Although some details of the chief’s story are nonsense to adults, the story is extremely welcomed by the boys. For instance, in “The Laughing Man,” the chief tells a creative adventure story about a man who wears a mask because if other people see his grotesque appearance, they will die immediately. In Nine Stories, while some characters shroud themselves in blissful wonder, others lose themselves in unwavering realism. Eloise loses herself in the past as she is struggling in her current life, but whether she will be saved by Ramona’s innocence or her condition will worsen due to her obsession over her past is unknown. Her words might strongly reflect: her desire to return to the innocent and carefree world, her regret for not being a responsible and exemplary mother, or her yearning for the good old times with Walter. This confession is also open to interpretation. This bond between them is vaguely displayed but important to understand the cause of their actions for instance, Eloise interrupts Ramona’s sleep and even makes her daughter “extremely frightened” (Salinger 55).Īt the end of the story, Eloise pleads to Mary Jane, “I was a nice girl… wasn’t I?” (Salinger 56).
The world Ramona creates inside her head mirrors Eloise’s inner desires. The difference between the mother and daughter, however, is that Ramona conceives a new boyfriend after each imaginary death, whereas Eloise loses all of her happiness and innocence after the irreversible death of her husband. On the other hand, Eloise is depicted as an indifferent and irresponsible parent who cannot help being drowned in her past memories after her lover dies in a war. She even designs a deadly accident for Jimmy, her previous imaginary boyfriend-“ got runned over”-which surprises the readers and makes them wonder why the little girl imagines such a cruel thing and what she has suffered in the past (Salinger 50). Ramona is a strange child who always has an imaginary boyfriend with fully-developed backgrounds. In addition to the hard-to-explain death of Seymour in the first story, the interaction between Eloise and her 10-year-old daughter Ramona in “Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut” also implies a deeper connection than what is presented by the text. His suicide prevents the audience from finding out an affirmative answer to his internal world, leaving the story dangling and evocative. In Seymour’s mind, many people become distorted bananafish, which keep feeding themselves more bananas until the day they die. They are trapped by the hole and can only wait for death. Seymour implies his suffering in the postwar society by bananafish, and he longs for spiritual salvation by Sybil, an innocent child, when almost everyone around him is acting like a bananafish.Īccording to Seymour, the bananafish cannot pass through the hole because they devour too many bananas which enlarge their body. However, looking back to his interaction with Sybil after knowing about Seymour’s suicide at the end, these words may intrigue the audience to think about their connotations. The audience may find Seymour strange at first sight. Seymour suggests to Sybil what they can do after going to the water: “we’ll see if we can catch a bananafish,” and when Sybil mentions another child, Sharon Lipschutz, Seymour says to himself, “how the name comes up. When asking where is Sybil from, Seymour playfully annoys her by asking, “Is that anywhere near Whirly Wood, Connecticut, by any chance” (Salinger 21). For instance, Seymour talks to Sybil in a nonsensical way. In the first story, “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” the conversation between Seymour, a veteran of the war, and the little girl Sybil seems random but profound.
The only breakthrough to these unresolved and thought-provoking endings of Salinger’s stories is through reflecting on “the sound of one hand clapping,” to break the logic and hear the impossible sound. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?” Reading through the book, the audience may find the unusual plots and characters do not make sense when interpreted logically. Salinger’s Nine Stories opens with a Zen koan: “We know the sound of two hands clapping.
Listen to the Echo of Silence: Sound in Salinger’s Nine Stories
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