What is bananafish by JD Salinger about?
What is bananafish by JD Salinger about?
The story is set at an upscale seaside resort in Florida. Muriel Glass, a wealthy and self-absorbed woman, phones her mother from her suite to discuss Muriel’s husband Seymour, a World War II combat veteran recently discharged from an army hospital; it is implied that he was being evaluated for a psychiatric disorder.
Who is the main character in A Perfect Day for Banana Fish?
Seymour
Seymour, the oldest of the Glass children, is Salinger’s main character in one of his most elusive pieces of writing. The reader of “Bananafish” learns that Seymour, a veteran of World War II, has had trouble readjusting to civilian life—an understandable problem that thousands of soldiers had to face.
What is the meaning of a Perfect Day for Bananafish?
The bananafish story, on reflection, is a metaphor for the post-war American consumer society. Seymour has returned from a Europe devastated by World War II to an America where people express an unbridled materialism. Their appetite for material possessions is insatiable, like that of the bananafish for bananas.
What might the story that Seymour tells Sybil about bananafish represent?
The titular bananafish—a kind of fish that Seymour makes up to entertain Sybil—has two layers of symbolic significance: the story that Seymour tells about the fish is a metaphor for the destruction caused by war and by hyper-materialistic culture.
When was A Perfect Day for Bananafish written?
1948
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is a short story by J. D. Salinger that was first published in 1948.
How old is Sybil Carpenter in A Perfect Day for Bananafish?
Sybil is a young girl vacationing on Florida with her mother. We can guess that her age is somewhere around four. Salinger tells us she’s wearing a two-piece bathing suit, “one piece of which she would not actually be needing for another nine or ten years” (3).
What existentialist concept is Seymour suffering from?
Seymour hovers uncomfortably between the world of adult sexuality and world of childhood innocence. Scarred from his experiences in the war and suffering from psychological distress, Seymour finds refuge in children. Innocent and simple, they exist in a world that is free from adult suffering and greed.
What does Seymour do at the end of the story why?
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. One possible, if far less satisfying, reason for Seymour’s suicide is pedophilia.
What does Sybil symbolize?
Sibyl, also called Sibylla, prophetess in Greek legend and literature. Tradition represented her as a woman of prodigious old age uttering predictions in ecstatic frenzy, but she was always a figure of the mythical past, and her prophecies, in Greek hexameters, were handed down in writing.
How many words is a Perfect Day for Bananafish?
Analysis Of A Perfect Day For Bananafish – 730 Words | Bartleby.
