Re: Seymour/dying of light
pmiller@memphisonline.com
Wed, 24 Sep 1997 23:24:36 -0500
George Ford wrote:
>
> >> i also think many people experience a "dying of the light" long before
> >> they ever die by living a life of apathy, of being on autopilot and
> >> accepting the status quo without ever wanting to "rock the boat". i wish
> >> all people did live their lives in touch with that rage for life which
> >> should be inside of all us.
> We on the list have discussed Seymour's suicide many times, but perhaps we
> could reinvigorate that discussion by looking at it in terms of this "dying
> of the light" discussion. Seymour was obviously not apathetic to life, but
> was he perhaps troubled by his life of marriage, which he found "too happy",
> that perhaps that life offered only a kind of stagnancy, a beatified
> normalcy that drowned his spiritual vigour for life.
>
> Rereading what I have written, I'm not sure I agree with any of it, but I
> suppose I'll post it anyway to see what you all think of it.
> ************************************************************
> George Ford
> bf20455@binghamton.edu
>
> "For this world also which seems to us a thing of stone
> and flower and blood is not a thing at all but is a tale."
> -Cormac McCarthy
> "The Crossing"
> ************************************************************
I think maybe Seymour wanted to die at the peak of his happiness. I
just wish he would of thought a little more about his wife and not shot
himself in the same room with her sleeping on the bed, destined to wake
up the next second screaming horribly. None of us are perfect, but the
self absorbtion of Seymour in the Bananafish ending was particularly
pernicious.
Of course it has been suggested and agreed to by Buddy aka Salinger
that the Seymour in Bananafish was not the same Seymour as the one in
the later stories, but instead was someone alot like Buddy aka Salinger.
I believe this was in "Seymour an Introduction". ...and so it goes.
Paul