Analysis
Like the eldest son of the Glass family, Salinger was deeply affected by his experiences as a combat soldier in WWII, and these informed his writing. Kenneth Slawenski reports that Salinger, in his Seymour – An Introduction (1959), confesses that the young man in Bananafish “was not Seymour at all but... myself.” Traumatized by the Battle of the Bulge and the Nazi concentration camps Salinger “found it impossible to fit into a society that ignored the truth that he now knew.”
Children figure prominently in Salinger’s works. Seymour’s sympathetic and affectionate interaction with children is contrasted with the detached and phony behavior of adults. In the aftermath of his interlude with Sybil, Seymour “has drawn his own conclusions regarding the makeup of human beings and the world around him” and commits suicide.
Read more about this topic: A Perfect Day For Bananafish
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