Concise Critique

Disclaimer: Long post so beware When we were discussing "The Outing" in class, we were able to cover almost everything in the story except the church service they held on the boat. I thought it was one of the most interesting scenes in the story, and I also felt that, in some ways, I could relate to how Johnnie felt and the way the service was depicted by the narrator. This scene has the potential to be the most confusing scene in the story due to the amount of dialogue and the ambiguity of the narration when it appears. Some of the language reminds me of the jazz performance in "Sonny's Blues". For example, when Baldwin is describing the commotion of the service on the boat, he says, "And someone cried aloud, a timeless sound on wailing; fire splashed the open deck and filled the doors and bathed the sinners standing there; fire filled the great hall and splashed the faces of the saints and a wind, unearthly, moved above their heads. Their hands were a...

Seymour's strange behavior and sudden suicide are two of the most confusing aspects of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish". He seems fascinated with children, but also appears to be struggling with major personal issues that culminate in him taking his own life. His fascination and strife are never fully explained, and since reading the story, I've been looking through  Nine Stories  to see if I could discover any clues. Other stories have included relatives to Seymour, but none have fleshed out his condition. The most explicit reference to Seymour was in "Down at the Dinghy" where they actually mentioned his name, but by this point he was already dead. "Teddy" doesn't include any references to Seymour, but its position at the end of the anthology leads me to believe that it's meant to provide some context for the entire book. The nine stories don't follow any logical order, but if the book does follow any regular conventions, the end may ha...