Aside from being both unpredictable and interesting, J.D. Salinger’s nine stories are also well-constructed. The different settings, conflicts, characters’ attitudes and even the words used, work together to create such attention-grabbing stories—full of expression and voice.
Jean De Daumier-Smith is my favorite character in the short story, “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period”. He is the protagonist and at the same time, the story-teller. The way he describes the events and people around him, from his point of view, is funny and amusing for the most part, but his frequent criticisms show his feeling of superiority over the people around him. What I liked about his story is the way he expresses his real thoughts and feelings and how he is so much like a ‘real’ person. When he was ‘crazy’ about Sister Irma (a nun, whose face he hasn’t seen) and her painting, his words were true and believable and as if you can feel his vulnerability and madness. “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” also shows vesimilitude through the story-teller’s tone and the expressions of admiration and self-discovery—emotions that we also feel.
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” has an interesting example of a conflict between man and himself. Seymour Glass and his wife, Muriel, are at a beach resort for their second honeymoon. It is indicated, by his unusual actions, that Seymour is experiencing some kind of a mental problem. He wears a bathrobe on the beach to hide his tattoo from people—a tattoo which he does not have. He is also disturbed by people staring at his feet and asks to himself, “what the hell is wrong with my feet?” He is fighting over his own mind and emotions—the conflict of the story. At the end, he is defeated, when he went to his wife’s room and sat beside her, and killed himself by a gunshot at his right temple.
“A few years before, it had taken her three days to dispose of the Easter chick she had found dead on the sawdust in the bottom of her wastebasket”. This is the last—and seemingly unconnected to the rest of the story—sentence of the story, “Just Before the War with the Eskimos”. Ginnie, who was waiting for her money from Selena, had a spontaneous talk with Selena’s brother. He mentioned about airplanes and “Joan the snob”, and gave Ginnie a half of a sandwich. Ginnie was so involved and caught up in the conversation that she realized something after that, and refused to take her money back from Selena, at the end. The last sentence of the story, about the Easter chick, is a comparison of the sandwich that Selena’s brother gave Ginnie. And that sandwich symbolizes the unexpected talk that they had, which Ginnie treasured a lot.
photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/taniass/2487930389/sizes/o/