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 have a meaningful connection to the beginning.
In "Teddy", Teddy discusses with Bob Nicholson his understanding of life and death, which mostly aligns with the beliefs of Buddhism. He believes that the goal of living should be to remove the clutter of logic from our minds, and to meditate in order to reach a better understanding of how the world really works, and who we really are. He also believes in reincarnation, which in this story must be the way things work, since Teddy already knows all of this information at the age of ten. Perhaps this is the only story where this system applies, but maybe it's not. It's possible that Salinger is using Teddy to tell us that all of these stories operate in the same universe. If this is the case, it may provide helpful context in understanding the strange behavior of the children in Nine Stories, and I believe it can help us better comprehend Seymour's behavior.
Mr. Mitchell told us that Seymour was widely known for his amazing mind as a child, much like Teddy. Wikipedia says that Seymour was "a spiritual savant and brilliant intellectual", and it wouldn't be inaccurate to describe Teddy in the same way. Maybe, just maybe, Seymour was on his way to Enlightenment like Teddy. Perhaps he admired children because he saw their absence of logic and the purity in it. It would explain his predator-like interaction with Sybil that I expanded on in an earlier blog post. Perhaps by inventing the story of the bananafish, he was trying to show her the way the world really is, absent of logic and reason. He was trying to make her see past what should be there and think without inhibition, like Teddy was trying to explain to Bob. It's possible that his fascination with trees and rudeness in regards to Muriel's grandmother's plans for death were due to an enhanced perception of nature, and a less emotional attachment to death, which would no doubt be alarming to Muriel and her mother.
Even though Seymour may have been on the path to Enlightenment, I think he was still early on in his journey, and was having trouble undoing some of constraints his life had placed on him. Maybe he was well on his way when he became a professor at Columbia, but I think the war hindered his progress. War, as we've learned from O'Brien, is capable of changing a man, and is one of the world's best teachers. It may not teach logic, but whatever it does teach is strong enough to drive men insane and change the course of their lives as a result. After the war, Seymour attempts to take his life several times, and it might have been because his experience in the war kept him from meditating. The images may have been too real, too jolting, and may have penetrated the core of his effort to re-imagine life. An enlightened man may have seen war and death for what it really is, but again, I don't think Seymour had reached that stage yet. And so, he begins to attempt to kill himself because he's grieving - not over the loss of a comrade or any other human - but because he's lost the ability to transcend, at least in this life, thus requiring the start of a new one. Given this information, it seems odd that he'd be unsuccessful in committing suicide if he's looking forward to the next life. My explanation for this is Muriel; even though he may realize the insignificance of intimate, emotional relationships, he still recognizes the responsibility he holds to at least acknowledge the nature of the relationship that he's supposed to be having. He's done with his current life and is ready to move on, but the burden of responsibility to Muriel keeps him from ending his life. This is the stage that I believe he's in at the beginning of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", but his interaction with Sybil ultimately sends him over the edge.
As I stated earlier, Seymour interacts with the children because he knows that they are closer to intellectual purity than adults. It's why he spends time with Sharon and Sybil (it still doesn't explain the foot fetish, but I'm ignoring that for the moment). When he takes Sybil out the water, he's on the brink. He's disenchanted with his life, and disappointed that a relationship with a mortal who "may be in a thousand places" is keeping him from continuing his journey towards Enlightenment. He takes Sybil out to the water and conjures up the bananafish to see a glimpse of that childlike imagination, creativity and illogical thinking that only Sybil holds now. And when she allows herself to see it, he's filled with joy and can't contain it, and ends up kissing her foot in pure bliss (?). But that joy turns to sadness. He knows she sees the bananafish, but he can't see it - he's too far gone.
When we see him in the elevator with the stranger, we see him at his lowest; defeated by logic and crushed under its power. We know this when he says, "I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them." Who is he now to be the judge of rationality and logic? Would Teddy ever say he had "normal feet"? Teddy would never make such a statement, and neither would've Seymour before the war.
Seymour is ready to end his life when he enters the room, and furthermore he's ready to face the guilt of leaving the woman he's supposed to love and be married to. As I see it, when he pulls that trigger, he sees it as an act of freedom, release, and a chance to start again, this time without the baggage of being a veteran and having a wife.
With this take on the story, I'm essentially placing myself in Seymour's head and trying to explain what he's thinking, a position that Salinger never assumes in Nine Stories when there is a 3rd person narrator. Perhaps "Teddy" is the tool he wants us to use in order to be that omniscient narrator for ourselves.
