![]() ![]() Muriel, on the other hand, is inside because she's sun-burned so badly. Notice that Seymour is very pale and doesn't want to get any sun on the beach. So he sees her in the color blue, rather than the yellow she actually wears. Seymour sees Sybil's spiritual mechanism, her internal qualities of purity and innocence. "In making sure of the essential, he forgets the homely details intent on the inward qualities, he loses sight of the external." That's seems to be what's going on here with Seymour. The man has learned to look at the horse's "spiritual mechanism," he says. The Duke is peeved that this guy can't even tell the color and sex of a horse, but Po Lo is ecstatic. When the horse arrives, however, it is a black stallion. The man does, and when the emperor asks about its color and sex, the man tells him it is a brown mare. Po Lo does, and the Duke employs this man to pick out a horse for him. The Duke asked Po Lo to send him a man who could pick out a superior horse from a group of animals. ![]() The story he read was a Taoist tale about Duke Mu of China and an enlightened man named Po Lo. When their sister Franny was a ten months old, Seymour read her a story to stop her from fussing one night. Actually, there's an interesting aside in Salinger's short story "Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters" that Buddy Glass tells about his brother Seymour. ![]() She is pure and innocent, so he associates her with the color blue. It also makes sense that he thinks Sybil is wearing a blue bathing suit. If we think of blue as associated with purity or innocence, then it makes sense that Seymour is wearing blue trunks. If there's one thing I like, it's a blue bathing suit" (2.20). Yet Seymour says to her, "That's a fine bathing suit you have on. Notice that Seymour's swim trunks are blue, while Sybil wears a yellow bathing suit. We discuss this central theme in "What's Up with the Title?" See you there. We're going to go ahead and discuss the possible meanings of these different symbols, but keep in mind that it might all be for naught. To pick it apart analytically is to misinterpret Salinger's intentions. The other camp bases its interpretation largely on the epigraph, which tells us not to approach this story with logic. It matters that Sybil likes to eat wax, not jellybeans or pencils. ![]() It matters that Seymour's swim trunks are blue. From this viewpoint, it matters that Seymour's room is 507, rather than 213. He worries that people will see these experiences-and his subsequent psychological trauma-just by looking at him, and so bundling himself up in the bathrobe is a way for him to close himself off from other people.Before we talk about any of these symbols, you should know that there are two camps when it comes to interpreting "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." One camp is all about the deep hidden meaning, thinking that every line, perhaps even every word has some carefully chosen significance. With this, the story implies that this invisible tattoo that Seymour is desperate to cover up is a stand-in for Seymour’s experiences in World War II. Surprised, her mother asks if Seymour got a tattoo in the army, and Muriel says no-he doesn’t have a tattoo. After first writing off Seymour’s behavior as simple embarrassment about his pasty skin, Muriel eventually admits to her mother that Seymour wears the bathrobe so that people don’t stare at his tattoo. More specifically, it seems that the bathrobe symbolizes Seymour’s attempt to conceal his wartime experiences-and resulting psychological trauma-from others. True to form, when Seymour leaves Sybil’s company and walks back to his hotel, he puts his robe back on and “close the lapels tight,” closing himself back up both physically and emotionally as he prepares to reenter the adult world. That Seymour so willingly sheds his robe, which appears to be a kind of security blanket for him, reveals that he’s much more comfortable with children than adults, and it points to the thematic idea that he is drawn to the innocence that children represent. But when Seymour notices that the visitor is a child, he relaxes, and it’s not long before he takes off his robe entirely to go swimming with her. When Sybil walks up and startles him, Seymour’s hand instinctively flies up to the lapels of his robe, as if he were closing it tighter and closing himself off from the interaction. Indeed, when the story introduces Seymour a few pages later, he’s lying on the beach with his eyes closed, but he’s bundled up in his robe. However, his bizarre attachment to the bathrobe actually symbolizes how he closes himself off to other adults and the adult world they inhabit. Near the beginning of the story, Muriel complains to her mother that Seymour refuses to take his bathrobe off, which she flippantly attributes to him wanting to hide his pale complexion. ![]()
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