A Perfect Day for Bananafish - J.D. Salinger

A Perfect Day for Bananafish - J.D. Salinger

• Published in 1948 in The New Yorker, a literary magazine specializing in finding short story writers.
• The title is ironic because the day described is far from perfect; the main character commits suicide.
• A bananafish is a symbolic element representing the protagonist that does not exist.

Characters

• Seymour and Muriel Glass, Muriel's mum, and Sybil, a little girl, are the characters.
• Seymour and Muriel are theoretically in their late 20s.
• Seymour's war experience contrasts with Muriel's sheltered life, impacting their psychological evolution.
• The author aims to depict a traumatic experience and post-traumatic trauma.
• Seymour is meant to evoke discomfort due to his unique friendship with a child.

Muriel

• From the beginning, Muriel relies on her parents' protection, with her mother constantly calling and worrying.
• She avoids acknowledging her husband's traumatic experience, which has led to his mental instability.
• She focuses on her appearance and values others' opinions, portraying her as superficial.
  • Linguistic elements include the use of "room, phone, nails, magazine."
• She masks her ignorance of her husband's condition by painting her nails, reading magazines, etc.
  • "She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty" conveys her superficiality and overprotection.
  • "I'm so sunburned I can hardly move” / “Seymour looks so pale" highlights the contrast between the two protagonists.
• Seymour sends Muriel a book of German poems, symbolizing his feelings, but neither understands the language.
  • This suggests Seymour's lack of self-understanding.
• Muriel's disinterest in the German poems symbolizes her lack of concern for her husband's emotional state.

Seymour

• Described as thin and pale, appearing to be on the verge of collapse.
• Seymour struggles to communicate with adults due to his pain, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress.
• Seymour gives Muriel the book of poems to try and communicate, and communicates with Sybil, the child, who represents "safety" and innocence in a playful manner.
• Sybil teases Seymour by calling him "See more," a word game.
  • The reader learns of Seymour's mental instability and Muriel's parents' concerns through a conversation between Muriel and her parents.
• At one point Seymour swerved the car into a tree, trying to harm himself, foreshadowing his desperation.
  • The communication loss causes Seymour to struggle, trying to give signs to Muriel which she doesn't care about.
  • Seymour is struggling to communicate, and the only person he can communicate with is Sybil.

Sybil

• Serves as a symbolic element, representing innocence and basic human warmth, facilitating communication with Seymour.
• Seymour and Sybil communicate humorously, giving information in a playful manner.
  • "Did the tigers run all around that tree?” is and example.
  • A response to trauma paralyzes Seymour’s brain which is the only kind of conversation Seymour can have.
• The bananafish represent greed and insatiability, mirroring powerful individuals who orchestrate wars without participating, sending young men to suffer.
  • Salinger uses this metaphor to depict Seymour's perspective on the world.
  • Sallinger describes and critiques a situation that remains relevant today using only the basic elements of the short story.
• The story starts with an omniscient narrator but quickly transitions to dialogue, prompting the reader to form their image of the character.
• The author provides minimal information.
  • For example, the fact that Muriel does not support her husband is implied, not explicitly stated.
• The story unfolds in a Florida vacation resort, where Muriel aims to relax while Seymour Grapples with post-traumatic anxiety, undermining any sense of peace.

Mrs. Fox - Sarah Hall

• Hall employs The Metamorphosis technique to infuse her stories with symbolic meaning, set in 2014.
• The narrator employs a third-person perspective, primarily focusing on the husband's viewpoint, omitting insights into the woman's thoughts and sentiments.
• The woman transforms into a fox, leading to her departure from home and habitation in the forest so she can bear her offspring.
• The man cherishes expectations of her prompt return.
• The husband is left alone in their house, resulting in a poignant conclusion as he grapples with loneliness yet persists in life.

The Story's Main Theme

• The story's central theme revolves around pregnancy, illustrated through the woman's physical metamorphosis.
• The story serves as a metaphor for the bodily changes experienced during pregnancy, an ordinary yet transformative event.
• Hall accentuates the couple's unique experience, intensifying the narrative.
• The story's essence lies in the revelation of pregnancy, the husband associates it with cancer owing to his ignorance of its symptoms.
• Hall aims to elucidate the breakdown in the couple's rapport, each ensconced in separate realities.
• There is no explicit evidence of the woman's transmutation aside from the man's perception, aligning with the author's use of The Metamorphosis.
• The husband's perspective stems from his perception of his partner prioritizing her physical well-being.
• Sarah Hall introduces a typical couple undergoing pregnancy through the eyes of the male viewpoint.
• The couple's dynamic centers on physical attraction rather than profound understanding.
  • When Sophia sickens, her husband's reflex towards cancer underscores their weak connection.
• Hall uses metamorphosis through the wife from the narrator.
  • "Assian eyes, wide and sensual hips, walks with grace..." is a example, this showcases the narrator's fixation on her physical qualities.
  • "As she leans forward the notches in her spine rise against the flesh of her back" - she becomes an animal.
• Transition into a wild animal increases detachment.

