Analysis
The story, originally titled “Killer in the Dinghy” contains some clearly autobiographical elements. Salinger (who was called “Sonny” by his family) resembles Boo Boo Tannenbaum’s four-year-old son, Lionel, in that he “had a habit of running away from home when confronted by conflict.” Removing any doubt of this association, Salinger describes Lionel wearing a “Jerome the Ostrich” t-shirt – Salinger’s first name is Jerome. Lionel’s mother, "Boo Boo", employing great tact, succeeds in conveying to her son a simple and profound truth: fear and isolation can only be overcome through mutual support with other people.
The tale also addresses the issue of anti-Semitism in the post-war period when the facts of fascist atrocities committed against minorities, including Jews, were becoming fully understood. Salinger had personally viewed Nazi concentration camp as a US soldier. While attending Eastern upper-middle-class private schools as a boy, Salinger, half-Jewish, had been exposed to ethnic stereotyping by his mostly Anglo-Saxon classmates. Down at the Dinghy is not a reckoning of these personal and historical events, but rather a “reaffirmation of the faith in human connection” based upon “union, equality and compromise…”
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