A Perfect Day For Bananafish Summary

1372 Words3 Pages

Tyler McKee Dr. Andrew Pisano
English 104-09
29 March, 2016
Themes of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and “Soldiers Home”
Ernest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger both had their respective pieces of literature published after a great war. Hemingway’s In Our Time is a collection of short stories that was published after World War I in 1925. “Soldiers Home” is one of the short stories that is within In Our Time. It is about a former Marine named Harold Krebs who has returned home from World War I. Krebs struggles with readjusting to everyday life and has become a shell of his former self. Salinger’s “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” is a short story that was published in 1948 after World War II. This story is formed around a young couple who has left
His name is Seymour Glass and he served in some capacity in World War II. What we do know is that his wife Muriel Glass’s mother is very concerned over her daughters wellbeing around Seymour. She shows her concern when she states “How did he behave- in the car and all?” and when she reacts to the news of Seymour driving “He drove? Muriel, you gave me your word” (Salinger 6). Throughout the story it is implied that Seymour had incidents such as crashing a car and having an outburst directed toward Muriel’s grandmother. The severity of these incidents is never fully exposed, but 400 dollars to fix a car in 1948 is a lot of
Salinger wrote “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” in 1948 after World War II and Hemingway had his “Soldiers Home” published in 1925 after World War I. Both protagonists of these two stories show the symptoms of deep depression caused by PTSD and both protagonists fought in a world war to come home traumatized, distressed, emotionally and psychologically scarred. Salinger and Hemingway showed the terrible after effects of war in their respective main characters. Harrold Krebs and Seymour Glass were not physical casualties of war, but something far worse. They became psychological casualties due to the extreme traumatic situations they both found themselves

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