Jan's Short Story Exploration

War and Weather As you read through “Paranoia” by SaId Sayrafiezadeh one of the things that you notice throughout the story is the weather. The weather in Paranoia is an interesting detail that really adds to the tone of the story and adds another dimension to the writing. When we are first introduced to the characters in April, the narrator (Dean) tells us how it was starting to get warm and the war would soon come. As you read the story you notice the connection between the temperature rising and building of anticipation for war.     The story begins in April and Dean recounts that “everyone said the war would happen soon” and that war would be unavoidable. Then the temperature began to rise, and May is described as “hot” but does not mention war until later. Rather we focus on the broken nose of Dean’s friend Roberto.As Dean is riding the bus to meet Roberto in the hospital despite the air condition and open windows he describes the terrible heat on the bus and sweating ...

As we have been reading through the collection of stories by J D Salinger I have noticed on the thread that seems to impact nearly every story. The loss of innocence has been touched on in many ways in the various stories. Throughout the stories, the mentally fit adults all seem to be flawed. However, the children all seem to have an uncontested innocence and purity that protects them from the outside world.  In “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” Muriel is depicted as materialistic and elitist from the first scene. Salinger purposefully notes her clothing and her attitude when waiting to pick up the phone. She does not have any innocence and is rather very full of herself. Unlike Muriel, Sybil is compassionate and rather simplistic. She doesn’t care about materialistic things and the way people think about her but rather just talking to the nice man on the beach. Seymour is an outlier as an adult due to his mental state he focuses on his conversation with Sybil more than anything ...