Subject: Re: Seymour's death - another view
From: Steven Gabriel (sgabriel@willamette.edu)
Date: Wed May 24 2000 - 08:58:34 GMT
The following is written quickly, with an incomplete reading of the
discussion at hand. I may have missed qualifying remarks or comments
by others that are relevant. Oh well.
---I remember quite clearly the experience of reading Bananafish for the first time. It was after reading Catcher, and I was not prejudiced in my view of Seymour. I must say that it never would have occurred to me that Seymour would have been about to kill Muriel.
Him killing her is just ugly.
I would not have expected it because, a) I had enough of a glimpse of Seymour to know him to be a character that would not have done something ugly, b) I had glimpsed enough of Salinger to suspect the same of him.
Seyour killing himself is different. It's not ugly, though quite tragic. It might be beautiful. I'm not so sure about that, but I know it's not ugly.
I can't really imagine that this would not have been glaringly obvious to Salinger.
The place he chose to do it is dramatic, and is more likely chosen for that reason, rather than any other (I certainly hope exit wounds were very far from the writer's mind -- I take it as irrelevant what happened after, except in context with Buddy, et al, which is exactly the context we're avoiding).
For me Seymour was simply a tragic tale of a lost man that failed to make peace with the world, or failed to make peace with his inability to make peace with the world. It still is roughly that.
I should mention that this instinct of mine that Seymour would not do something as ugly as shooting Muriel is one that is one garnered not from watching life, but from watching the telling of good stories. It's the same type of instinct that tells you that Character X in the movie you are watching won't die, because he's not the kind of character that can. Seymour just wasn't the kind of character to shoot Muriel and it didn't take very much acquaintance with him to know that. Salinger had to have known this -- he's a good story teller, and seems to expect his audience to keep up (could a writer that wrote S:AI not?).
Besides. Seymour's reasons for killing himself seem to be a symptom of a larger concern of Salinger: showing things that can happen to people that have problems connecting to the world. I suspect that it was concerns like this that drove Bananafish, not a trick ending.
Steve.
On Wed, 24 May 2000, Matt Kozusko wrote:
> Mark offered, via proxy: > > > Seymour’s suicide is not simply the expression of a man > > who is tired of life. If that were the case, he could have > > ended things by swimming out to sea, for instance. > > His death would have looked like a bathing accident. > > But the only way to lead the reader to believe that Seymour is going to > harm Muriel is to narrate him performing a series of calculatedly > ambiguous and/or misleading actions, with that gun, in her immediate > proximity. Content bows to form here. Can you imagine what Scottie's > proposed "death-behind-the-dune" would look like? > > ...he kicked out the three metal legs of the tripod and dropped them > onto the sand. He cranked the elevating wheel of the Mk. I .303" > Vickers Machine Gun twice. He folded up the backsight and swung the > barrel around toward the balcony of room 507. Through the open window, > he traced in the sight the outline of the calf-skin luggage, the > nail-lacquer bottle and the foot of the bed. "Damned feet!" he > muttered, as the cross-hairs came to rest the girl's forhead. He > clamped the locking mechanism and employed the "one second delay" lever, > then pulled the trigger and leap-frogged over the 28.7 inches of gun > barrel directly into the stream of metal slugs that began to pour out of > the muzzle. > > The "reason" for staging the suicide in the room with Muriel is a > function of the effects the *author* wants to produce. It has only > secondarily to do with the effects *Seymour* wants his violence to have. > > Speculating about a different kind of death assumes a specific kind of > Seymour, which I think is only supposed to happen *after* the story's > been read at least once. "Seymour" begins to crystallize only after he > shoots himself. All we are supposed to know until then is that he's > unstable, that he plays with little girls, that he tells a story about > how material greed can kill you, and that he's waving a gun around in > his room next to his "spiritual tramp" of a wife. > > The war-veteran information vies with the other ambiguous details > Muriel's mother provides. I see a potential link between war experience > and psychological distress, but to me the link isn't quite so > overpowering, and it's certainly not dictatorial. It's not the only, or > even the principal, information that drives our understanding of Seymour > up to the conclusion. Mark's reading I think presumes a certain kind of > "Seymour" in order to explain the events of the story after the fact. I > have no quarrel with this, especially as my own reading does the same > thing. Any reading, really. But my understanding of the story is > entirely different from my theory here about the experience the reader > is supposed to have as he reads for the first time. A difference > between the story's "meaning" and its intended effect. What fails is > the intended effect, and though I realize it's all too easy to say, as > Cecelia puts it, "we're not led to expect something that doesn't > actually happen?", I think it's true. > > In fact, the confusion about Seymour's motivations--is it the war, or is > it the bananafish?--only supports the claim that the story is a mess. > We aren't lead directly enough to expect what in fact doesn't happen. > > > -- Matt Kozusko > - > * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message > * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH >
.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. : Steven Gabriel -- sgabriel@willamette.edu : : http://www.willamette.edu/~sgabriel : :-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-: : "Sitting quietly doing nothing, : : Spring comes and the grass grows by itself." : '-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-`
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