Something to be Learned Through the Ages

I greatly enjoyed Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger particularly because every story ended with some sort of unexpected twist, revelation, emotional moment, or totally confusing statement (as is the case with "Just Before the War with the Eskimos"). From suicide to a religious experience to a dead Easter chick in a wastebasket, the stories are never predictable, and frequently confusing. Even though none of the stories in this collection had overlapping characters as seen in the other two collections we've read this semester, Nine Stories felt surprisingly unified. Salinger has a very distinct style and focuses on unique, yet still quite similar characters: upper class, intellectually inclined children or young people, who maintain some quality of innocence even though their character interacts intensely with the adult world. All of Salinger's stories center on the dialogue and relationship between characters, regardless of the age difference or whether the characters had even met before or not.

"Uncle Wiggily Goes to Connecticut" was the least memorable of all the stories for me, but in terms of fitting Salinger's theme of exploring the relationship between children and adults, it's really one of the most meaningful. Most of the story is just a visit between Eloise and Mary Jane, full of some seemingly superficial conversation topics such as which color of hair dye their friend had used, people they used to know, and movie stars. The two women are very talkative and seem to be having a good time doing a lot of laughing, drinking, and smoking. "Marvelous," seems to be Mary Jane's response to everything. This depiction of adults is contrasted with the character of Ramona, who is quiet and a little awkward, constantly scratching herself and appearing thoroughly unimpressed with Mary Jane's attempts to engage her in conversation. Ramona clashes with Eloise's confident and bubbly (though as it turns out, also extremely self aware) personality and is instead interested in playing outside, swords, and having a companion. It is clear from the existence of Jimmy Jimereeno, Ramona's imaginary friend, that Ramona and Eloise's relationship is not close. This seems to be true with many of the other parental figures in Salinger’s writing as, with the exception of Boo Boo in “Down at the Dinghy,” all of them from Esme’s guardian to Teddy’s mother and father seem distant and not understanding. Yet to say that the wealthy, self-absorbed adults of Salinger's stories are merely superficial characters to bring out the innocence and creativity of children, is way too simplistic a view, and borderline incorrect in some cases. Eloise is clearly struggling with issues of identity and dissatisfaction with her current life. She is still mourning the death of Walt and her inability to talk about it with many people or to find the qualities he had in her husband. Though Eloise is upper class, she is also able to critique the superficiality of the lifestyle she’s in, especially in her husband Lew. “The first thing he asked me was what his rank was,” she says, about Lew and Walt’s military service, demonstrating her frustration with the collection and display of material achievements in the world she lives in(Salinger 31). The ending of the story is particularly poignant and a little strange, as Ramona invents a new imaginary friend causing Eloise to physically scare her a bit and then break down, holding Ramona’s glasses while she cries. She turns to Mary Jane for comfort: “‘I was a nice girl,’ she pleaded, wasn’t I?” (Salinger 38). Though her parenting is certainly flawed, Salinger doesn't present Eloise in a completely negative light or as the one-dimensional superficial woman that she fears she is.

Whether Salinger’s story is aligned with the child or the adult (or in the case of “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period” and “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes,” the more child-like adult), Salinger tends to use the image of the child as the one causing change or inspiration or some sort of emotional experience in the adult--because of some innocent wisdom or honesty children possess. On the other hand, Salinger refrains from polarizing his adult characters or trapping them in superficial roles. While often the subjects of criticism for materialism, many are given incredibly complex stories and experiences that often influence the child too. While Nine Stories features a lot of kids brushing up against the adult world, Salinger also points out that there is often not a clear line between the two and both can learn much from the other. Whether the child-adult relationship provides a profound emotional understanding like with Esme and the American soldier, or merely a common loneliness felt by Ramona and Eloise, there is some similarity and understanding to be found in connecting with people on an inter generational level.

Hemingway is Not One For Happy Endings

In Our Time  was a harder book for me to digest after The Things They Carried--which was certainly confusing at times, but always seemed to have a unified goal of expressing emotional truth and communicating the war experience. In Our Time felt less unified to me, which is fine for a collection of short stories, but because of the reappearance of certain characters and some of the stories being so abruptly short, I still felt myself looking for some sort of overarching message. I didn’t really find one, but I do think this book had an overarching tone of gloom and foreboding, and throughout every story there was this feeling that something wasn’t quite right. Even some of the more innocent stories like “Cat in the Rain,” which ended with the woman getting a cat like she wanted, have a kind of dark undertone. In “Cat in the Rain,” this is felt in the tense interactions between the husband and wife (“Oh shut up and get something to read” 94), and the description of the cat (“big tortoise-shell cat pressed against her and swung down against her body” 94) implying a lack of dignity and maybe even dissatisfaction. Perhaps the cat was only a representation of all the things she wanted, and having the cat does nothing to help her reach those other freedoms or ease the dynamic with her husband.

I think the feeling of gloom and dread that hangs over all these stories is in part due to the content of the stories themselves--and Hemingway’s tendency to end them with a twist--but is definitely also aided by the “interstitial chapters” that do a pretty good job destroying any hopeful feelings that remain. We mentioned in class how these chapters are notable for describing scenes of intense violence in a very short amount of time. Particularly memorable ones include the man with Typhoid not even being able to stand up for his own execution, or Boyle shooting two Hungarians off their wagon even before actually knowing who they were. Typical of Hemingway’s iceberg narration style, we are handed these gruesome events, that don’t often relate to any of the rest of the plot, and we are given no instruction for what to do with them or how to interpret them. Even the interludes that don’t include direct acts of violence are still pretty disheartening and touch on the way war affects people and messes with their minds. One that really stood out to me was the soldier having a religious moment during the bombing and praying just to survive, but then immediately forgetting his promise or thinking nothing of it as he sleeps with a prostitute that night. Hemingway sort of runs down the positivity in the story from the soldier surviving, by giving us details that sort of tease the reliability or morality of the soldier. While I don’t feel like I have a place to really judge the soldier's actions, Hemingway’s narration is implicitly a little judgmental, or at least cold: "The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rossa about Jesus. And he never told anybody" (67).

With all these italicized stories creating an ominous tone for the entire book, it was a bit of a surprise for me to read the last section where Nick seems so peaceful, content, and even optimistic. We see this side of Nick in the story “Cross-Country Snow” when he becomes a very poetic narrator describing “his sticks hanging like some insect's thin legs, kicking up puffs of snow as they touched the surface and finally the whole kneeling, trailing figure coming around in a beautiful right curve...the sticks accenting the curve like points of light, all in a wild cloud of snow" (108). But even that story had a melancholy ending with Nick and George realizing things won’t be the same anymore and acknowledging that even promises break and friendships don't last. Yet after all this gloom and disillusionment, the closing story is once again Nick out in nature--this time alone--and once again accompanied by feelings of contentment and peace. We identified the tone in class to be “meditative” which I think is very accurate. But this time, it ends with a more optimistic and hopeful tone: “There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp” (156).  I’m a little confused what the significance of this ending is, whether it’s commenting on the healing power of nature or of being alone, and how to understand this in the context of all the tension in previous stories. It feels weird to view it as a post-war optimism after stories like “Soldier’s Home” that depict such an unsuccessful homecoming and assimilation back into civilian life. It was nice to end Nick’s narrative on a hopeful note, but after so many ominous endings it also felt a little strange to me.