What Is The Loss Of Innocence In A Perfect Day For Bananafish

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In the short story, “A Perfect Day for BananaFish” from the collection, Nine Stories, by JD Salinger, Salinger makes the claim that Seymour Glass, a World War II Veteran, is deeply disturbed from his war experiences. Salinger shows the extent of Glass’s disturbance through his interactions with other people, and his view of the world around him.
Seymour Glass has lost his innocence in the war. He suffered through tragedy and death and has lost his purity. And this loss of innocence has led him to interact with others in a very peculiar way. He can no longer talk to adults who he can see have also lost their innocence. This is clear when he yells at the grandmother of Muriel, his wife, who stayed with him through the war. He yells at her grandmother spewing words that …show more content…

He cleverly disguises his suicide farewell in the story. Seymour claims that BananaFish are fish that eat bananas in a hole, in which they get stuck in, and eventually die. He states that this is a deadly disease known as Banana Fever. Seymour Glass is a BananaFish as the story can be interpreted as war and the loss of innocence. Soldiers go into the war and kill and kill and kill, and they cannot get their mind off of the acts that they committed and eventually die; mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. The soldiers are the BananaFish, the war is the hole that they cannot get out of, the bananas are experiences that weigh a soldier down, and Banana Fever is Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He explained to a child in a metaphor of what he went through and is continuing to go through. Seymour Glass’s thinking is that all BananaFish are doomed to death, just as all soldiers are doomed to go crazy. But, when he says, “This is a perfect day for BananaFish,” (Salinger 8) he is saying that it is the perfect day to die. And that is exactly what happens, as he kills himself later that

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