Well that was quite the story. It felt more like three independent stories than one short story and I enjoyed all 3. To start with the the first part, the story of a young girl talking to her Mom. This had a very different style than Hemingway, it was so heavy on dialog. Personally, I really liked this, it made me care more about the characters, also as a teenager I found this part to be quite relatable. I mean who hasn’t had that conversation with their mother at some point.
The story then moved on to the young man and Sybil. Intriguingly, at no point are we ever given his name and I’m still not quite sure what their relationship is. Overall, though, the story was pretty normal and complacent. Though, I was worried for Sybil’s safety the entire time, something didn’t quite feel right about that situation. I was especially worried when he started talking about the Bananafish drowning, I was afraid he might be foreshadowing something. Yet, in the end, they both return to the shore and Sybil runs off. But, It did feel like Sybil may have known something wasn’t quite right, when she ran off.
The third part of the story then starts and my god did that escalate quickly. The way Salinger did that in so few lines was absolutely shocking. It reminded me a lot of the story “My Old Man” from In Our Time, when the Dad dies so suddenly in the horse racing accident. The end also leaves me with a lot of questions. Who was that girl? Was it the daughter from the start or someone else? Was the young man the boyfriend? I think it was but i’m not quite sure. Also why was he so angry about the girl looking at his feet? Whatever the answers to these questions are, if there are any, J. D Salinger appears to be quite the impressive writer and has managed to enthrall me in a way that Hemingway just couldn’t quite do.
Salinger's story was, indeed, truly well done. Initially, I was admittedly a bit confused. The exchanges between Muriel and her (possibly overprotective) mother were rapid, like they would be in real life, but I struggled to understand what they were talking about. Our discussion of that portion in class clarified the scene for me. Moving into the bit with Sybil, I sensed something odd while reading as well. Something about a man in a bathrobe interacting with a young child on a beach didn't exactly feel normal. Seymour's kiss of the girl's foot cemented the uncomfortable sensation in my stomach. As he goes back to the room, the third portion occurs so quickly that I was left startled. Having spent a number of pages on Muriel and her mother's conversation, Seymour's suicide taking place in a matter of lines seemed extremely abrupt and didn't seem to justify the gravity of his actions. The moment of hesitation when he "aims the gun" made me wonder whether he was about to shoot Muriel, but then ultimately takes his own life. I had to read the paragraph two more times to digest what had actually happened. Why did he kill himself? Did it have something to do with the notion of "feet"? Were the feet symbolic or indicative of an underlying problem? What drove him over the edge? I'm interested to hopefully find out more about the Glass family as we continue reading.
ReplyDeleteI like your description of the structure of this story as seeming like three interlinked but separate stories. Muriel's narrative--the opening scene--doesn't seem to be "aware" that it's part of any other story; this concerns an ongoing discussion between Muriel and her mother about her husband's troubling behavior. The narrator of the second part doesn't even seem aware of the first part. Seymour isn't introduced as "Seymour," a character we already know something about, but as "the young man"--and we have to figure it out through context clues, like the paleness and the bathrobe. And then, when Muriel is referred to in the second section, she's just "the lady." The third section follows more closely from the second, but the tone is so different, and Seymour's playful humor is a lot more irritable and cranky.
ReplyDeleteThis structure is significant, I think. The reader is sent back over what we've already read to try and make sense of what seems like a sudden and incoherent action. We put the pieces together.