Re: Unfeddered Access
AntiUtopia (AntiUtopia@aol.com)
Sat, 28 Feb 1998 07:34:26 -0500 (EST)
In a message dated 98-02-28 03:03:03 EST, you write:
<< A little late night revelation...I'm sure this has been covered
previously, but I missed it:
Has anyone ever noticed Muriel's last name--Fedder--for its literal
implications? Spelled differently, it's Fetter--a noun meaning a
shackle or restraint...a verb meaning to shackle or physically restrain.
Do you think I'm giving too much thought to this? I think Salinger was
very conscious of his characters' names and their implications, and
considering Seymour's story of the bananafish becoming trapped in the
hole (I think Muriel is a banana, if you will), wouldn't this allusion
to shackles be appropriate?
Any thoughts?
Brendan
>>
It's a pretty fine line between reading in and reading out of a text, and
between putting too much thought into something and not enough. In at least
some cases Salinger's names are OBVIOUSLY meaningful, you know...See More
Glass, etc. So it's reasonable to assume that at least several of the names
Salinger's characters would be meaningful in this way as well.
But then if you assume they are All meaningful in this way, you'd really get
into some extra textual stretching to attach some kind of meaning to all the
names. Teddy, for example....what meaning could you attach to his name that
is relevant to the story? I'm sure if you were creative enough you could come
up with something, but you could also come up with something if you put all
the text's words in a barrel, spun it around, and pulled words back out at
random.
Anyway, with Fetter/Fedder....yes, authors do commonly play word games and use
assonance to ascribe meaning to their character's names. I'd look at what
Fedder may mean in other languages...German maybe...and also ask yourself,
"Ok, if Muriel's last name was Fedder, what does that tell us about the story,
and is it consistent with all my other impressions of the story?"
Jim