Over the course of the narrative, more aspects of the enigmatic character become apparent: Seymour, unable to connect to others, is seen as mentally unstable in the public eye while simultaneously viewing himself as a sensitive and lonely individual, unab le to form lasting connections with others. Each of the three acts offers new insights into the nature of Seymour’s character and the reasoning behind his eventual suicide: the telephone exchange between his wife Muriel and her mother elaborates the public opinion and family life of the man; his meeting on the beach with young Sybil shows his own insights regarding society and the self; and his subsequent suicide attempts to synthesize everything gleaned in the first two acts in a compelling yet ambiguous manner. Seymour’s story is short but incredibly dense, open to interpretations far beyond those presented in the text.

Salinger makes good use of the first act of Bananafish to allow the reader implicit knowledge regarding the character of Seymour Glass. Lacking a proper introduction, this mysterious individual is the subject of discussion of his fashion-conscious wife Muriel and her fretful mother.  Even after reading the exchange between the two women, one is left with little concrete knowledge in regard to Seymour, although there remains the sense that both are emotionally distant to the man, unsure of how to connect. Muriel’s mother holds only suspicion for the man, interrogating her daughter fearfully: “Did he try any of that funny business with the trees?” (Salinger 5) Her worried qualms seem to convey the public opinion of Seymour: he is viewed as a suspicious and volatile man, with multiple outbursts and slights in the past. Muriel herself brushes aside all such fears with flippancy; in fact, this dismissal proves not only her gentle naivety but her complete inability to connect with her husband. One does not need to be acquainted with Seymour to interpret his gift of a book of German poetry to Muriel as a cry for sympathy which she ultimately dismissed, confusing and stilted though the gesture was. Although she tolerates the man—she even finds his calling her ‘Miss Spiritual Tramp of 1948’ amusing—Muriel seems disinterested in the actions of her husband, choosing to pass two and a half hours idly primping in their hotel room rather than spending time with Seymour on their shared vacation. She seems utterly unperturbed by the questions regarding her husband’s mental state and chooses to ignore them outright, a stance which effectively harms Seymour: the man seeks only to connect.

In spite of the sense of foreboding expressed by Muriel’s mother, Seymour’s first appearance in the story is remarkably unassuming. The reader’s first image of him is simply “a young man lying on his back” (11) on a secluded shore; at most, he may be something of an eccentric individual for the terrycloth robe covering his body. The worries of his mother-in-law appear unfounded as Seymour casually engages the young Sybil in a platonic (if not still unconventional) friendship. Seymour tells Sybil of the tragic bananafish, a creature he claims is known “to swim into a banana hole and eat as many as seventy-eight bananas…Naturally, after that they’re so fat they can’t get out of the hole again” (Salinger 16). This image is symbolically ambiguous, although regardless of Seymour’s personal interpretation it can be conceded that “the disturbed young man, deprived of love, recognizes symbolically the inevitability of his destruction” (Gwynn and Blotner 21). His ability to relate to the mythical bananafish is not by chance; Seymour considers himself one of these fish, so sensitive as to collapse under the weight of all that which he has taken on. Interactions with society have left such profound marks upon him—the non-existent tattoo he attempts to conceal, as observed by Muriel—that he finds himself bloated with emotions and without hope of catharsis. The fact he can only seem to befriend a young, innocent child—a near-angelic being, no less, as attested to by “the delicate, wing-like blades of her back” (Salinger 10)—solidifies his belief he has no place in society or the idyllic life pursued by Muriel and her family.

The story’s finale offers only the sparsest of closure. Instead of rounding off the work with a tidy moral and a happy ending, Salinger employs Seymour’s suicide not only for its immediate shock value, but also to reiterate the man’s apparent inability to form significant connections or express himself. Unable to ask even his wife for counsel, he merely “glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the twin beds” (Salinger 18) as if she were a stranger, their separate sleeping arrangements only attesting to this fact. Moreover, Seymour’s concealing his pistol in his luggage suggests premeditation—he has played the role of the bananafish for so long, yet still cannot find any better catharsis than suicide. His casual dismissal of Muriel does not appear malicious, however; the woman simply happens to be symbolic of the materialistic life that has engorged and subsequently disgusted him.

Seymour Glass commits suicide in order to escape a life he has no interest in, yes, but moreover he wishes to free himself from the memories and emotions he is not able to discard: the bananas in his stomach, if you will. Since he lacks the ability to form connections with his equals, this heavily interdependent man feels neglected and alone to the point where he views his heightened sensitivity to emotions as a disease. Perhaps his experience in the Army was what left him with such emotional ballast—or maybe it was his marriage to a woman he cannot understand. One can only speculate and leave the rest to interpretation.