lagusta, i believe the critic who discusses the surfeit of emotion that bananafish may represent was john wenke...I think he comes pretty close to having done some of the best critical analysis of why seymour offed himself but I also like Gary Lane's thinking and the way he applies Rilke to his thinking about Seymour's suicide...but it depresses me that the lovely and fabulous sybil is referred to as some girl on the beach...Salinger is a great writer because everything in his work, every word and piece of punctuation is important! will