A Perfect Day for Bananafish by JD Salinger from Nine Stories
Rating: 
I love this story. I first read it in high school when we were reading Catcher in the Rye. I remember being blown away by the audacity of this author. I didn’t think you were allowed to write like that. Salinger is one of my favorite writers and a part of me hates to read him because I love the idea of there being more I haven’t read yet.
Anyway, this story has so much written about it there isn’t much more to say but here are my observations. I like the way you learn pieces of the character every few pages. You first read Mrs. Glass and then you hear the name Seymour, and then you put it all together when the little girl says See More Glass.
I took the Bananfish to be a metaphor for soldiers at war. Being a part of a violent war is hard on the soldiers. They must take lives in order to survive and that changes them irrevocably. The war is over but how do you just pick up the pieces of your former life? Even though you were victorious in battle it has still cost you. You’re yourself before you go into war but then once you’re there you change and you can’t come back the same as the way you came in. The bananafish were the same way, they floated into the holes and gorged themselves and then could not fit back out. They got stuck and they died. The person the soldier used to be is dead and now they have become a new person and not one they necessarily like.
The ending is shocking no question about it but when you read it over, you realize that Salinger has given you hints the whole way through the story that something was going to happen, that this man was unstable. During her conversation with her mother, Mrs. Glass brings up some interesting facts about her husband. And at one point her mother says that she talked to a doctor and he said Seymour “may completely lose control of himself.” Evidently he crashed the car into something because he could not stop looking at the trees. Instead of indicating what will happen, Salinger leaves you with an small understanding of why it happens. The ending is a shock but you can reconcile it in your brain because he was not quite right.
I read a bunch of critique on this story and no one every mentioned anything about the slight sexual undertones in the story. I got a creepy feeling from him with his interaction with Sybil. Am I the only one who thought that perhaps he was a pedophile? It’s clear that he has a thing about feet, but is that why he kisses her foot? Is he just attracted to her complete innocence? Her unspoiled outlook on life? Does the snobbish entitlement of his wife drive him to see the beauty and simplicity in a child?
What did you think?
