Re: Seymour's death-- See better, Lear!

Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Tue, 17 Nov 1998 18:04:12 -0500

J J R wrote:
 
> But I don't think she's written as a
> credible character either.  The reader doesn't see Muriel's mother as
> someone to be trusted.  Muriel herself, on the other hand, is completely
> at ease with Seymour.  So I don't think we can take the opening dialog as
> foreshadowing that Muriel herself is going to be shot 

Interesting.  It's equally difficult to "support" either side of the
issue, I suppose--and as difficult to  decide which side bears the
burden of "proof."  Could Muriel's lack of concern not also be read as
proof that her character is clueless, entirely incapable of matching the
stature of her husband's?  

Both women are frivolous, wandering in conversation from concerns about
the sanity and safety of loved ones to the "clothes this year" with
disturbing alacrity.  They differ most strikingly in their opinion of
Seymour's stability.  Murield seems amused by his antics, while her
mother reads them as darkly portentous.  Is it simply a matter of woman
to believe?  Either mother is overly concerned or Muriel is more vacuous
than she appears to be.  My gut feeling is that, given the accuracy of
mother's observations about SEymour's behavior--he turns out to be as
strange as she describes him--the reader is supposed to fear for Muriel
along with her.  
 
I am powerless, at the moment, to defend against your next point ("The
bulk of his dialog with the child was to teach her to be kind to her
fellow child").  But if Seymour is unstable and behaving strangely and
talking about the day being perfect for Bananafish...well, there's
something generally creepy in the air, hanging alongside mother's
statement:  "Did he [psychologist] say he though there was a chance he
[Seymour] might get--you know--funny or anything?  Do something to you
[Muriel]!" (8).

> Given the REAL ending, I think it points even more to Seymour as the
> greedy bananafish.

Indeed--but that's part of my point.  The actual ending asks the reader
to go back and discover how Seymour could be the bananafish instead. 
And here we move into new territory:  either the reader gets more credit
than he perhaps deserves, the author assuming he can make that metonymic
leap from banana to apple (it is I who read proleptically here), or the
author has no specific plan for bananas (in which case the banana is
just...well, just a banana).  To recap:  the reader, in my theory,
assumes that Seymour is upset with the wasteland of the west and is
ready to "do something to [Muriel]."  When he shoots himself instead,
the reader has to go back and discover how Seymour might be the
bananafish.    
  
> Seriously.  I don't remember thinking that my first read.

Me neither, truth be told.  I do think the story fails in this regard. 
I figure Salinger counts on the reader to move slowly and deliberately
through that last paragraph, whereas most of us, intrigued by the
suspense, or lacking the patience that writers of fiction assume we
have, or whatever, tumble through the passage looking for the key, the
ending.  

> However, I will acknowledge that there may be a bit of intentional
> (horrible word :) ) ambiguity about just Who's Gonna be Shot in the end.
> I'm not saying the idea is unjustified.  Just that it's not certain.

That's as much as I hope to suggest, actually.  (I debated using the
word "unmistakably"...)
 

-- 
Matt Kozusko    mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu