시모어의 죽음에 대한 분석

Abstract

“A Perfect Day for Banafish” is the fist story in 『Nine Stories』, the second collection of short stories written by J. D. Salinger. There have been many efforts to analyse and identify the motives and reasons for the death of Seymour Glass, the hero in “Bananfish”. But the complicated and symbolic descriptions and meanings never allow any critics to draw any clear conclusions from Seymour’s suicide. Moreover, Salinger’s latter stories, in which Seymour, the same character as the hero in “Bananafish”, takes the most important role, make it even more complex and difficult to interpret his suicide. Above all, the ‘Seymour’ in “Bananafish” does not correctly coincide with the ‘Seymour’ in the Glass’s stories. While Seymour in “Bananafish” is too feeble physically and mentally to endure his life with his materialistic wife, Muriel, the same person in the latter stories is described as an outstanding artist and god-seer. Despite the fact he is a transcendent existence as a god-seer, why does he kill himself? Those hitherto studies on Seymour’s suicide used to focus only on “Bananafish” or the latter stories. This study tried a new effort to interpret his suicide by the combined analysis of “Banafish” and the three works of Salinger’s latter stories, 『Raise the Roof Beam』, Carpenters , 『Seymour; Introduction』, and 『Hapworth 16, 1924』.