Bananafish Essay Research Paper EssayInnocence LostThe world

Bananafish Essay, Research Paper

Essay:

Innocence Lost

The world of childhood is protected from many of the problems of the world. The

adult world is mentally, physically, and socially an adjustment that can be very difficult for

some people. There is sometimes a reluctance to accept adulthood. In “A Perfect Day for

Bananafish,” as well as “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” J.D. Salinger focuses not only on

the loss of innocence with youth, but also on events that have changed his characters

forever. Ironically, it is often the children, seemingly the perfect models of carefree life

and thought, who make this loss most evident.

The main character in Salinger’s story “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is Seymour

Glass. He is married to a woman named Muriel, whose name both looks and sounds like

the word “material.” This could possibly symbolize that she, like her mother, is shallow,

fashion-conscious, and unwilling to learn German in order to read delicate, world-weary

poets. In the story, Seymour and his wife Muriel have gone to Florida for a vacation like

the one they had before the war. Muriel’s parents are worried about her because of

Seymour’s behavior since his discharge from the military. They believe he has gone crazy,

yet this is not quite the case. Living through the war has stripped Seymour of his “inner

child.” The things he saw and experienced were too horrible to forget. Because of this,

Seymour has lost his innocence, and its presence was greatly missed.

In the story, Seymour meets a little girl, four-year-old Sybil. One day at the beach

Sybil asks her mother, “Did you see more glass?” Her mother becomes annoyed and tells

her to run off and play. It was then that Sybil meets up with “see more glass” on the

beach. There, Seymour is reluctant to remove his beach robe because he wants to cover

his “tattoos”; to Seymour they were an “adult” decoration. These tattoos couldn’t be

seen, but they were felt. To Seymour, they were imaginary marks of adulthood, which he

resented.

Later on the beach, Seymour tells Sybil, “We’ll see if we can catch a bananafish.”

He tells the young girl a tale of fish who swim into holes filled with bananas. These

bananafish then gorge themselves on the fruit and, too fat to swim out of the holes, die of

banana fever. Like these bananafish, phonies of the world are guilty of bingeing

themselves with meaningless material objects until they become so superficial they are

beyond hope of ever attaining spiritual purity. These people are intentional bananafishes.

Seymour, like the bananafish, desires the innocence, the childhood that was

wrapped before him in a yellow package. However, when Sybil admits she sees a

bananafish with six bananas in its mouth, Seymour realizes that she is already on the path

toward becoming a superficial bananafish. In a few years Sybil will be like her mother,

interested only in how another woman has her scarf tied.

At the end of their play-time, Seymour suddenly picks up one of Sybil’s feet, kisses

the arch, and announces, “We’re going in now.” He returns to the hotel and gets into the

elevator with a young woman, whom he accuses of looking at his feet. The woman denies

his accusations, which angers Seymour even more. He then tells her, “If you want to look

at my feet, say so, but don’t be a God-damned sneak about it.” Seymour’s fixation upon

his feet, which do not resemble the childlike feet that he desires to have, and the woman in

the elevator’s scorn towards Seymour’s accusations, drive him to dislike the adult world

even more. Seymour is the bananafish who cannot escape the hole and achieve the

spiritualism and childlike characteristics that he so desires. In his opinion, Seymour

believes that by committing suicide, he will be given the chance that he wants and needs:

to start all over again.

Succeeding the incident in the elevator, Seymour continues to his room where, “he

went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol,

and fired a bullet through his right temple.” This is an example of innocence lost. When

innocence is lost, it is lost forever. Seymour wants out of a world that is too material. He

no longer wanted to live as an adult. If childhood came to an end, so he decided, must

adulthood. Realizing this, he fired the bullet, dying of his own desires. What’s gone is

gone, what’s done is done.

“’I was a nice girl,’ she pleaded, ‘wasn’t I?’” This is another example of lost

innocence. It is the sound of innocence remembered, long after it has passed. In

Salinger’s story, “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut,” there is the same conflict between

innocence and adulthood. The main character, Eloise, closely resembles Muriel from

“Bananafish.” She is shallow, selfish, and self-absorbed. Throughout the story, Eloise

struggles with her lost innocence.

In the beginning of the story, Mary Jane arrives

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