For Esme with Love and Squalor by JD Salinger

E-Journal Entry 1 Literacy Circle Suchaita MAE13119

Summary

First published in the American magazine The New Yorker on April 8^th 1950, the short story ‘For Esme—With Love and Squalor’ was anthologized two years later in J.D. Salinger’s collection Nine Stories. The story is narrated in the first person by an unnamed character who upon receiving an invitation to a wedding that he wishes to attend but is unable to commences to write a story about his previous encounters with and memories of the bride. The narrative then shifts to the past (1944) when the narrator was undergoing training in intelligence operations for the D-Day invasion alongwith a group of Americans in Devon, England. On a stroll through the town, he enters a church to hear a choir sing where he is particularly attracted by the voice of a thirteen-year-old girl. When he enters a teashop to escape the rain, he encounters the same girl who introduces herself as Esme and her brother, Charles. What follows is a rather random and mundane conversation largely initiated by Esme where she tries to affirm her maturity while maintaining a certain degree of austerity. The conversation ends with the narrator admitting to Esme that he is a short-story writer and she asking him to write her a story on squalor.

The narrative then shifts to a few months later when the narrator rather unconvincingly attempts to disguise himself as Sergeant X, who has been psychologically marred by the war and has returned to his station after a period of treatment and recuperation in a field hospital. During this time, he finds an unopened package from Esme containing a letter and a watch, Esme’s father’s watch which she had worn during their previous meeting, and is moved with emotion after quite a while. This moment marks his gradual ascent into psychological recovery.

Author Background

‘For Esme’ appears to aptly capture the emotional climate of postwar America torn between feelings of patriotism and pride in America, which was on the winning side of the Second World War, and feelings of confusion, delirium and depression that many of the veterans experienced as they grappled with the horrors of war. Salinger’s own experience as a non-commissioned officer in intelligence operations during the Second World War seem to be reflected in the story, especially through the character of Sergeant X. During his war-time duties, Salinger was required to visit Nazi death camps in Dachau, Germany, which could have contributed to his psychological scarring and his being hospitalized for post-traumatic stress disorder. Salinger’s novel Catcher in the Rye is another instance of his work that captures the alienation and sense of placelessness that characterized the post-war experience in America, suggesting that capturing the psychological impact of war is a running theme in Salinger’s works.

Reflections

The story seemed a little strange to me at first and the distorted narrative made it hard to follow. But when I coaxed myself into “letting go” of my expectations of coherence and followed the cadences of the story, I found it rather strikingly fascinating and poignant. The play on language and its deliberate obtuseness was quite fascinating. For instance, two of the words that were spelt out in the story “s-l-a-i-n” and “f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s” appear to be the conflicting metaphors that characterize the age being talked about—how does one preserve one’s sanity in the face of genocide? However, these words are not directly used in the context of the war. Esme uses the former word to talk about her father who was killed in North Africa and the narrator uses the latter to convey to Esme that she has helped him regain his sanity. It is upto the reader to extrapolate the extremely personal contexts in which these words are used to the entire experience of post-war America. Moreover, these words can also be interpreted as “anti-euphemisms”. At a time when patriotism was expected to reign strong, these words make an ironic comment on the difference between the government-initiated efforts at fostering patriotism and the way ordinary people experienced war. For instance, Esme could have said that her father was “k-i-l-l-e-d” in the war but she chose “slain” instead of its more sanitized counterpart. Similarly the phrase “faculties intact” appears to be a more raw and rather crude representation of sanity as opposed to the expression “I’m fine”.

A more general feature of Salinger’s use of language appears to be restraint. The characters appear to be strikingly unemotional and appear to struggle to maintain composure. Esme struggles to act much older than she really is and employs a highly formal and almost artificially stylized kind of language. The narrator, too, appears precise and detached as he speaks. His fellow soldiers seem to use no language at all as they do not speak to one another and communicate only through writing. Thus, there appear to be deliberate and often unrealistic attempt to sustain emotional restraint in language.

Another aspect of the story that appealed to me was the apparition that it had no plot. There is no real sense of progression in the narrative and the “point” of the story did not seem clear at first. However, a few readings later, it seemed that there actually was a clear plot to the story—the narrator meets Esme, promises to write her a story, heads off to war and is scarred by his experiences, then receives a letter and a gift from Esme that is apparently his first brush with emotion after a long period of violence and trauma and gradually begins his recovery, and several years later is in a position to write the story he had earlier promised signifying his (almost) complete recovery and his ability to reflect on the past and gather the words to share his memories. Thus, the distorted and unconventional plot appears to capture the horrors of distorted sensibilities during the war and when viewed through this lens of distortion, the plot becomes quite evident.

Literary elements

The literary elements most appealing to me were the plot and the characterization. The plot, as discussed earlier, is relatively difficult to discern. The author incites incident through the meeting of the narrator and the girl, the story develops as Sergeant X goes on to the war, the climax perhaps when he receives the letter and gift from Esme and the resolution is what we see, which is the entire story itself.

The characterization also appears to be done very carefully with specific efforts made to preserve the restraint in emotion in all the characters. Despite his stoic appearance, Sergeant X is portrayed as a multi-layered and three-dimensional character who assumes a stoical stance as a preparation for military service. His humanity is revealed in his vulnerability to emotional turmoil during the war and his yearning for emotional contact is revealed through his strange connection with Esme who is the only person he has “spoken” to in a long time and possibly the one person who shares his forced stoical position as an attempt to put up a brave front to bear the horrors of the war. Esme is similarly portrayed as an emotionally devoid character who is perhaps still in search of a human connection as she approaches the narrator looking to make mundane conversation and later writes to him, inquiring of his well-being. Thus, the characters are not as unidimensional and emotionally devoid as they seem and there are several layers to their desires and insecurities.

