Plot Summary
The story opens in an upscale seaside hotel room in Florida. A young woman, Muriel Glass, is preening herself while waiting for a phone call from her mother . Self-absorbed and complacent, she is “a girl who for the ringing of a phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually since she reached puberty.".
Speaking with her mother, the central topic is Muriel’s young husband, Seymour, a World War II combat veteran recently discharged from an Army hospital, where he was presumably evaluated for psychiatric disorders. He has gone down to the beach for the afternoon. The mother-daughter exchange includes a good deal of banter about clothing and fashion, as well as disparaging remarks about the quality of the hotel guests. The mother is disgusted and incensed by reports about her son-in-law's increasingly bizarre and anti-social behavior – acting “funny” – and she persistently warns Muriel that Seymour “may completely lose control of himself”. Muriel dismisses her remarks as hyperbole, regarding her husband’s idiosyncrasies as benign and manageable. Neither of the women express concern that Seymour’s irrational behavior may indicate that he is suffering emotionally.
The scene switches to the beachfront area reserved for hotel clientele. We meet the four- or five-year-old Sybil Carpenter (“She was wearing…a two piece bathing suit, one piece of which she would not be needing for another nine or ten years.") The little girl’s mother, after applying suntan lotion to the child, departs for the hotel lounge to drink martinis. Unsupervised, Sybil seeks out an adult acquaintance, Seymour, who has retreated from the hotel – and his wife – a quarter of the mile away, to lie in solitude on a public beach.
There, the two engage in an intriguing conversation, while Seymour prepares to go for a swim. Sybil selfishly reproaches Seymour for permitting another little girl, the “three and a half” year old Sharon Lipschutz to sit with him while he entertained guests performing on the lounge piano previous nights. Seymour, with mock-seriousness, attempts to placate the spoiled child, but to no avail.
At this impasse, Seymour casually proposes that they “catch a Bananafish," but Sybil coyly insists that Seymour choose between her and Sharon Lipschutz. He gently, yet pointedly, informs her that he observed Sybil abusing a hotel patron’s tiny dog and the chastened girl falls silent. Seymour wades into the ocean and, placing the girl on a rubber raft, proceeds to tell her the whimsical tale – “the very tragic life” – of the bananafish: in their gluttony, they gorge themselves on bananas, and swollen too large to escape their feeding holes, die. The child, unfazed by the story, claims that she sees a bananafish – “six” bananas in its mouth. Seymour affectionately kisses the arch of one of her feet, and returns her to shore, where she departs “without regrets."
Seymour returns to the hotel, where his wife is taking a nap. He retrieves a handgun from his luggage and takes his own life.
Read more about this topic: A Perfect Day For Bananafish
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