Psychache is a term coined by suicidologist Edwin Shneidman. Psychache refers to an unbearable psychological pain — “hurt, anguish, soreness, aching, psychological pain in the psyche, the mind” (Shneidman 51). It can refer to anything like the pain of excessive guilt, humiliation, loneliness, fear, or anything that causes psychological pain. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, alienation means “a withdrawing or separation of a person or a person’s affections from an object or position of former attachment (“Alienation”). It results in loneliness, emptiness, and despair.
In “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J. D. Salinger, Seymour Glass is a man who had just come back from fighting in a war. He cannot relate to adults, especially his wife, Muriel, and the people at the resort he is staying at who are all narcissistic and live lavishly. Seymour is the most comfortable around children, especially Sybil, whom he meets on the beach at the resort. He lives through his ideal world with Sybil full of innocence, purity, and curiosity but when he has an odd encounter with a woman in the elevator on his way back to his room, he snaps back into reality.
Seymour goes through psychache and alienation: not being able to fit in and not being able to cope with reality and wanting a world full of innocence, purity, and curiosity, Seymour feels such anguish and ends up shooting himself in his head. Unable to feel comfortable and fit in the world he lives in, he escapes by killing himself. Muriel Glass is a very self-interested, vain socialite who loves fashion. She is introduced to the story as “a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing. She looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever since she had reached puberty” (Salinger 3).
She comes across as a popular, materialistic, shallow girl. When Muriel talks to her mother on the phone, she worries for Muriel because of Seymour’s mental instability and they talk a lot about the fashion at the resort. Muriel admits she let Seymour drive even though she knows about an accident he had with trees while driving which just shows how unconcerned she is about his health. While Seymour’s instability concerns Muriel’s mother, it does not seem to faze Muriel. Muriel’s mother repeatedly asks Muriel how she is and Muriel curtly tells her that she is perfectly fine many times and that Sevmour is doing just fine on the beach.
Muriel tells her mother that she met with a psychiatrist at the resort and makes it seem like she engaged in a thorough conversation but really just apathetically pursued answers from the psychiatrist. Instead of talking about Seymour, she played Bingo and drank with the psychiatrist and his wife. While Muriel spends time with the psychiatrist, Seymour is “in the Ocean Room playing the piano… both nights [they’ve] been there” (Salinger 5). He separates himself from all the events and parties and Muriel doesn’t even try to help Seymour fit in.
She knows that he has a problem but doesn’t acknowledge it. Readers see it is clear that Seymour is not stable and that he needs help, she doesn’t seem to make any effort to help Seymour. Muriel doesn’t even realize how bad Seymour’s condition is to the point where the day he shoots himself in the head, she is concerned about her looks and the fashion around the resort, not about Seymour. Sybil is a three-year-old girl that is on the beach with her mother. Sybil asks her mother “See more glass,’ … ‘Did you see more glass? “” “‘Pussycat, stop saying that.
It’s driving Mommy absolutely crazy. Hold still, please. “(Salinger 6) Her mother tells Sybil to run off so that she could go have a Martini. Sybil and Seymour have a very friendly relationship. Sybil can relate with Seymour because no one seems to understand either of them like how Sybil’s mother didn’t understand what she meant by “see more glass. ” However, Sybil seems to be the only one that understands Seymour as if she can see through him like glass. Sybil shows Seymour the innocence, purity, and curiosity and they both live in an imaginary world together in the ocean.
They talk about tigers and bananafish, which are fish that “lead a tragic life” (Salinger 8). Seymour explains that bananafish “swim into a hole where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinarylooking 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… naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again” (Salinger 8). With Sybil, Seymour seems happy to know that there is someone who understands her and he feels as if he fits in with her.
Sybil tells Seymour that she has seen a bananafish with six bananas in her mouth and Seymour is so overjoyed that he picks up one of Sybil’s wet feet and kisses the arch of her feet. At that moment, it seems that Sybil snapped back into reality and returns to the hotel without regret. Even as a three year old, she seems to be much mature than Seymour to know when the line is crossed. Sybil brings Seymour a taste of the life he would love to live in. Readers are left with the impression that although Seymour has a mental problem, that he has a sane side.
As he is on his way to his room, he gets onto an elevator and accuses a lady of staring at his feet. She politely responds to him, telling him that she was looking at the floor but the denial only made Seymour even angrier telling her “lf you want to look at my feet, say so. But don’t be a God-damned sneak about it” (Salinger 9). This is when readers first see Seymour’s actions to be inappropriate; however, his behavior hasn’t really changed at all since he was with Sybil. His behavior in the elevator could seem perfectly acceptable with children but appears inappropriate with adults.
Seymour fits in well with children but with adults, he is a fish trying to avoid all the bananafish. At that moment, Seymour seems to snap back to reality, out of his happy state that Sybil has brought to him. He walks to his room and grabs his gun out of luggage and looks at his wife on the other bed, aims the gun and fires a bullet through his head. It wasn’t just one thing that led Seymour to kill himself; it was a series of events that happened throughout the day. After his time with Sybil, readers are left with a sane side of Seymour and most of the story, he seems placid.
Seymour doesn’t seem like the harmful person that Muriel’s mother described him to be until the ending when he pulls out the gun. Seymour is like a regular fish surrounded by a sea of gluttonous bananafish that want more and more bananas just like the gluttonous and materialistic people he is surrounded by. The lady in the elevator reminds him that the world he had imagined with Sybil is just that, an imagination. He realizes that the world he is living in is not innocent, pure, or curious and because he is not able to cope with reality, he escapes.
He feels alienated being surrounded by these people lacking innocence, purity, and curiosity and he has such a big “psychache” that it all just led him to take his own life. Seymour had a hard time adjusting when he came back from the war. He was very introverted and had the mindset of a child therefore he didn’t fit around adults and his actions deemed to be inappropriate. Seymour longed to live in a world full of innocence, purity, and curiosity and was able to see a glimpse of that world with Sybil.
The bananafish he talked about with Sybil referred to the gluttonous people he was surrounded by who only want more and more materialistic things and can’t escape from the hole from taking too much and end up dying by suffocating from all the things surrounding them. Seymour didn’t want to live life the way of a bananafish but he also couldn’t handle being surrounded by them. Seymour couldn’t and didn’t want to join the bananafish so he tried to avoid them; however, there were way too many bananafish and that the only way to get away from them is death. Seymour’s psychache, alienation, and yearning for innocence ended up killing him.
