Re: From Daumier to Smith
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Wed, 15 Sep 1999 17:38:37 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 9/15/99 5:12:57 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
gpaterso@richmond.edu writes:
<<
Overanalyzing any part of this story tends to take the humor out of it.
Maybe this whole scene was just another instance of the naive D-Smith's
rather humorous over- or misinterpretations. >>
Ah, who's to say when we're overanalyzing? There's always the Sometimes a
Cigar is Just a Cigar quote, but I think we're trying to just get a toehold
here -- not running away with the imagery.
I just finished the story and now I'm inclined the think the dummy inside the
window display is the center of meaning for the window scene. He first sees
it as the god of a world filled with enameled urinals who rules over his
world regardless of how far he develops, and the thought disturbs him to no
end. I think this thought is that the banal really rules the world and the
enlightened individual can never really rise above it. This isn't too far
from the disillusionment most of Salinger's characters seem to have with the
world.
But then the second time he comes to the window, a woman is replacing a truss
on the dummy -- trying to dress it up, so to speak. And that's DDS's life
too -- drying to dress up the banal. I think he sees everyone as trying to do
the same thing in their own way. The revelation, then, might be for him to
still value art without making it everything -- the source of all value. It
frees him to be himself, admit he wants a chair in his room, and to release
Sister Irma to let her dress up her dummy her way.
This isn't too different from Franny and her vocation as an actress, either,
although she went in different directions.
That's where I'm leaning now, anyway...
Jim