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    Bananafish

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    The short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger is about a World War II veteran named Seymour who is experiencing mental hardship like PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and bipolarism after the war. Seymour tells a young girl a story about bananafish swimming into holes filled with bananas and eating uncontrollably, representing soldiers entering the trenches and killing enemies until they develop "banana fever" or mental illness. Seymour exhibits symptoms of different mental illnesses and ultimately commits suicide, reflecting Salinger's own experiences as a veteran and message that war destroys soldiers both during and after combat.

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    Bananafish

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    api-357469106
    54 views3 pages
    The short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger is about a World War II veteran named Seymour who is experiencing mental hardship like PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and bipolarism after the war. Seymour tells a young girl a story about bananafish swimming into holes filled with bananas and eating uncontrollably, representing soldiers entering the trenches and killing enemies until they develop "banana fever" or mental illness. Seymour exhibits symptoms of different mental illnesses and ultimately commits suicide, reflecting Salinger's own experiences as a veteran and message that war destroys soldiers both during and after combat.

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    bananafish

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    The short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger is about a World War II veteran named Seymour who is experiencing mental hardship like PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and bipolarism after the war. Seymour tells a young girl a story about bananafish swimming into holes filled with bananas and eating uncontrollably, representing soldiers entering the trenches and killing enemies until they develop "banana fever" or mental illness. Seymour exhibits symptoms of different mental illnesses and ultimately commits suicide, reflecting Salinger's own experiences as a veteran and message that war destroys soldiers both during and after combat.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    54 views3 pages

    Bananafish

    Uploaded by

    api-357469106
    The short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger is about a World War II veteran named Seymour who is experiencing mental hardship like PTSD, schizophrenia, depression, and bipolarism after the war. Seymour tells a young girl a story about bananafish swimming into holes filled with bananas and eating uncontrollably, representing soldiers entering the trenches and killing enemies until they develop "banana fever" or mental illness. Seymour exhibits symptoms of different mental illnesses and ultimately commits suicide, reflecting Salinger's own experiences as a veteran and message that war destroys soldiers both during and after combat.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    of 3

    Nikolaus 1

    Madyson Nikolaus

    Mrs. Schenck

    English 11/ Period 6

    14 February 2019

    Bananafish

    The short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish by JD Salinger informs the lucky

    prospectors of World War II of the soldiers that resided in the trenches which led to their mental

    downfalls after the war. The main character, Seymour, is a veteran from the war and is now

    experiencing mental hardships such as possible PTSD, schizophrenia, depression and bipolarism.

    He tells of a story in which a veteran describes the war to a little girl, Sybil, in an innocent story

    of bananafish. Salinger is a veteran from the war and is explaining his life after the dramatization

    of the trenches.

    The mention of some of the things in the story, like the bananafish, could implicitly be

    soldiers in the war. Seymour tells Sybil about bananafish, saying that they “swim into a hole

    where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once

    they get in, they behave like pigs. Why, I’ve known some bananafish to swim into a banana hole

    and eat as many as seventy- eight bananas” (Salinger 9). The bananafish are the soldiers who

    went into the trenches and behave like a mad-men, killing as many as seventy-eight enemy

    soldiers. They get so tired, emotionally and mentally, that they cannot get out of the dangerous

    headspace, so they die there, or they are killed. Soldiers that make it out alive have caught the

    “banana fever” (10) which is mental illness, causing them to die by their own hand later on. The

    story of the bananafish is merely the truth of the war.


    Nikolaus 2

    It doesn’t need to be analyzed that Seymour had a mental illness, possibly including:

    PTSD, schizophrenia and depression. After the beach, Seymour makes his way back to his hotel

    and once there, he ends up taking out “an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the

    magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then went over and sat down on

    the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right

    temple” (10). A man does not just kill himself. The knowledge following Salinger’s involvement

    in the second World War can lead the readers to believe that Seymour is based off of the true

    feelings of the author. Seymour clearly suffered from a mental illness of some sort.

    Where a message was a little cloudy was what mental illness the main character suffers

    from. Options or hypothesis of maybe: PTSD, schizophrenia, depression and bipolarism, seem to

    be picked up on. In the scene after the beach, Seymour is in the elevator with a woman. In the

    elevator he feels as if the woman is looking at his feet, she politely tells him “I beg your pardon.

    I happened to be looking at the floor” (10) for some odd reason this angers Seymour. It seems as

    if someone has told him she was doing this, him reacting negatively and quick to assume; thus

    leading to the evidence of schizophrenia and bipolarism. The next scene over includes him

    killing himself maybe to get away from the depression that fills him. When Sybil mentions that

    she sees a bananafish, Seymour becomes frantic and freaks out, leading to the belief that he has

    PTSD since bananafish are a metaphor of soldiers.

    The short story informs the reader of the trenches and what happens to the World War II

    soldiers after their traumatic experiences in it. Seymour, a man drafted in served as a soldier who

    reflects the author, Salinger. Salinger is maybe sharing with the reader his true emotions and

    hardships of the war by telling a metaphorical story of bananafish that eat a lot of bananas, when

    really he describes soldiers who kill their enemies, picking up mental illnesses. Seymour might
    Nikolaus 3

    have picked up these illnesses, leading to his suicide. Salinger informs the reader that the war

    kills its participants during and after.

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