Re: Seymour's Death -- "Et tu, Muriel?"
J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Wed, 18 Nov 1998 21:10:24 -0500 (EST)
<<Since the canon was back for this... We expect children to be selfish
because we have already lost our innocence and have become as cynical as
anyone else. Thus children charitable and compassionate enough to
satisfy
an innocent, like Esme or Phoebe, are extraordinarily beneficial indeed,
which, I believe, is part of Salinger's point.
Am I just going overboard / getting boring? I'm just getting into
this.--Pasha>>
You played the game quite well, thank you very much :) I tend to balk a
bit at either/or reasoning--it was a problem I ran into with Aquinas too.
I prefer either/or/or/or. Generally, that is. Sometimes (say, with
questions of existence) there's no other choices but an either/or.
But I agree that we're left baffled, really, by Seymour's suicide. We
really don't have any reason to think it was premeditated at all. Why
did he bring the loaded gun? SHOOT, I don't know :) Deliberately to
kill himself? Or is that just common for a former soldier? Was left
unstable by the war, maybe, and all our other speculations are moot?
I think your point that we NEED the rest of the canon to understand the
story is the best point of all. And that we need the story to understand
the rest of the canon as well. I think we're left in the same position
as the rest of the Glass family by Seymour's suicide--baffled, and trying
to work it out for the rest of our lives.
I think that's the point.
Jim
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