experienced and people, stating that he only wants to return to the safety or Room. Meanwhile, the case has attracted a lot of attention from the media, making it even harder for Jack and his mother to start living a normal life. After a television interview that ends badly, Ma suffers a mental breakdown and attempts suicide. Jack then goes to live with his grandmother and her new partner for several days. The rest of the book basically discusses how Ma and Jack learn to readjust to the outside world. It is a very powerful book and I would recommend it to anyone who’s willing to read a heart wrenching story.

Room was published in 2010, and was written by Emma Donoghue, who drew her inspiration for the story after hearing about five-year-old Felix in the Fritzl case. In 2015, there was a film adaption, starring Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay. The film was nominated for four Academy Awards, with Larson winning the Oscar for Best Actress. Now, I just recently watched the movie and wanted to write this post explaining the similarities and differences between it and the book. Even though the script was co-written by Emma Donoghue herself, there still were some changes that made me unhappy.

First is that the most poignant aspect of the novel is that it is told in the perspective of Jack, a five-year-old boy. Because of this, we are given this innocent view of a horrible situation. If we were given Ma’s perspective, we wouldn’t be reading everything in such a positive light. But, in the film, the perspective of the story jumps from being on the outside to Jack’s perspective. Although I don’t know how successful the movie would have been if it was entirely from Jack’s perspective (mostly because that would be a considerably hard thing to accomplish), but it definitely disappointed me a little, being a huge supporter of the novel.

Another difference was Old Nick. Now, in the book, Old Nick is presented as this looming shadow that haunts Ma. Jack is scared of Old Nick and stays away from him, but only because Ma says he should. In the book, we never see Old Nick’s face, giving the feeling that he is this faceless monster who lurks in the shadows of Room. But, in the movie, we do see Old Nick’s face. In fact, we even jump to his perspective when he hears Jack making noise in the wardrobe and therefore proceeds to approach the wardrobe until Ma distracts him. Although, in a way, it’s nice to give Old Nick a face in the movie, I definitely think it didn’t capture his true, dark personality as well as the book did. Giving Old Nick this faceless character added to how horrible this whole situation was.

Finally, after Jack and Ma get out, I felt like the rest of the movie was rushed. In the novel, half of it is dedicated to Jack and Ma inside Room, and the other half is them adjusting to the outside. The movie is about two hours long, and I’m just sure exactly how they split it up, but it felt like an hour and a half focused on Ma and Jack in Room, while the last thirty minutes showed them outside of Room. Because of this, valuable scenes were lost, especially scenes of Jack interacting with things outside of Room. (For readers of Room, the scene where Jack goes to the mall is totally lost. Also, the bond that forms between Jack and Leo is also fairly absent...sorry if this is a spoiler).

All in all, although I liked the film adaption, I feel like, since I read to book before hand, I already knew what was going to happen, so I just criticized the movie while watching it. Although some scenes were left out, I think the filmmakers did a decent job recreating the book. (Assumably because the author was helping them). I would definitely recommend reading the book before watching the movie (as it usually is in all cases with books and film adaptations), because the book creates a more poignant atmosphere. The movie kind of rushes things, while the book takes its time and really submerges you into Jack’s world. All in all, it is well worth the read and was worth it to watch as well.

Baldwin's Lion King

Just as a heads up, this post may seem pretty long, but it has a lot of pictures and videos. Also, sorry if I spoil anything for those who haven’t seen The Lion King, but I hope this post will then convince ya’ll to see it because it’s my favorite Disney movie. Anyways, enjoy.

So, I know I mentioned this in class, but throughout the Baldwin’s story, “The Man Child”, I was getting some serious Lion King vibes. If it’s been awhile since you’ve watched The Lion King, or you haven’t at all (of which I believe is a travesty and that you must watch it right way), here is a brief synopsis: In the Pride Lands of Africa, a lion rules over the animals as king. The birth of King Mufasa and Queen Sarabi’s son, Simba, creates envy and resentment in Mufasa’s younger brother, Scar, who knows his nephew will now replace him as heir to the throne. After Simba has grown into a young cub, Mufasa gives him a tour of the Pride Lands, teaching him the responsibilities of being a king and the circle of life. Later on, Scar lures Simba to a gorge and tells him to wait there while he gets Mufasa. On Scar’s orders, a band of hyenas stampede a large herd of wildebeest into the gorge. Mufasa saves Simba, but as Mufasa tries to climb up the gorge’s walls, Scar throws him back into the stampede, where he is trampled to death. After Simba finds Mufasa’s body, Scar convinces him he was responsible for his father’s death and advises Simba to flee the kingdom. Scar then proceeds to take over as king of the Pride Lands...Well, you all get the picture. Typical Disney stuff. If you don’t know the rest of the story, and would like to know, you can watch the movie or read more online.

In Baldwin’s story, once we get to the scene when Eric takes a walk with his father, where he is shown the land that his will inherit once his father becomes too old to run it, my Lion King senses started going off like mad. There is a scene in The Lion King that parallels this almost completely. (Except with lions, of course).

Interestingly enough, Mufasa, like Eric, also talks about the sun. Mufasa uses the sun to illustrate to Simba how, in the future, he will have to step down as king, and Simba will rise up as the new leader of the Pride Lands. In the scene with Eric and his father, Eric’s father explains that once he gets old, Eric will have to look over the land, along with Eric’s children. In this scene, Eric’s father is introducing to him the responsibilities that he will eventually inherit. It’s a scene to shows a powerful bond between a father and son.

Another parallel between “The Man Child” and The Lion King was the whole situation with Jamie. Now, although there aren’t clear similarities, Jamie reminds me a lot of Scar. First, is the relationship between Jamie and Eric’s father. Now, in The Lion King, Scar and Mufasa are brothers, and there is a lot of tension between them, especially since Mufasa was first born, so he inherited the Pride Lands, and then he bore a son, so basically Scar has no chance of inheriting the lands at any point in time.

Although the relationship between Scar and Mufasa doesn’t directly correlate to Jamie and Eric’s father, they do share some resemblances. One of which being that Scar could have ruled over the Pride Lands, if he hadn’t been born second. In Baldwin’s story, Jamie could have kept his land if he hadn’t apparently messed up his marriage and then failed to take care of his own land, leading Eric’s father to pay to take over it. In this sense, he makes Jamie seem weaker than Eric’s father, being the seemingly lesser fortunate of the two. Even though they are apparently close friends, inseparable even, there is still this competition for dominance, and Jamie is seemingly losing by a significant amount.

The last correlation has to do with the last scene of Baldwin’s story. In it, Jamie randomly kills Eric, leaving the reader to figure out why. Now, during Jamie’s birthday celebration, all Eric’s father does is poke fun at how unfortunate Jamie’s life has turned out. He enjoys making fun at the fact that his wife left him without a son, but that doesn’t matter because he has no land to hand down, even if he did have one. Eric’s father, on the other hand, has Eric, his only heir to the family land. Although, Eric’s mother had another boy on the way, but she got sick and miscarried, leaving the family with just Eric as its heir. One could speculate that Jamie saw how Eric’s father’s legacy hinges on Eric, since he is the lone son of the family. Assumably, this would be the reason why Jamie sought to kill Eric, so as to stop the family line to spite Eric’s father, who constantly makes fun of the fact that Jamie has no family line.

In The Lion King, during the stampede, Mufasa risks his life to save Simba. After he does so, he jumps up onto the rocks in order to get away from the rampant wildebeests. Scar awaits at the top of the rocks and while Mufasa struggles to climb to the top, Scar grabs Mufasa’s paws and throws them off the rocks, sending Mufasa down to his death.

After Simba finds his father dead, Scar convinces him that it was his fault that his father died, and he tells Simba to run away and never return. With Mufasa dead and Simba gone, Scar returns to Pride Rock and claims the spot of king.

There is also another similar scene in The Lion King where Scar and Simba fight. Simba comes back to claim his rightful spot as king of the Pride Lands. But, Scar isn’t so easy to give his newly given title up. The two fight, as seen in the picture below. In this, Scar has already killed the old king of the land, Mufasa, and now he is about to kill Mufasa’s son. This act would have him end that bloodline, allowing Scar to be the permanent king of the Pride Lands.

Now, although these are some loose connections, being an avid enthusiast of The Lion King, I got very excited when I saw some parallels. Whether or not this has convinced you that there are in fact similarities doesn’t really matter to me, because I just rewatched The Lion King...so I could properly assess the similarities between the two stories. (Completely for educational purposes only).

David and Goliath

As we begin our journey through James Baldwin’s Going to Meet the Man, it’s interesting to see what kind of picture the first two stories paint. These first two stories, “The Rockpile” and “The Outing”, both follow the extremely religious Grimes family. One interesting aspect of the family that caught my eye was the relationship between each member. The father, Gabriel, seems to be this looming shadow over the family. In the first story, he is portrayed as a frightful figure that strikes fear in almost every family member. Then there’s the mother, who is just doing the best she can, watching over her numerous children. She is constantly berated by Gabriel for her oldest child, John, who is from a previous relationship. John is the oldest in the family and seems to be the calmest. From the first story, we can observe that John is a very passive character, as he enjoys just sitting atop the fire escape, reading and looking down upon those below. Then we have Roy, John’s younger brother, and apparently Gabriel’s “little man”. Roy is almost the exact opposite of John. He’s outgoing and adventurous, not afraid the break the rules in order to have a little fun.

