When I heard we had to pick a short story and analyze it for out third unit project, I was very excited as I always enjoyed dissecting the symbolism within stories throughout high school and my time in college. I first found my enjoyment in this area my junior year of high school when we had to read “The Great Gatsby”. I also enjoyed dissecting the symbolism of “To Kill a Mockingbird” in high school, which was my second favorite story I read in that four year duration. Although these books were great, I enjoyed the all of the short stories a read as well. I liked the fact that they were easy to comprehend and didn’t take too much time to read. Out of all the short stories I read though, I enjoyed “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” by J.D Salinger the most. The chain of events that takes place in this story intrigued me as they were unorthodox and dark. This is what led me to do my UP3 on this exact story. Although I found themes in this story in the past, I wanted to see if I could dig deeper and find more potential themes that I could back up with solid textual evidence.
Although it’s nice that I got to pick a story that I was very interested in, I had some rust and growing pains when it came to closely analyzing a text as it was the first time I had closely read a short story in a while. Due to the fact that I had read the story already, I was skipping a step while reading as I tried to extrapolate important details instead of jogging my memory first. After making this mistake I had to read the story again to get a better and more full understanding of the story. After going through it twice, I had not gained a new perspective on the story, but I feel like as I spend more time with it, I will start to notice new themes within it. Another thing I had trouble with when it came to re-reading this story was trying to decipher what was important within the story and what wasn’t. I feel like because I was familiar with the story, I had a hard time trying to decipher what was important information and what wasn’t due to me simply overthinking and trying to force a new perspective into my brain. This again, relates to the fact that I need to spend more time with this story throughout the unit to gain the new understanding I am looking for.
Although I have had some struggles so far with analyzing this short story, I feel like I am going to enjoy and embrace this challenge as it it making me think outside the box for a story I genuinely care for. Moreover, I think this unit will help me in the future as I will have a reminder on how to think critically with a text. Trying to extrapolate symbolism can be hard, but I think this will definitely benefit me in the long run and allow me to grow in an area that I did not know I needed to touch up on.
Featured Image
“A Perfect Day for Bananafish” book cover. [book cover]. 1948, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7431607-a-perfect-day-for-bananafish