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Madyson Nikolaus

Mrs. Schenck

English 11/ Period 6

14 February 2019

Bananafish

The short story A Perfect Day for Bananafish by JD Salinger informs the lucky

prospectors of World War II of the soldiers that resided in the trenches which led to their mental

downfalls after the war. The main character, Seymour, is a veteran from the war and is now

experiencing mental hardships such as possible PTSD, schizophrenia, depression and bipolarism.

He tells of a story in which a veteran describes the war to a little girl, Sybil, in an innocent story

of bananafish. Salinger is a veteran from the war and is explaining his life after the dramatization

of the trenches.

The mention of some of the things in the story, like the bananafish, could implicitly be

soldiers in the war. Seymour tells Sybil about bananafish, saying that they “swim into a hole

where there’s a lot of bananas. They’re very ordinary-looking 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” (Salinger 9). The bananafish are the soldiers who

went into the trenches and behave like a mad-men, killing as many as seventy-eight enemy

soldiers. They get so tired, emotionally and mentally, that they cannot get out of the dangerous

headspace, so they die there, or they are killed. Soldiers that make it out alive have caught the

“banana fever” (10) which is mental illness, causing them to die by their own hand later on. The

story of the bananafish is merely the truth of the war.

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It doesn’t need to be analyzed that Seymour had a mental illness, possibly including:

PTSD, schizophrenia and depression. After the beach, Seymour makes his way back to his hotel

and once there, he ends up taking out “an Ortgies calibre 7.65 automatic. He released the

magazine, looked at it, then reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then went over and sat down on

the unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet through his right

temple” (10). A man does not just kill himself. The knowledge following Salinger’s involvement

in the second World War can lead the readers to believe that Seymour is based off of the true

feelings of the author. Seymour clearly suffered from a mental illness of some sort.

Where a message was a little cloudy was what mental illness the main character suffers

from. Options or hypothesis of maybe: PTSD, schizophrenia, depression and bipolarism, seem to

be picked up on. In the scene after the beach, Seymour is in the elevator with a woman. In the

elevator he feels as if the woman is looking at his feet, she politely tells him “I beg your pardon.

I happened to be looking at the floor” (10) for some odd reason this angers Seymour. It seems as

if someone has told him she was doing this, him reacting negatively and quick to assume; thus

leading to the evidence of schizophrenia and bipolarism. The next scene over includes him

killing himself maybe to get away from the depression that fills him. When Sybil mentions that

she sees a bananafish, Seymour becomes frantic and freaks out, leading to the belief that he has

PTSD since bananafish are a metaphor of soldiers.

The short story informs the reader of the trenches and what happens to the World War II

soldiers after their traumatic experiences in it. Seymour, a man drafted in served as a soldier who

reflects the author, Salinger. Salinger is maybe sharing with the reader his true emotions and

hardships of the war by telling a metaphorical story of bananafish that eat a lot of bananas, when

really he describes soldiers who kill their enemies, picking up mental illnesses. Seymour might
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have picked up these illnesses, leading to his suicide. Salinger informs the reader that the war

kills its participants during and after.