For Esme, First Impression Response

For Esme, First Impression Response

The first time I read For Esme I was very confused. This short story, like most in the anthology Nine Stories, does not make much sense from a surface scan. However, after reading it a few more times I started to notice the intriguing symbols, how the story is told, and some odd occurrences.

Two of the major symbols that Salinger uses in For Esme are letters and the wristwatch. In the story everybody uses letters to talk, as they were the only way to communicate across the Atlantic Ocean, save for telegram. The story shows how letters can sometimes be even more influential and important than conversations. Esme is saving her father’s letters to show her children a man whom she knew for only a short amount of time, but feels she knows because of the important messages he wrote to her. Esme can save these letters and reread them, knowing this will always remain the same unlike memories, which are fluid and ever-changing. Esme’s

She symbolizes the person that is better than everybody in everything. She is stronger, smarter, “blindingly beautiful” and you can suppose that she also has a stunning voice. She is an important symbol in the novel because she shows that even though the handicap general tries to hide beauty with masks and strength with weights people still compare themselves to others. George says that the ballerina must have been exceptionally gorgeous because she wore such hideous mask, and that the amount of weight she carried meant she was exceptionally strong as well. He subconsciously compares himself to her proven by the quote “And it was easy to see that she was the strongest and most graceful of all the dancers, for her handicap bags were as big as those worn by two-hundred pound men.” (Harrison Bergeron) By comparing her amount of weight to that a man would wear, George is comparing himself to the ballerina and probably wondering why he isn’t