For Esme—with Love and Squalor (Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition)
At a glance:
- Author: J. D. Salinger
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Plot: Psychological
- Time of Work: April, 1944, to May, 1945
- Setting: Dover, England, and Gaufurt, Bavaria
- Principal Characters: Staff Sergeant X, Esmé, Clay (Corporal Z)
- Genres: Psychological fiction
- Subjects: Children
- Locales: Bavaria
The Story
The story opens in 1950, immediately after the narrator has received an invitation to Esmé's wedding. He and his “breathtakingly levelheaded” wife have decided that he cannot go, so, instead, he writes these “few revealing notes on the bride as I knew her almost six years ago.”
The story proper (still in the first person) begins in April of 1944. The narrator is one of sixty enlisted men stationed in rural England, undergoing pre-Invasion Intelligence training. On the afternoon of his last day in Devon, he walks through the rain to the small town and...
[The entire page is 1551 words long]
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