One aspect of the Grimes family that really struck me is Gabriel’s constant use of John as a scapegoat. This causes John to feel like a kind of outsider, not only among other boys, but also in his family. In the first story, when Roy runs off to go play on the Rockpile (against his mother’s orders), John elects to stay up on the fire escape. Later, when Roy takes a tin can to the head and starts bleeding, John is blamed by his father for not looking after his younger brother. In the second story, John brings his friend David, who isn’t a part of their congregation, to the outing with him. When in the middle of a peaceful conversation with members of their church, Gabriel decides to butt in and tell the group how it was Roy who brought David to the church and how Roy has been reaching out to David, when it has actually been John the whole time. In Gabriel’s eyes, John is just the child of a previous lover, and therefore has no blood ties to him, so he basically means nothing to him. Ironically, before Gabriel leaves the group, he reminds John to not get into any trouble, even though it’s Roy who usually gets into trouble, as seen in the first story.

Even though John has endured constant badgering from his “father”, this comment, along with the one about David, pushes John off the edge, as he snaps back, saying “Don’t worry about me, Daddy. Roy’ll see to it that I behave” (35). Gabriel, furious that his despicable son has just embarrassed him in public, pulls John aside to remind him that he is still just a little boy and that he should watch himself. Gabriel then goes to tell his wife that John is becoming too confident and is therefore learning to be disrespectful towards others. He states that, “that boy’s pride is running away with him...that proud demon’s just eating him up” (40). Gabriel is basically proclaiming that he doesn’t have to deal with John because he isn’t related to him, so he brushes John and his so called “problems” aside for his wife to deal with. Now, we have no idea how the conversation between John and his mother will go, but I’m pretty sure that it will do nothing. His mother can see the pain Gabriel puts him through and so she is understandably unsure how to deal with this situations that probably constantly pop up.

Being constantly in this voiceless situation, John needs some kind of outlet. This is where Daniel comes in. Although we aren’t given information of how John’s and Daniel’s relationship is like before the outing, we can infer that they are very close and that Daniel is aware how poorly John is treated by his father. When they are along, Daniel states that the interaction between John and Gabriel was pretty rough, implying that if John wanted to talk about it, Daniel would be there to listen. John then proceeds to put his head on Daniel’s shoulder and state that he loves him. Now, he may not fully realize this, but Daniel is basically all John has. He is John’s outlet for all the troubles he has at home. A metaphor that can be made is that Gabriel is like Goliath and Daniel is, well, Daniel. Gabriel is this overbearing bully in John’s life and Daniel is there to protect him. Although Daniel may not understand the extent of John’s love for him, (for all we know, he may just assume their relationship is platonic), but at least he understands that he needs to be there for John because he’s all that John has. John is a loner. He has been excluded from all communities already, and being in love with someone of the same sex makes him completely incompatible with his social surroundings.

So, assumably, John feels hurt when Daniel starts to go after Sylvia. If Daniel and Sylvia start hanging out more, John may lose his only friend, the only person he can talk to. Now, I’m not saying that John should be able to control Daniel’s life, but it would be a shame if John were to lose him without finding a replacement. It could be possible that Daniel is only going after Sylvia to distract attention from him and John’s relationship. I mean, Daniel only seems to talk about Sylvia with other people are around. When him and John are alone, they share intimate, emotional moments together, only caring about each other. As long as John and Daniel remain in close contact, this kind of relationship puts a lighter spin on the whole situation. Maybe when he grows older, John will run away and live with Daniel. But, for now, I’m just glad John at least has someone. Even if Daniel doesn’t love him the same way John does, he is still there for him in his times of need, most of the time.

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.

Is That Even True?!?

