A Perfect Day for Banana Fish vs. For Esmé

     The short stories A Perfect Day for Banana Fish and For Esmé-with Love and Squalor have many similarities as well as obvious differences. The main similarity between the short stories is the main character's problems with innocence. Seymour has an obvious problem with being stuck in between a world full of corruption and innocence. While at war, Seymour was surrounded by war, violence, and materialistic people. He often represented corrupt or "phony" things with the color yellow. When Seymour came home, and was surrounded with complete innocence, he had trouble being part of this other world. Seymour's relationship with Sybil and Sharon, as well as his obsession with bare(pure) feet represents him during his innocent stage of his life. It is possible that going to war forced Seymour to leave his innocent life behind and enter this realistic world of corruption. Similarly Esmé has difficulties with innocence. The death of her parents caused Esmé to take responsibility for herself and her brother, which caused her to grow up faster. In many ways, Esmé pushed herself into the world of corruption when she stated that she was "extremely interested in squalor" (Salinger 151) It is obvious here that she wants to grow up, and grow out of her innocence. At the same time, we see hints of Esmé's innocence, when she mentions her father. Since Esmé misses her father greatly, she relates every part of her conversation with X to her father, and his amazing qualities, so you can see her childish side. 

       X believes that during his time at war, all of his actions were justified. I believe that he has this quality of denial to cope with the horrors of war. When X was talking to Clay, he tried to convince Clay, as well as himself that he didn't do anything wrong at war. He tried to persuade them both by saying "You weren't insane. You were simply doing your duty."(Salinger 167) It was almost as if he was trying to put the blame of killing people on this idea of "its his job" Even with denial, X developed PTSD because he couldn't cope with the horrors of war. On the other hand, Seymour didn't seem to have a coping mechanism. He seemed very depressed, and I didn't get a sense that he was trying to make light out of his situation. Seymour's PTSD had taken over him to a point where he couldn't trick his body into recovering like X was attempting to do.