I keep thinking about Seymour Glass. That story is stuck in my head and it won't get unstuck. Right when I thought that I had finally figured out why he would kill himself for being too happy, it turns out that I had it all wrong...

I read some of the interpretations of the story on the internet. Seymour was clearly unhappy - having been in World War II had a deep impact on him - after the discharge, he spent some time in a hospital for psychiatric evaluation - a condition that is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. After the war, he was having a hard time readjusting to the life in the U.S., which was becoming more and more materialistic. The bananafish is to symbolize greed - these fish, looking like any ordinary fish, swim into a banana hole, where they consume large number of bananas. "I've seen a bananafish eat as many as seventy-eight bananas..." They get so big that they get stuck in the hole and eventually die of banana fever.

And here's where I'm stumped - although this is more of an indicative of my ignorance about depression and PTSD, than anything else... If you're unhappy, there is always something you can do about it. It's being happy that you can do nothing about...

Even if you're scarred by the horrors of the world, you live through it out of spite - to prove that despite all that, human will for life and goodness prevails... You just don't give up like that, calmly and methodically...