Narrator's Voice

• The narrator is predominately in man's voice.
• He narrator emphasizes physical appeal.
• "The shape of her eyes, almost Persian, though she is English" is an example.
• He is a mythical figure and the trick is to remain detach.
• The description is very similar when being described in both forms.
• The person does not consider the person a sexually driven animal.

Restorying

• Her husband's passivity aggravates Sophia.
• The husband lives with the fact he is always by his side.

Rip Van Wrinkle - Washington Irving

• Irving created stories by adding features to existing ones.
• The story follows a man who goes to the mountains to escape his wife, drinks with Dutch settlers, sleeps for 20 years, and returns to a changed village.
• New "modern Town" and new promising building.
• Irving's greater interest is in the emotion, and less on the feelings.
• He is a lazy man, who does note like to work, take acre of the farm and the house or play with his kids.
  • "at length he reduced to almost dispare as the woods is and example.

Time Characteristics

• It changes over time.

Language Types

• He uses personification to refer to the nature background.
• Giving a sense of expression vs. context.
• A new nation is America, so it's important to move from the old to the new.
• The anti-heros are not good.
• Revisions are important.
• He was a happy man.
• He was an obedient man and he went to the wood. It was a rich area and he approached a village where they knew everyone.
• Irving used chronology and the narrator described them.

Major Topics

• The characters change.
• America Has changed.
• There is capitalism.
• The person in full and had the right of citizens.

Young Goodman Brown - Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Hawthorne conveys the character's inner struggles through allegory.
• Puritanism and the journey structure are key elements in the story.
• Goodman Brown, an anti-hero, embarks on a night journey into the forest, guided by allegory.
• He aims to test his Puritan faith and life, leading the allegory's.
• The short story has a journey for transformation.
• The narrator, a third-person omniscient voice, introduces Faith with pink ribbons, an allegorical symbol.

The Narrator

• Presents doubts and the third-person voice knows everything.
• The story is set around Boston in Massachusetts.

Setting Characteristics

• Hawthorne hints at the zone of america that should be happy.
• The goal was to colonize and people lived a holy life.

Character Connections

The author touches on the gods and the character is going to change and do sinful actions.

• They have a journey that takes place.
• Faith shows perfect life.
• The man acts like the devil and the biggest character.
• There are private and religious places.
• He found out the fact that he would become something so good for something.
• He wants to question his history.
• One encounter is a virgin and the person has devilish tendencies.
• One cannot trust and this is a result of double morality.
• There are sinful tendencies.
• It's good to be American in his world.

The Task of The Amontillado - Edgar Allan Poe

• Narrative and most innovative of one sort stroy.
• First perosn navative and Roderick the best example.
• The revenge of Fortunato is a way to test him.
• They both spoke the same languge in dusk when drunk.
• Building foudnations of obsessive character in a scary way.
• The time is always important in this story.

Story Qualities

• Symbolizes the whole story.
• Should be one sitting.
• The other one is to use language in a rich way.
• The man is in a party.
• The time increases.

The Country of The Blind - H.G Wells

• The Naturalist approach sets the objective of the writer to be in challenge.
• The other characters are antiheroes and they are similar.
• Nuñez is introduced as a hero of emblem vs. other characters.
• The village cannot feet Nuñez.

The Setting

• Darwin's theory says leave or stay.
• His initial archetype.
• He his clumsy and he doesn't adapt.
• He gives a third-person overview and its from both sides.
• Their culture is well introduced and their organized.
• The villiage has the ability of deflecting the world.
• The couple face different problems and there is no change.
  • Colonialism in this story.
  • Science and faith.
• They way find peace in the blind in the questioned story.

Daisy Miller - Henry James

• He portrays the tensions and this all takes place in the united states.
• Focus is on Winterboure and daisy.
• Impossible to adapt the whole new environment.
• She isn't trying to be open in any new place.
• He tries to follow her but its hard

Story Traits.

• She cannot talk to a man
• Hired or not hired the tourism is very hard.
• There is a person who wants to suck the blood.
• She has issues of the fact as a bad story.
• He followed her and it was natural.
• The dialogue is in an ironic situation and and innocent tone.
• It's not her fault to like him.

Kew Gardens - Virginia Woolf

• Until The point of 20, there was to conciousness of mind.
• They gave a speific meaning.
• What happens in what happened with the people in the people and the train.
• They were modernist and express the individualisty from a wet flower that never dies.
• The story starts with to the big city.

Narration

• It's that the movement is the narrator.
• Hihgiylit the shape and the voice with high.
• The mind is stopping due ti the the woman.
• The other person does a lot of things and so everything goes on.

Themes

• the person looks at the way to what he can.

Good Country People - Flannery O'connor

• An idea of questioning a point thats going to give you it uses irony.
• He's able to work and his traits apon each character.
• It is one characteristic and the bad characters and the people never look at the benefits.
• In the Freeman's its always good to be with and together.
• They made sure its the opposite with the ironic point.
• She likes to study and she has a leg.
• He seduces the bible and her way.
• What happens with the bad person and has no chance.