Subject: the trouble with symbolism...
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Sat May 04 2002 - 17:41:01 EDT
to twist an old phrase, is that it's always getting worse.
99% of the time I don't really trust description of symbols in
Salinger's stories. The symbol has to carry weight within a story apart
from any outside referent for it to have any meaning at all, and quite
often the explanation of the symbolism imports meaning into the story
from an arbitrarily chosen outside referent, rather than really showing
how the symbol works within the story. Rilke does seem to be alluded to
in Bananafish (we can't be sure -- he's not the only good German poet in
the world), but the reference is to his poetry in general, not to that
particular anecdote about feet.
I think that feet in this story don't really symbolize anything. They
may be a point of identification between Seymour and the little girl --
you can't help but think they have to mean something since Seymour
kissed the little girl's feet, then got a bit out of control about an
adult woman looking at his feet in the elevator. If I were to guess,
Seymour felt the older woman was patronizing him (treating him as a
child) just as Seymour treated, justly, the child. What's appropriate
for Seymour to do to a little child, in other words, is inappropriate
for another adult to do to Seymour.
No doubt the woman in the elevator wasn't anywhere near kissing
Seymour's feet. You have to wonder what the act of "kissing the feet"
may mean, though -- in common parlance, that's a form of obesiance. But
the adult female's attention to Seymour's feet may have been seen by
Seymour as parallel to his attention to the little girl's feet. Seymour
was paying homage to the child by kissing her feet, but was unwilling to
adopt the child role in normal adult society. This may be one reason he
had to find such a violent and permanent escape route...
Jim
"LR Pearson, Arts 99" wrote:
>
> Somebody asked again recently about the significance of feet in
> 'Bananafish' and I thought I'd have a search through the archives for
> the postI made on Rilke. Here it is:
>
> "I have been reading Rilke's "Stories of God" and came across this
> interesting passage. It follows an invitation to the charater to join a
> literary society.
>
> '"Picture to yourself," I explained with the necessary
> seriousness, "Since that time hardly a moment has passed during which I
> have not been resigning from some society or other, and yet there are
> still societies which, so to speak, contain me."
> The young man looked, first with amazement and then with a kind
> of respectful pity, AT MY FEET [capitalisation my own]. He must have
> seen in them confirmation of my continuous withdrawals, for he nodded
> understandingly.'"
>
> I think this is quite significant seeing Salinger's interest in Rilke.
>
> Incidentally, while surfing the archives, I came across the posts that
> were made while I was off-list in the summer and realised that the
> radio programme I was on was the one with Matthew Dodd which wasted
> Will's time by not using his contribution. I haven't actually managed
> to hear it yet as I was overseas at the time it was aired and didn't
> manage to get a tape. They have just sent me one, after much reminding.
> I can't say I'm that enthusiastic about hearing it now, though, since
> responses on the list seemed to be pretty negative. I did have an
> inkling it might not be very insightful, since they seemed a lot more
> interested in knowing what I thought Holden looked like (not something
> I have strong feelings about, I'm not a very visual person) than what I
> thought about the book and Salinger in general.
>
> Ah well,
>
> love Lucy-Ruth
> ----------------------
> LR Pearson, Arts 99
> lp9616@bristol.ac.uk
>
> -
> * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
> * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Fri Sep 27 2002 - 17:14:12 EDT