Throughout the latter years of my high school career, the questions of “Is the narrator telling the truth?” seems to always come about in class discussions. Now, before I was introduced to this kind of questioning, I always just assumed that the narrator of a story was always being truthful, or else there would be no reason to tell us the story in the first place. But, nearing my senior year of high school, it seems like the reliability of a narrator is always something that must be questioned in any and every book one reads. It almost seems counterintuitive to ask, after finishing a story, whether or not the narrator was actually telling the truth. Why would you read a story that you know isn’t true? But, when it came time for “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period”, the reliability of the narrator, Jean De Daumier-Smith, proved to be a topic worth discussing. Now, right off the bat, we can see the Jean is an interesting character to say the least. Even in his opening paragraph we can see that there is something just off about him. His constant interjections within his sentences distract from the subject of his thoughts, making him come off as arrogant and obnoxious. To be honest, I hated Jean’s character in the beginning. He came off as trying to act very posh, seemingly making us feel like we were subordinate to him. It isn’t until his fills out his application to work for M. Yoshito, that we begin to see a hidden side of Jean.

While applying for the art teacher job, Jean feels the need to lie about numerous aspects of his life in order to appear capable for the job. He even proclaims that he and his family was friends with Pablo Picasso for peat’s sake! Jean feels unconfident with his current character, so he fabricates aspects of his life to make him seemingly appear more appealing. Now, Jean does get the job, but this seems to have negative effects. He feels the need to play this character that he has convinced his employers to hire. While working he even tries to think of new false stories about the times he “hung out” with Picasso. Being hired only showed Jean that he needs to fabricate aspects of his life in order to be accepted. This plays along with Jean’s constant feeling of loneliness. Only recently has his mother died and so Jean is left with his stepfather, Bobby. (Of which it doesn’t help that Bobby has seemed to have moved on, since he is already eating dinner with another lady). So, Jean tries to downplay his loneliness by extremely playing up other aspects of his character. In this situation, he decides to exercise his ability to lie. Similarly, in “For Esmé--with Love and Squalor”, Esmé tries very hard to sound like an adult by having a pretentious vocabulary. She’s just trying to fit in among adults, but since she is a kid and doesn’t necessarily understand the meaning behind all the words she chooses to use, she ends up sounding a little bit on the ridiculous side. Similarly, Jean attempts to appear as this art prodigy, when in reality, he is just nineteen and naive.

With all this being said, even if Jean can be seen as a sympathetic character, do we trust him? I mean, he has proved to be a decent liar, and I wouldn’t put it past him to possibly lie in order to get us on his good side. Does it ruin the story if some of it is fabricated? I honestly can’t say. All I know is that it is a little unsettling to have to question a narrative because, especially since it’s a short story, what Jean says is all we get. We experienced something similar to this when reading The Things They Carried in which the narrator shares with us the difference between the truth-truth and the story-truth. Now, when I read stories, I tend to just assume that the words on the page are the truth. I assume that the narrator and I have this bond and that he or she feels confident in sharing the true story with me. But, throughout my english career, I have realized that this is not always the case. Unfortunately, us readers are just as untrustworthy as the rest of them. Only, we are (or at least in my case) more gullible. I feel like my emotions are being played with, but, either way, Jean tells a pretty good story, so I suppose it doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not.

Just a bunch of what ifs...

When discussing Salinger’s “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes” in class, it was evident that most people assumed that Joanie, Arthur’s wife, was having an affair with Lee. Although we are never explicitly given the name of the girl who is in bed with Lee, through little hints Salinger drops throughout the scene, we can reasonably infer that the woman was Joanie. Going with that, as Lee states, this makes the whole scene that much more complicated. As stated in class, it’s both sad and impressive that Lee gives advice to his friend on the woman he happens to be sleeping with. What’s worse is that, by the end of the scene, when Arthur calls back to tell Lee that he wife has apparently walzed through the door, just like he said she would, Lee fully realizes the damage that has been done. Whether or not Arthur knows that his wife is with Lee is unknown, but it hurts that Arthur feels the need to lie in order to save face and convince Lee that he isn’t as crazy or paranoid as he may seem.

This is why, at the end of the story, Lee acts cold towards the woman. All she has said is that she feels like a dog by being in a relationship with two men. She doesn’t show any sense of compassion and sympathy towards Arthur, who seems genuinely worried that his marriage may be over. It’s symbolic how, when the lit cigarette drops to the ground, the girl attempts to help retrieve it before it burned anything, but Lee stops her. Damage has already been done, so there’s no use trying to stop it. Although the fire of love between Arthur and Joanie may have died out, a new fire has been started; a fire consisting of envy and guilty; a fire that is currently tearing Lee apart.

