“‘Really,’ she said, “I wasn’t quite born
yesterday, you know.’”
I
find this a perfect example of the kind of tone we can expect from Esmé
throughout her appearance in the story named for her, For Esmé – with Love and Squalor. She is sweet and not insulting,
but sassy enough to retort when she knows she’s being lied to. She is mature
and nuanced, but childish enough to outdo herself in terms of sophistication.
All these qualities and contrasts immediately endeared Esmé to me, as I’m sure
was true for many of you, too. This was also the case, it seems, with Sergeant
X. Even before he met her, he was taken with her “sweet-sounding, sure” voice.
As soon as he meets her in the café, something else appears in the story that demonstrates
to me how taken Sergeant X is with Esmé.
As
soon as Esmé and the Sergeant get to talking, the story cuts out almost all of
the Sergeant’s dialogue. It’s replaced instead with descriptions of what the
answer contained. This, to me, demonstrated the extent to which the Sergeant
went to extol Esmé and show that she was the true star of the story, not
himself. After all, the story is called
For Esmé. Rather than record his own
responses, he wants to show how precious he finds this charming little girl he
met. Thus, he just cuts himself out of it as much as he can as to not distract
from the truly important character.
We
also talked in class about how well the Sergeant acts with the children. In
taking the initiative to strike up a conversation with Esmé after he came to
her children’s choir rehearsal, he went further than most adults about to be
shipped out for war would have. He interacts pleasantly and appropriately with Esmé,
not being harsh when she asks extremely
personal questions (“Are you very deeply in love with your wife?”) or letting
on that she doesn’t know exactly what certain words mean, despite her confident
use of them. It becomes especially evident to me that Sergeant X puts a lot of
effort into being kind to these children when Charles comes into the picture.
Not only does he play along with Charles’ riddle and his very childish amusement
with it, but Sergeant X is immediately distraught when he offends Charles for
no particular reason. This shows that he cares about Charles’ hurt feelings,
even if they were hurt for no reason at all. Then, when Esmé and Charles part
ways from Sergeant X, he repeats the riddle in a perfect way to again raise
Charles’ spirits and rectify whatever he did to upset Charles previously.
Sergeant
X became a very likable character to me through the way he treated Esmé and
Charles. I loved seeing how he interacted with them both, and loved seeing his continual
kindness, patience, and self-abasing attitude towards the children he reached
out to after choir practice. Did you all interpret his narration and actions
the same way I did? Was Sergeant X as likable to you as he was to me?
I also found Sergeant X to be a very likable character from the way he treated and interacted with Esme and Charles. However another interesting thing to think about: Is Sergeant X still just as likable after D-Day? There is a clear difference between the Sergeant X before D-Day and the Sergeant X after D-Day. Something definitely happened in between to change the man. Although Sergeant X is certainly different after D-Day, I still believe him to hold the same likable traits as he did before. He is still caring and kind as he was before. One evidence of this is the fact that he did in fact write this short story for Esme. Also, even though he only knew Esme for a short while, he desperately wanted to go to her wedding many years later. This shows the connection between the two and also the fact that Sergeant X still holds the same feelings for Esme as he did before D-Day on his first encounter with her.
ReplyDeleteI didn't find Sergeant X likeable, but that's just because I interpreted Sergeant X as only having existed during a period after D-Day. The pre-D-Day narrator certainly is likeable, with the way he interacts with Esme and her brother, and the narrator in the future that opens the short story is also likeable with his dry tone. However, Sergeant X seems to be lazy, unmotivated, and rude to his friend Corporal Y. I think it's important that Salinger portrayed Sergeant X as unlikeable, though, because that contrast highlights just how much of an effect Esme's letter had on the narrator.
ReplyDeleteI guess Sergeant X seemed polite and likeable enough to me, but not particularly likeable, not unusually likeable. Sergeant X just seemed like a random guy wandering through town; Salinger's trope of older boys striking up conversations with young girls always takes me aback. Esme certainly seemed very likeable, and I think that this was the bigger appeal of character in the story. It was all about her.
ReplyDelete"Sergeant X" in the second half of the story is certainly salty, but I do "like" the way he's so sarcastic with Clay, who seems like kind of an idiot who, at the very least, is really insensitive about X's suffering. The contrast between his irritated and dismissive engagement with Clay and the lovely interactions with Esme that you describe is crucial to the story's purposes, as we should be able to see *some* continuity here, to see the original narrator "in" X somewhere, with Esme's letter able to draw him out again. Remember that this whole story represents X's efforts to write about this experience, and he deliberately depicts himself as "unlikeable" or whatever in his "X" phase. The story is very much "about" how this experience in the war changes him profoundly, but it's also about hope that he can be restored to his former self, get his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s back.
ReplyDelete