I am SOOOO far behind in reading this list!!!!!!! sorry! I must admit the comments on this list are the first time I've ever heard the notion of Franklin being gay seriously entertained. I thought Eric's homosexuality was "tastefully done" (to quote the ESPN ad) and neither too obvious nor too demeaning. However, I saw it as more a reason for Eric to be disqualified from the draft than a reason for Franklin to be friends with him. I can't see Franklin being gay. The reason I only quote Paul's comment here is that it is closest to my conception of the original puzzle: the chicken sandwich and the last line of the story. In the summer school class I co-taught this past summer we conceived a generalized notion of "catchers" based on Holden's dream in TCIR. A "catcher" in a Salinger story would be any character who to some extent saves/reawakens/restores/begins the protagonist's progress towards spiritual enlightenment. We termed this enlightenment "innocence" (sometimes with a capital I) and thus the protagonist as the "innocent" of the story. Our reading of "Eskimos" was that Ginnie was the troubled innocent, who walked a thin line between childish honesty (preferred) and adult phoniness (itself a subject of some debate). Paul put his finger on our reading of Franklin's character: as his name might suggest, he is absolutely sincere -- "frank" -- with everyone, especially Ginnie. Franklin is the catcher for this story, in that his undying honesty and near childishness has the same strangely comforting, strangely awakening influence on Ginnie that Esme's and Charles's have on X. Further, Ginnie sees Franklin's charitable gesture as an act of innocence, not unlike Esme's donation of her father's watch or Phoebe packing up her belongings and trying to catch up to Holden. Taken together, these points would explain the reference to the Easter chick: Ginnie sees both Franklin's gift and the dead Easter chick as reminders of purity of innocence. Maybe not in such overdeveloped terms, but still... To try to put it simply, the chick reminds Ginnie of Franklin's childishly innocent gift-giving gesture. Hope I've been more helpful than confusing. __________________________________________________________________________ At 17:19 11/01/98 -0500, Paul Janse wrote: >I am always struck by Franklin's absolute sincerity: he absolutely doesn't >mind expressing his opinion of Ginnie's sister in front of her, nor is he >ashamed of his fear of pain for iodine. Maybe Ginnie respects this trait of >Franklin's as well. ________________________________________________________ G.H.G.A.Paterson (804)662-3737 gpaterso@richmond.edu ________________________________________________________