Nine stories was quite the collection, the titular stories explored a variety of topics and plot lines. Despite these differences, there are a large number of parallels between the first story, A Perfect Day For Bananafish, and the last story, Teddy. The most obvious similarity is the endings, both ended with sudden and quite dramatic deaths. However, both deaths were foreshadowed heavily in their respective stories. There is also a key difference between the two deaths and that is the atmosphere behind them. On one hand, there is Seymour’s suicide caused by his inability to cope with past events, and on the other there is Teddy’s death, which seemed to move Teddy on to the “next” part of his life. One death looked to the past while the other looked to the future.
The next similarity was the children, both stories had a protagonist under the age of 13 who possessed knowledge and ability far beyond their age. In Bananafish young Sybil simply walks up to and starts hanging out with Seymour, which is quite unexpected for her age. And then there is Teddy, a boy of unprecedented spiritual intelligence, his abilities dwarf not just all kids but essentially everyone in Western society. This theme of smart children, is seen not just in the first and last stories but throughout the book.
There are some lines in the stories that appear to allude to the other story. My favorite line by far is when Seymour refers to Muriel as “Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948”, clearly referencing the spiritual themes of Teddy. Overall, I feel that the similarities between these stories serves to highlight a couple key ideas. The first is the intelligence of kids, this is something that Salinger seems to bring up throughout the book, with a variety of hyper-competent young people. The other thing it details is the perception of death, through the contrast between the two stories’ death scenes, the stories highlight just how little people know about death and how to react to it.
My theory about "Teddy" was actually that he killed himself by jumping into the pool, and his sister saw and was screaming. I guess maybe I'm just super morbid, but I thought that maybe Teddy's "genius" ideas and such were a mask for deeper mental issues, and he got tired of being this super smart kid being interviewed all the time and jumped into an empty pool. That's pretty dramatic, sorry haha. I guess we'll never know.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting suggestion! Teddy is less perfect than we thought! I guess I kind of like that interpretation! It turns it into a story about the impossibility of actually ever being perfect!
DeleteTeddy embraces his past which contrasts him sharply with Seymour who seems entirely not forthcoming about his. Teddy doesn't mention his own recent past however. His method of coping with potentially traumatic or frustrating events could be a fabrication of a previous life which follows his philosophical narrative.
ReplyDeleteI really like the connections you made between the two stories. I also liked how you showed the similarities between the two characters. I agree with Siena; I believe that Teddy did kill himself in the pool. I do believe however that it was because Teddy was ready for a new life. When I read it, I felt as though Teddy thought that his job was done in this life and he was ready to gain new experiences in another.
ReplyDeleteThere's your reason and plenty of others for why Teddy might kill himself, but I'm always been confused as to why Seymour would kill himself. He doesn't appear to display the same spiritualness that gives Teddy the idea that the end of his life wouldn't be such a big deal. In a way, I found the ending of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" far more shocking and unexpected than the ending of "Teddy"-- maybe Salinger's trying to say that despite the differences in emotional impact, all that happened in both cases was a death.
DeleteYeah, I think it's kinda cool how Salinger both started and ended the book with the same very basic frame of a story. It's really interesting how he incorporates a lot of these themes into each story. It might be possible that he meant to do it (and picked these stories to put into this collection because of those elements) or maybe he just unintentionally wrote every story that when stripped of the plot have these hidden themes.
ReplyDeleteI kind of think that Seymour is more like Jamie from "The Man Child" than Teddy. Seymour killed himself, Jamie killed a child. However, I honestly expected Seymour to kill Sybil as I was going along in the story, so I'd say that there was an obvious connection there. They're both dysfunctionally caught up in a different reality, lost and kind of strange. The only difference is that Seymour seems more self-fulfilled and introverted.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly enough, I wrote about the same connection on my blog post. I agree with the points you've made here, Jack. One thing I hadn't contemplated was the supposed motives for each character's respective suicides. The fact that Seymour's past was causing him trouble, while Teddy was looking forward is certainly interesting. I wonder whether Teddy was, perhaps, uninterested with the life he was currently living, and was eager to see what else a future one could offer. Since reincarnation theoretically erases all knowledge of previous lives, the only direction he could be looking is, indeed, ahead. As for Seymour's nickname of Muriel, this opens up a handful of new thoughts and possibilities. Could Seymour and Teddy be even more connected that we thought?
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ReplyDeleteI wrote my last blog on the exact same topic and noticed the same sorts of things as you did. Its crazy how so many people noticed similarities between these two stories and chose to write a blog post on them. In my blog I made a similar comparison between the endings of the stories and how they mirror each other. I didn't mention the fact that both protagonists (Teddy and Sybil) are younger than 13 years old and posses abilities well beyond their years. I am amazed by how Salinger perceives young children and their intelligence. I couldn't possibly imagine a ten year old boy to have such incredible thoughts and a young four year old girl to hold a conversation.
ReplyDeleteconversation like the one in the strory
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