In "Teddy", Teddy discusses with Bob Nicholson his understanding of life and death, which mostly aligns with the beliefs of Buddhism. He believes that the goal of living should be to remove the clutter of logic from our minds, and to meditate in order to reach a better understanding of how the world really works, and who we really are. He also believes in reincarnation, which in this story must be the way things work, since Teddy already knows all of this information at the age of ten. Perhaps this is the only story where this system applies, but maybe it's not. It's possible that Salinger is using Teddy to tell us that all of these stories operate in the same universe. If this is the case, it may provide helpful context in understanding the strange behavior of the children in Nine Stories, and I believe it can help us better comprehend Seymour's behavior.
Mr. Mitchell told us that Seymour was widely known for his amazing mind as a child, much like Teddy. Wikipedia says that Seymour was "a spiritual savant and brilliant intellectual", and it wouldn't be inaccurate to describe Teddy in the same way. Maybe, just maybe, Seymour was on his way to Enlightenment like Teddy. Perhaps he admired children because he saw their absence of logic and the purity in it. It would explain his predator-like interaction with Sybil that I expanded on in an earlier blog post. Perhaps by inventing the story of the bananafish, he was trying to show her the way the world really is, absent of logic and reason. He was trying to make her see past what should be there and think without inhibition, like Teddy was trying to explain to Bob. It's possible that his fascination with trees and rudeness in regards to Muriel's grandmother's plans for death were due to an enhanced perception of nature, and a less emotional attachment to death, which would no doubt be alarming to Muriel and her mother.
Even though Seymour may have been on the path to Enlightenment, I think he was still early on in his journey, and was having trouble undoing some of constraints his life had placed on him. Maybe he was well on his way when he became a professor at Columbia, but I think the war hindered his progress. War, as we've learned from O'Brien, is capable of changing a man, and is one of the world's best teachers. It may not teach logic, but whatever it does teach is strong enough to drive men insane and change the course of their lives as a result. After the war, Seymour attempts to take his life several times, and it might have been because his experience in the war kept him from meditating. The images may have been too real, too jolting, and may have penetrated the core of his effort to re-imagine life. An enlightened man may have seen war and death for what it really is, but again, I don't think Seymour had reached that stage yet. And so, he begins to attempt to kill himself because he's grieving - not over the loss of a comrade or any other human - but because he's lost the ability to transcend, at least in this life, thus requiring the start of a new one. Given this information, it seems odd that he'd be unsuccessful in committing suicide if he's looking forward to the next life. My explanation for this is Muriel; even though he may realize the insignificance of intimate, emotional relationships, he still recognizes the responsibility he holds to at least acknowledge the nature of the relationship that he's supposed to be having. He's done with his current life and is ready to move on, but the burden of responsibility to Muriel keeps him from ending his life. This is the stage that I believe he's in at the beginning of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", but his interaction with Sybil ultimately sends him over the edge.
As I stated earlier, Seymour interacts with the children because he knows that they are closer to intellectual purity than adults. It's why he spends time with Sharon and Sybil (it still doesn't explain the foot fetish, but I'm ignoring that for the moment). When he takes Sybil out the water, he's on the brink. He's disenchanted with his life, and disappointed that a relationship with a mortal who "may be in a thousand places" is keeping him from continuing his journey towards Enlightenment. He takes Sybil out to the water and conjures up the bananafish to see a glimpse of that childlike imagination, creativity and illogical thinking that only Sybil holds now. And when she allows herself to see it, he's filled with joy and can't contain it, and ends up kissing her foot in pure bliss (?). But that joy turns to sadness. He knows she sees the bananafish, but he can't see it - he's too far gone.
When we see him in the elevator with the stranger, we see him at his lowest; defeated by logic and crushed under its power. We know this when he says, "I have two normal feet and I can't see the slightest God-damned reason why anybody should stare at them." Who is he now to be the judge of rationality and logic? Would Teddy ever say he had "normal feet"? Teddy would never make such a statement, and neither would've Seymour before the war.
Seymour is ready to end his life when he enters the room, and furthermore he's ready to face the guilt of leaving the woman he's supposed to love and be married to. As I see it, when he pulls that trigger, he sees it as an act of freedom, release, and a chance to start again, this time without the baggage of being a veteran and having a wife.
With this take on the story, I'm essentially placing myself in Seymour's head and trying to explain what he's thinking, a position that Salinger never assumes in Nine Stories when there is a 3rd person narrator. Perhaps "Teddy" is the tool he wants us to use in order to be that omniscient narrator for ourselves.
I was thinking that "Teddy" was somehow a consolation for "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" while I was reading it! Teddy and Seymour seem very similar, as you point out, and beyond their intelligence, they both reject material objects. I did some more research and found that "Teddy" was written by Seymour's brother (in this story world). So that makes me think that somehow Teddy was based off Seymour, and was written so we didn't feel so bad about Seymour's death.
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