Subject: Re: here goes...
From: James Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 12 2002 - 17:20:00 GMT
Turn on your freaking word wrap, PLEASE :)
I think you're responding to the story pretty intelligently...much of it is wide open, and I know the confusion you're talking about. I don't think the girl's eye color is much of an issue if her eyes are clearly NOT green. I don't know quite what he meant by her having eyes like seashells. Could be a light brown, could be a number of colors, actually. May not be a reference to color at all, but to another quality. I think "green" in the made up line of the husband's poem may be significant as an indicator of jealousy, or envy, peering back at him in the form of his wife. He saw her eyes as "green," regardless of what they were, in his creative imagination.
Anyway, I had to read and reread the story too, a few times, and decided that the girl was Arthur's wife, and Lee was screwing around on Arthur with his wife. Seems to fit her behavior pattern and personality as described in her husband's phone conversation.
That being the case, Arthur was lying about her coming home to keep him from looking so pathetic -- which made him look EVEN MORE pathetic to Lee, who had his wife in bed next to him. It reinforced what came through the husband's entire conversation: the humiliation inflicted upon the spouse who has been cheated upon, along with the personality traits of that spouse that drives the cheater away.
The story paints an absolutely awful picture in a pretty horrible fashion, which makes it, for me, one of Salinger's best pieces (because it achieves its effect so powerfully once you figure out what's going on...and to be honest, the need to figure out what's going on adds to the effect in a story about adultery).
Jim
SkiFrog717@aol.com wrote:
> ok, so i guess i want to start off by talking about pretty mouth and green my eyes.
> what intrigues me is exactly what will pointed out he was disappointed with (how the story is made up entirely of dialogue)- this way, so much is left open and i love how i can basically make up my own ideas, and i would love to hear what anyone else things...when i began to read the story and thought about the initial situation, lee asking the girl lying next to him if for any reason he would rather he not answer the phone, i assumed something was up- i dont know if i actually made the assumption that they were having an affair but i know it crossed my mind, so as the story goes on, arthur (did i mix up the two men's names?) complains about joanie not being there, and lee is giving the girl next to him looks. at this time i'm assuming the girl is joanie, from my initial thougths and how he keeps looking at her and is trying to keep calm, etc. after they hang up, her excitement and astonishment ("i feel like such a dog"- ??) justifies my assumptions even more. so when ar!
th!
ur!
> calls back, at first i thought that he was blatantly lying and after he had hung up the first time decided he didnt want lee to consider him pathetic/vulnerable, i dont know-so he calls back to make himself seem for lack of a better word, better (?). i dont know. so that's what i had been thinking, especially since when they hang up the second time lee is incredibly upset, i thought it upset him that arthur was so ashamed that he had to call back and lie. at this point the story was puzzling but i thought i had it basically figured out and it wasnt until my friend asked me what i thought about it and he told me he thought that joanie really had come home. so i started to consider this a possibility, but then why was lee so upset at the end...why is the girl somehow a part of this triangle, her saying she's a dog/lee's looks at her...and so i started to read the story again, and here's what is bothering me: at the beginning when the girl is being described, they say soem!
th!
ig!
> n about her eyes are so blue they look violet? something along those lines. and then when arthur is talkign to lee and telling her about the poem, it says abotu green eyes and he says "she doesnt even have green eyes, her eyes are like goddamn seashells" that woudl make me think theya re brown... how confusing is this? so
> my only possibilities so far are that: he doesn't know the color of joanie's eyes or it really isnt joanie. but then, the title of the story includes the green eyes, so wouldn't eyes play a significant part in the story? i don't know if anyone has noticed this or if it bothers anyone as much as it bothers me, or puzzles rather, but i woudl LOVE to get some feedback! thanks, jess
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