Re: suicide?
Camille Scaysbrook (the_globe@hotmail.com)
Thu, 15 Apr 1999 19:17:58 -0700 (PDT)
I already wrote a response to this but I think it got lost in my
current email malaise. So here's turn #2 ...
Cecilia Baader wrote:
>> I've thought about the question of Salinger's true attitude to
suicide or just plain death quite a bit, even more after I trekked
out to the library and found _Hapworth_. I found Seymour's letter to
his parents very Teddy-like. Like Teddy, he calmly predicts and
accept his early death, worried only about the reaction of his family
to it.
It left me a little annoyed, frankly. <<
A similar thing occured to me recently when I decided, seeing it was
Easter, to read the interpretations of the death of Jesus in the four
different gospels. It made me feel the same way when Matthew and John
seemed to portray Jesus as saying or doing certain things
*specifically* so that certain prophecies and scriptures would come
true. Obviously, His death was preordained, but somehow it seemed to
rob the whole thing of a certain humanity; He just seemed to be going
through the motions, whereas in Mark's gospel you can feel His
torment when He says `Oh God why have you forsaken me?'. I think
you're reacting to a similar thing in Teddy and Seymour. Seymour's
suicide is enacted with all the coolness and calmness of taking a
train ride, there's no anguish in his decision. Perhaps this is why
it is in some ways hard to mourn for him. You could even argue that
the Glasses miss the *idea* of Seymour more than they miss Seymour
himself. (hey there's an idea - is Seymour just an idea? Like the
nonexistent son in `Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'). If Salinger is
implying that Seymour and Teddy are on a spiritual and therefore
prescient par with Jesus - well, that's pretty high ground to take (:
P.S. Cecilia, it's a sin that this is your first post! I wanna hear
more! (:
Camille
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