Bananafish, The Fog, or The Horror?

Survivor’s guilt, an insight into Kurtz’s character:

When I first came to CNG I had an English teacher, which every boy in my class considered astonishingly beautiful. Her name was Mrs. Lawrynowicz, and she made us read short stories in order to help us analyze literature better. One day she handed to us a short story the tittle read “A perfect day for Bananafish” , and told us to read it for our HWK. I read it a thousand times over and couldn’t really assimilate it inside my head. Suddenly it clicked in my head. Something I had read in a psychoanalysis essay, something about survivor’s guilt.

After that I had another English teacher. His approach to literature was quiet different, and he had us read Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest “ I have since then assimilated Mcmurphy’s character with that of Seymour Glass, the main character in “A perfect Day for Bananafish”. About Seymour’s character I am only going to say that what he has in common with McMuphy is that people looked up to him to be a hero. This little girl Sybil walked up to him everyday in the beach because he was her personal story teller, he was her separation from the unjust world in which she lived in, a world in which both her parents where absent. McMurphy had the entire ward looking up to him, because they needed someone who was stronger than them to guide them trough.

When I first read about Mr. Kurtz I saw him as Marlow saw him. Better than him, stronger, greater and by the end of “Heart of Darkness” Kurtz has become a symbol of heroism and standing up to what you believe in even if must people brand you mad for believing that.

That is one thing that this three characters have in common. People who look up to them, standing up for a cause and last but not least an unpleasant death. Glass kills himself, McMurphy is chocked by Chief, and Kurtz dies, living in his regrets.