A Perfect Day For Bananafish By J.D. Salinger

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A Perfect Day For Bananafish
By J.D. Salinger

A Perfect Day For Bananafish was written in 1948 by the American writer Jerome David Salinger. This was just three years after the ending of World War II, where Salinger was stationed in Berlin, Germany. From further analysis of the short-story I have come to the conclusion that Seymour is Salinger’s role model. Seymour has just returned from World War II, as well as Salinger had when he wrote the story. Seymour returns to his native country very confused, dysfunctional and with some psychic issues.
From the conversation between Muriel and her mother, we acknowledge that Seymour didn’t act normally after he has returned from the war. He destroyed “all those lovely pictures from Bermuda” for example. He has also been seeing a lot of psychiatrists and he’s all covered up, even when lying on the beach, too embarrassed to let people see his tattoo from the army.
Seymour IS a bananafish. He has seen too many awful and horrible things during the war like holocaust, starving people, shootings, executions, bombings, deaths of his friends etc. – he has eaten too many bananas. And when he returns to his native country he just doesn’t fit in anymore. He returns totally changed, very confused, because he has seen things he couldn’t imagine could actually happen. And then in the end he dies, just like the bananafish. Therefore Seymour wants to save Sybil because he cares a lot about her. He wants to tell her, that if you get too much of som...

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