A Perfect Day for Bananafish | A Source for Seymour's Suicide: Rilke's Voices and Salinger's Nine Stories
In the following essay excerpt, this author shows how the poetry of German poet Rainer Maria Rilke informs the actions of Seymour in ‘‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish.''
J.D. Salinger's short story, ‘‘A Perfect Day for Bananafish,’’ employs the traditional device of a surprise ending. Seymour Glass returns to his Miami hotel room, glances at his wife asleep on her bed, takes from his luggage a heavy-caliber German automatic, sits down on his bed, looks again at Muriel, and fires a bullet through his head. Not even Richard Cory's suicide has provoked more critical commentary. Why does Seymour shoot himself?
The number of reasons proposed for this denouement attests to the effectiveness of the surprise. Is Seymour no longer able to cope with...
[The entire page is 2056 words long]
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