Re: Fear and Trembling - Left handedness

Catherine Marie (tangerineness@hotmail.com)
Fri, 26 Nov 1999 11:26:57 -0800 (PST) 

Thank you, Jared, for bringing this topic up. I must say quickly that 
left-handedness is my favorite topic, and actually fairly Salinger related. 
I wrote a final paper on "left" and "right" in Franny and Zooey. I'd be 
interested to know what people think of these quotes, and how they relate. 
I'm a bit unsure what to say on this right now, but that "left" represents 
evil in the bible, and sinister is the latin word for left-handed. Beginning 
with early Christian art the "bad guy" would be placed to the left of the 
"good guy" to show this. (I personally don't like that much). Another note 
is that the heart is on the left, and symbolically, then, love comes from 
the left side. A friend of mine said that the church puts the wedding ring 
on the left hand to somehow stop creativity and love and such, and force the 
woman to become less indepenent. Just some side notes, I'd like to hear what 
others think on this.
             Catherine
P.S. On a related note, Seymour is right-handed. Buddy says so somewhere in 
S:AI, but at the end of Bananafish, he shoots himself with his left-hand. I 
know this has come up before, but it's still interesting, and I'd like to 
know what people think.


>     "I do not trouble God with my petty sorrows, the particular does not
>trouble me, I gaze only at my love, and I keep its virginal flame pure and
>clear.  Faith is convinced the God is concerned about the least things.  I
>am content in this life with being married to the left hand, faith is 
>humble
>enough to demand the right hand - for that this is humility I do not deny
>and shall never deny."       - Soren Kierkegaard from Problemata:
>Preliminary Expectoration in Fear and Trembling.
>
>     "The other poem, the last one in the collection, is about a young
>suburban widower who sits down on his patch of lawn one night, implicitly 
>in
>his pajamas and robe to look at the full moon. A bored white cat, clearly a
>member of his household and almost surely a former kingpin of his 
>household,
>comes up to him and rolls over, and he lets her bite his left hand as he
>looks at the moon." J.D. Salinger (Buddy Glass) from Seymour: An
>Introduction.
>                                      -jared
>

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