Even though Lee and Arthur don’t even seem like good friends, he still feels bad for the situation that he is in. Arthur has honestly no clue what’s going on so he just gets drunk in order to clear his head, but this just causes him to become more and more paranoid and worried about the whole situation. All Lee can say is that he needs to close his eyes and it will all be over. Joanie will be back and things will go back to normal...until she sneaks out again, and again, and again. Lee realizes that this will become a vicious cycle of Joanie leaving and Arthur becoming worried. He can see that Joanie has lost interest in Arthur and that their marriage is basically over, but Arthur can’t seem to bring himself to break it off. A reasonable explanation for this is that Arthur is a very traditional man. He believes that once the vows are said, the married couple has made a promise to be bound together for life. What he didn’t see is that Joanie is seemingly not ready for marriage. I do believe that, at some point in their relationship, that Joanie loved Arthur. But she has since moved on, seemingly taking her marriage less seriously. As RJ mentioned in class, Joanie’s character slightly resembles Aunt Sylvie in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping. In Robinson’s novel, Sylvie is a nomad. She loves to hop on a train and just see where it takes her. She is a free spirit. In Salinger’s novel, Joanie is sort of a free spirit of her own. As stated by Arthur, “every night I come home, I half expect to find a bunch of bastards hiding all over the place. Elevator boys. Delivery boys. Cops--” (119). In a nutshell, Arthur states that his wife gets around, storing her apparent multiple suitors all around the house. In this way, Joanie feels as if she too is a free spirit. She doesn’t feel confined by marriage like Arthur does. She does what she pleases. Unfortunately, doing what makes her happy is consequently making her husband go batshit crazy.

Now, the majority of this blog post is based off the idea that Joanie is the girl in Lee’s room, seemingly having an affair with him. Even though this isn’t a direct conclusion that we can necessarily come to, because of how ambiguous Salinger is with the meaning behind his writing, all we can do is take the text given to us and make our own conclusions, which I believe was the goal Salinger had in mind when writing his stories.

Multiple Sides to a Story

So, I know this is backtracking, but I wanted to take some time and revisit Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”. While searching the internet for “fun facts on J.D. Salinger” on a lovely, sunny Saturday afternoon, I came across a somewhat startling fact that apparently Salinger had a predilection for young teen girls. This aspect of Salinger’s life was seen as very disturbing to others, even filmmakers who were attempting to create a movie that gave people insight into Salinger’s life. The movie touches on Salinger’s early romance with high-schooler Oona O’Neill (who would later marry Charlie Chaplin), and describes his involvement with Jean Miller, whom he met when she was 14 and he was 30. It also delves into his relationship with Claire Douglas, whom he met when she was 16 and who became his second wife and mother to his two children.

One of his most well-documented relationships was with the 18-year-old Joyce Maynard, while he was 53. She dropped out of Yale to live with him for 10 months, where she wrote her first novel about living with Salinger. After 10 months, he their relationship ended abruptly. At the film's premiere in Telluride, Maynard attended and commented that she was more agitated by the movie than she expected, saying that “Salinger’s interest in seeking out young girls in certainly an element in the film. But the disturbing consequences of this behavior, to the girls, is barely addressed, and the suggestion has been made that there was some kind of privilege or honor involved in having been selected as a muse...It is my view that J.D. Salinger damaged the lives of many young girls, on a far greater scale than is represented in Salerno’s film.” So, even with the film out and Salinger’s nature exposed, many people still feel it lucky for Maynard to have had the chance to be in a relationship with the great J.D. Salinger. Many don’t take the time to realize the hardships she went through by dropping out of Yale, just four months away from graduation, because she felt like she was in love, only to be dumped ten months later.

The movie about Salinger’s life came out in 2013 and was unfortunately a flop for most Salinger fans were unhappy with how cheesy the movie, among other displeasing aspects. But after seeing the film, some people were taken aback, and also unable to accept the disturbing parts of Salinger’s personality. In the initial early cuts of the film, many people were like “We get it”, implying that Salinger’s accomplishments outweigh his romantic nature. In today’s world, if someone were to have the same tendencies as Salinger, their career would plummet and they would be punished. But, back then, people revered Salinger and literary talents.

Now, relating this back to “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, I honestly think Salinger reflected his character in Seymour, more than we may think. Seymour is seen as an outlier among the adult community because he feels more comfortable sinking into this child-like state. Although this sort of behavior is frowned upon and causes adults to worry about Seymours nature, it’s what he feels comfortable with. Now, Seymour, as we know it, doesn’t seek relationships with the children he chooses to hang out with, he would just rather play with them than adults. But, his actions are still frowned upon because no one takes the chance to try and understand him. Similar, Salinger’s nature of dating teenage girls was also probably frowned upon. I’m not saying his preference for teenagers should be acceptable, but I’m thinking that no one took the time to understand him except for the girls he was in a relationship with. But, even with his questionable past, it’s interesting that people refuse to dwell on Salinger’s dark side and choose to revere him for his literary talents.