For Esmé and APDB Compare and Contrast

For Esmé- with Love and Squalor and A Perfect Day for Bananafish are very similar in many ways. Both stories feature men who have fought in world war two. Both men have been greatly affected by the war and both suffer from PTSD. To deal with their corrupted views of the world, both Seymour and Sergeant X, turn to little kids, more specifically little girls, because they like the innocence that children have. Another similarity is that both of the men have wives who they don’t seem very connected to. This is more obvious in A Perfect Day for Bananafish in which Seymour and his wife Muriel are never shown communicating and Seymour thinks of Muriel as materialistic. Seymour’s disconnection from the world, the world in which Muriel lives in, is what leads Seymour to suicide. Similarly in For Esmé- with Love and Squalor, Sergeant X doesn’t talk about his wife much. When asked whether he loves her deeply or not Sergeant X does not answer. It can be assumed that the relationship between Sergeant X and his wife is not a very good one. Perhaps not having very good relationships with their wives is another reason why these two men befriend innocent little girls. A major difference in these two stories is the fact that Seymour ends up killing himself. I find this strange considering we are given more details regarding Sergeants X’s PTSD. Sergeant X had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized. Sergeant X’s fingers shake and his brain teeters however in the end it is Seymour, who does not show any similar or very obvious signs of PTSD, who takes his own life.