The minor characters serve to accentuate the void the main characters experience. The narrator’s fellow soldiers, for instance, are the “letter-writing” types and barely speak to each other, suggesting the ubiquity of people’s inability to make sense of the war and speak about it. Clay, on the other hand, attempts to be a counterpart to X by mocking X’s illness and attempting to portray a stronger and more balanced composure. Nevertheless, Clay embodies another coping strategy—denial. Thus, the minor characters also play a significant role in accentuating the feelings of alienation experienced by the main characters.

Interpretations of the Story

All the members of our group, including me, felt that the story was extremely bizarre with a rather incoherent narrative. However, I was the only one who felt that we perceived the incoherence only because we approached the story with expectations of linearity and coherence. When viewed as the narrative of a traumatized soldier, the story was quite justified and rational, even moving. I also felt that the story was very clearly a love story albeit a very restrained one, but some of the other members of the group felt that the story represented a mix of genres—a love story, a war narrative, perhaps some elements of an epistolary novel. This was a key point of insight for me as I had not thought of the story as a blend of genres. It helped me analyse the story from myriad angles, as well. I focused more on the traumatic experiences of the narrator and mulled over his fleeting representations of the war rather than solely his relationship with Esme.

Another point of thought for me that ensued during the discussion was the need to draw a timeline for the story. I was so concerned with the efferent reading of the text that it did not strike me to pay particular attention to the dates and the sequencing of events. Understanding this sequencing—first the meeting with Esme in 1944, the V-E-Day of 1945 and the “present” 1950 helped me get a sense of how the characters had aged and metamorphed in terms of experiences during this time. I also did not concern myself too much with the details of the Normandy invasions and the significance of V-E-Day. Urged by my group members to discuss the details of these historical events, I grasped a more nuanced understanding of the irony between “V-E-Day” as it is officially celebrated and the personal trauma of soldiers. This comparison helped me draw a sociocultural critique of the story—the way official history is recorded and the experiences of reality from below.

We were all interested in why the narrator chose to narrate the first half of the story in the first person and the second in the third person. Some of the thoughts shared during our discussion helped me make sense of the narrator’s choice. It was suggested that the narrator makes a jive or an ironic comment at anonymity; military personnel are expected to conceal their true identities as a strategic effort to maintain the official secrecy of national-level information. The narrator perhaps suggests that by making soldiers nameless, their version of history is also subdued. I further suggested that the shift between the first person and the third person was concerned with the concept of the “reliable narrator”. Even before the war, the narrator seems to be unrealistically calm, perhaps indicating his actual discomfiture with the prospects of war. But once he actually undergoes psychological trauma and finds himself unable to write sensibly, he further loses his faith in his own ability to narrate and therefore attempts to transpose his identity onto the persona of Sergeant X to enable the reader to better relate to him and trust and his narrative. The group seemed quite convinced by this version of the story although some people felt that there might be plural reasons.

A further point of learning for me was an exploration of the word “squalor”. I took it for granted and assumed that the second half of the story was “the squalid and moving” part. But our group members raised questions about the clarity of these views. They thought that the fact that Esme asked for a story on squalor was absurd. I thought it was an attempt on Esme’s part to validate for herself that the horrors taking place in the war and those yet to take place were indeed true. Also, from a text-to-text criticism perspective, I thought of the Movement Poets who were writing in England at the time, such as Sir Philip Larkin. These poets were known to write “poetry from the dustbins” for their realistic representations of urban squalor and the European wasteland resulting from the afflictions of two World Wars. When read in this light, it seems quite likely that Salinger would have one of his characters ask for something to be written on squalor. I also thought that in the context of Catcher in the Rye, squalor represents alienation and the loss of faith in a meaningful world and, like Holden Caulfield, the characters in ‘For Esme…’ are in desperate search for meaning which leads to absurd extremities.

One of the questions raised in our group was how Salinger’s experiences are reflected in the story. I was not very comfortable with this discussion because I believe that intentional fallacy prevents us from focusing on the story itself and leads us onto a different route to search for mirroring of the writer’s life in the work, which could be misleading and we might end up seeing things that aren’t really there.

Reflections on Reader Identity

During this session, I became aware of myself as more of an efferent reader and realized that I need several readings before I become conscious of the aesthetic aspects of the text. Reading in a group helped me arrive at the aesthetic experiences of the text much quicker. I also think that I tend to focus more on the formal and stylistic aspects of the text rather than give in to the entire affective possibilities that the text opens up. Similarly, I have too many preconceived notions about linearity and coherence and I need to focus more on what the text actually has to say. Besides, as Calkins cautions, in literary discussions, I am too preoccupied with proving my point or saying something smart and it would be helpful to share ideas and engaging in a collective discovery of the text rather than the former. From a transactional critique perspective, I think I need to place more faith in myself as a reader and focus on experiences and feelings as I read the text rather than think of the text as a separate entity that requires decoding.

Insights about Literacy Discussions

I think if I were to conduct a literacy discussion, I would urge my students to draw on their own experiences as they read the text while grounding their opinions in the text. At the same time, I would urge them to focus on the formal and stylistic aspects of the text and draw connections between the formal elements and the aesthetic experiences that the text has to offer. I would also encourage collective discussion and idea sharing as opposed to “rewarding” children for saying something smart. Nevertheless, I would encourage and scaffold insightful comments.