Re: Throwing Rocks

I did respond - I said it sounded pretty good, actually, and that I'd like to
hear someone argue with it.

No one ever did, though...

Jim

Kevin Carter wrote:

> I rarely bump up my old messages, but I thought with the recent lull around
> here and the relatively few reactions that Daniel's worthy topic raised, it
> was rather appropriate. I'm really curious about what all the rest of you
> bananafish thought of the motivation behind Seymour's rock-throwing. Any
> responses would be greatly appreciated.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Kevin Carter" <kevvsan@attbi.com>
> To: <bananafish@roughdraft.org>
> Sent: Thursday, December 26, 2002 9:30 PM
> Subject: Re: Throwing Rocks
>
> > I doubt that I, a pedantic yet ignorant high school senior, can truly add
> a
> > great deal of psychoanalytical insight in this matter, but I'll try to at
> > least do a little bit of character analysis. Thank god for Advanced
> > Placement Literature classes, where one learns to assert misinformed,
> naive
> > interpretations as gospel. "Salinger masterfully utilizes irony in the
> > character of Seymour to bring about his deeper theme of the individual's
> > strugg-- sweet Jesus. Stop me now. Princeton Review's AP Lit "idea
> > machine" has eaten its way into my brain, eradicating any literary talent
> > and creativity that ever existed within me. Not that there was really any
> > to begin with.
> >
> > Anyway, I've always thought that his motivation for throwing stones might
> > have been his dangerous level of sensitivity to all beautiful things. A
> > primary example of this includes Seymour's apologetic returning of Sybil
> to
> > shore despite her insistence that she has not "had enough" of swimming
> > shortly before his suicide (Nine Stories, 17). When this would occur,
> > Seymour always felt the necessity to escape somehow, at risk of becoming a
> > bananafish himself.
> >
> > Charlotte Mayhew, Seymour's fellow "wise child," was the impetus behind
> two
> > of these emotionally-wrenching incidents. In his journal, Seymour
> mentions
> > a day when Charlotte runs from him outside of the It's A Wise Child studio
> > in a "yellow cotton dress [he] loved because it was too long for her"
> > (RHTRBC, 75). Seymour consistently appreciates the flaws in Charlotte as
> an
> > individual, because they make her -- a woman that he indubitably loves --
> > endurable to his aesthetic senses. Throwing stones at her did the same
> > thing: it gave Seymour the opportunity to appreciate her beauty without
> > becoming overly and harmfully captivated by it.
> >
> > As Mattis Fishman writes in a January 13, 1998 post to Bananafish:
> >
> > "In Charlotte's case, he was also overwhelmed by her perfection, and threw
> > the rock, *not* out any desire to hurt her, or place a blemish on this
> > transient world's false perfection, but rather in order to reduce the
> scene
> > of Charlotte in the driveway to one which would not overwhelm him (sorry
> for
> > the same word, but I can't find a better one here). As though to cure his
> > bananafever, he needed to ruin the bananas. This was a flawed reaction, an
> > immature one, when contrasted to his behavior in Raise High, where he
> > eventually gets married."
> >
> > Fishman's categorization of Seymour's motivation to throwing the rock is
> > articulate and thoughtful, but it fails in its assertion that he is
> > eventually ameliorated through his marriage to Muriel. Seymour never
> > recovered from his banana fever. Oh, he may have suppressed it at times,
> > but it was a chronic illness. His encounter with Sybil at the eleventh
> hour
> > is the final symptom of his disease: oversensitivity to beauty.
> >
> > Thankfully for the reader, I didn't invoke Freud during my post, as I
> > certainly would have been embarassed by my lack of psychological
> knowledge.
> > Instead, I came to my conclusion through archetypal reactions to beauty
> and
> > perfection. When we see a house of cards perfectly constructed, we stare
> at
> > it in awe, then feeling the need to blow it down. Same with a crème
> brulée
> > or a burning candle. We may feel this sensation on a significantly lesser
> > level than Seymour did, but we feel it all the same.
> >
> >
> >
> > -
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>
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Received on Fri Jan 3 10:56:53 2003