In a message dated 98-01-05 10:57:55 EST, you write: << Brendan, your "of course" attitude shows how limited a reader you really are--there are many good reasons to construct the story with an empty pool and a pushed/dead teddy, but there are enough reasons to create some very valid doubt as well. Readers who are certain of one interpretation without understanding a legitimate field of possibility may be praised for their enthusiasm, but not their wisdom. will >> eh, not necessarily. This is a general priniciple as far as literary intereptation goes, but there are limits to interpretation as well. While there are numerous possibilities in interpreting any literary text, unless you're prepared to say "anything goes" you have to admit to numerous impossibilities. For example, my speculation that Teddy was a reincarnation of Seymour is getting more and more improbable, especially since it now seems that "Teddy" is a story supposedly written by Buddy Glass. But the idea that Holden Caulfield is an adolescent male is something that only the Densest Reader Imaginable wouldn't catch. The fact that arguments can be made against this thesis does not mean the thesis isn't pretty solid. Of course other interpretations are possible. They are just a whole lot less likely. Now, suppose I were to say Holden Caulfield is based upon Salinger as a youth? That would take some proving. It's at the other end of the interpretive scale. It's possible, but nowhere near a given. Suppose I were to say Holden was a code character disguising Salinger's dream of a homoerotic encounter with a teenage boy? I'd say this one is off the interpretive scale, but now that I've said it, I bet someone would try to draft this argument.... In Teddy the last paragraph is meaningless in relationship to the rest of the story if the "sustained scream" (since the scream "from a young girl" was sustained, and not suddenly cut off, Teddy's sister wasn't the one who fell in the pool) wasn't the reaction of Teddy's sister to having unknowingly pushed Teddy in the pool. Now, this thesis is less solid than, say, saying Holden was an adolescent male. More reasonable people will debate about what happened to Teddy at the end of his story than about who Holden was in the novel. But I still think it's closer to the certainty end of the scale than the other end.... Jim