Subject: Re: Seymours sacrifice
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu)
Date: Thu May 08 1997 - 01:12:13 GMT
> "Seymour is at least partly exonerated for making freaks of Franny and
> Zooey when we note that it was his death which saved the youngest Glass
> children (...) Seymour died that Franny and Zooey might live,and it is
> in this sense of his almost ritualistic death, rather than in the
> deluding mysticism of his life, that one seizes on the essence of this
> characters saintliness. Through Seymour´s death, Zooey learns that the
> Fat Lady, the eternal vulgarian, must not be passed over for any
> mystical vulgarian".
I'm inclined to resist the urge to make the "B-fish" Seymour into a Jesus
figure. I think Salinger's vision of Jesus involves some violence on
Jesus' part, but Seymour's death seems to me (though I'm by no means fixed
in this opinion) a personal death, with too much violence, even though it
happens rather publicly. Actually, it's a very interesting question. Is
Seymour's death (the 1948 version) supposed to teach something? Is there
a didactic spiritual agenda, or is this merely the death of a despairing
genius?
Does Seymour teach? Does he redeem? Does he come to do these things as
the Glass saga evolves (and I mean "evolves," rather than "proceeds"--at
least to a point)? What Zooey learns from Seymour's death is that
psychiatrists are bad. Doesn't Zooey rather learn more from Buddy than
from Seymour? Buddy close-reads Seymour (and Eliot, who was probably
pleased), like a spiritually-driven New Critic, and it his reading that
reveals that the Fat Lady must not be passed over. Seymour writes, Buddy
reads and teaches.
I suppose Seymour can redeem, but I think Buddy still has to interpret
(even if he mis-reads initially).
Poetic misprision, anyone?
-clinamen
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mkozusko@virtual.park.uga.edu
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