Subject: feet?
From: Scout Thompson (one38@one38.org)
Date: Fri May 26 2000 - 04:53:20 GMT
I'm curious to know if any of you ever understood the "goddamned feet" thing. I
remember I read the story because of a friend and I asked him and he was just
like "Cuz she was a phoney" and I was like "Okay, sure." I guess I was just kind
of pacified because I, like you, believed seymour was "picking a fight." Like he
was just pretending she was staring at her feet just to give her a hard time, to
goof around, play with her....Seymour Glass as Tom Green, you know?
It could be mere irreverence. I mean it could be. I've got to thinking though
about the "god damned tattoo" which he didn't have (he didn't want people
looking at his _body_ and so he wore a robe to the beach) and then on his way
back- he's still wearing a bathrobe, remember, this is something I tend to
forget, and she looks at his feet- not covered by the bathrobe, the only part
besides his face- and so maybe a. she DID look at his feet and he didn;t want to
be seen, or B. She didn't and Seymour was just hyper aware of his body (he
kisses sybils toes, mind you)
I think B's a likelihood. I mean there have been times of complete happiness
where I could feel my body literally stretch to feel like it would fill a whole
room, like not my body, really, but like, the awareness of my body? Like I was
literally connected, like the lampshade was my arm.
I suppose its possible that, if you stayed in a maintained state of that state
(what a terrible sentence!) you would probably see your body as useless and
limiting......
The other thing is that the Bananafish is Seymour himself, I think. "They're
very ordinary looking fish coming in"...it says...but then they find this hole
and eat as many bananas a day- bananas being beauty, you know, or whatever. And
then they can't get out of the hole. They can't be ordinary fish- and so then,
you know, we have Seymour very upset not that she was looking at his feet but
that he has "two normal feet and i can't see the slightest god damned reason why
anybody should stare at them." NORMAL FEET, you know? He wasn't afraid of being
seen- he was aware that he wouldn't ever be capable of swimming out of the
banana hole, and there is Muriel, and his life, you know (we know from later
stories that he was terrified of the marriage, didn;t show up and they eloped
despite having a cathedral full of relatives and all that jazz) then here they
are immediately afterward where seymour is supposed to start his normal
life.....I'm pretty sure he realises he can't do it. He can't get out of the
bananahole and so, being a steady believer, we presume, in reincarnation, he
offs himself.
I mean when one has swum into a hole and can't get out, what do you do? You
watch what happens outside the hole- and then you die.
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