7-22-03

Leslie English 112

The Grass Before it Was Green

            “Teddy”, a short story by J.D. Salinger, distinguishes the conflicts between intuitive knowledge and worldly experience with symbolism as well as subtle references to Eastern philosophy’s influence on Salinger.   The main point of the story is the establishment of karmic reincarnation, a belief upheld by the young Theodore McArdle, against the materialism of  a pseudo spiritual America.  Teddy is obviously gifted, but just how is the young boy exceptional?  He foresees events, reads at a college level, and is one step away from Nirvana.   Can a spiritual boy co-exist with a nation of shallow people who would rather he tell the future than guide them to a better life?

            “Teddy” begins with the title character annoying his parents in their bed room on board a transatlantic cruise line.  The young boy is sent out to retrieve his father’s Leica camera from his sister Booper.  After the camera is returned, Teddy writes in his notebook until he is interrupted by Bob Nicholson, an education teacher.  Nicholson relays heavy questioning to Teddy who is considered a “gifted” child.   In the end, Teddy foresees his own death and proceeds to fulfill that prophecy by being shoved into an empty cement pool promptly splitting his head open.

            No one in this story can be considered a spiritual leader except for Teddy,  but just how spiritual is the young boy when compared to Yogis, Swamis, and Lamas?  It is no secret just how big a part Buddhism and Hinduism play in J.D. Salinger’s life.  To read Salinger’s works pertaining to the Glass family (mainly Franny and Zooey and “Seymour: An Introduction“) one notices a preoccupation with Eastern Mysticism and an attachment to Haiku poetry.  Salinger lives to be the distant holy man who was rarely approached by outsiders and strongly resisted any commercial gain.  It can be said that the character of Teddy is a prime example of the type of person Salinger strives to be.

            Salinger is a very deliberate type of person.  To understand the importance of “Teddy” is to be able to relate the story to the rest of Nine Stories.  The interesting part of the story is its unwritten involvement with what many refer to as a “Nine Story Cycle”.  The story, “Teddy”, appeared in a volume of nine stories.  The Glass family is present in all of the stories except for one apparently, “Teddy”.  Obviously, Salinger is a man of heavy concentration and to include “Teddy” in such a volume is no careless mistake.

            There is reason to believe that Theodore McArdle is Seymour Glass of “A Perfect Day for Bananafish“.  In his respective story, Seymour Glass is on a honeymoon when he commits suicide because he feels he has become too happy and complacent with his life.  This is the first story of the book and “Teddy” is the last story.  The two characters are very similar.  Both of them intensely study Eastern philosophy, especially the Vedantic theory of Reincarnation, are very intellectually advanced.  Seymour, as were all of the Glass children, was featured on a radio quiz show as a child genius.  Teddy is a lad who makes tapes to be studied by a psychological group.  Teddy, when asked about his previous life, says “I met a lady and sort of stopped meditating” (188).  This comment can be take to represent the state of Seymour’s character in the last few moments of his life.

            The fact that a mildly spiritual boy is considered a freak in America is a satire of what Salinger saw daily in his public life.  Teddy says, “I mean, it’s very hard to meditate and live a spiritual life in America.” (188).  Teddy’s family is more concerned with material possessions than anything else because they have special names to distinguish all of their items.  Mr. McArdle calls his simple camera a “ My godamn Leica”(172) and the Gladstone suitcase Teddy stands on to look out the window of the ship.  His parents aren’t even content to call a window a window.  “Out the window.  Out the window,” Mr McArdle said sarcastically, flicking his ashes, “Out the porthole buddy.  Out the porthole.” (171).

            The doctors who interview Teddy are not too interested in his spiritual answers either.  Instead, they pester him to tell their times of death. Instead, Teddy says, “I told them places and times, when they should be very, very careful.”(192).

            This brings to the foreground another question concerning Teddy.  Is Teddy more gifted than spiritual?  Teddy appears to possess the talent of clairvoyance but his Buddhist principles prevent him from capitalizing.  Teddy even foresees his own death in two ways, in his notebook, “It will happen today or February 14, 1958 when I am sixteen. It is ridiculous to mention even.”(182) and to prove a point to Nicholson about fear of death, “For example, I have a swimming lesson in about five minutes.  I could go downstairs to the  pool, and there might not be any water in it. …  What might happen, though, I might walk up to the edge of it, just to have a look at the bottom, for instance, and my sister might come up and sort of push me in.  I could fracture my skull and die instantaneously.”(193).  If Teddy knows when and how he will die, why doesn’t he bother to save himself from the calamity?

            To be a reincarnations is to realize that death has happened before and it is nothing to fear.  To adhere to Buddhist principles is to face death with no emotion, something Teddy does extremely well.  “What would be so tragic about it, though?”(193) Teddy asks Nicholson.  Teddy dislikes emotional things like Western poetry and love.  At one point, Nicholson asks Teddy, “I take it you have no emotions?” to which Teddy replies “If I do, I don’t remember when I ever used them.  I don’t see what they’re good for.”(186).  Teddy wants proof that emotions are useful.

            No amount of proof will prove to Teddy the importance of emotions and he cannot be convinced because his stance is one of intuitive knowledge.  The entire world has already been revealed to him through reincarnation and the sciences of empirical thought are useless.  Teddy uses the example of an elephant to illustrate his point and more succinctly define his ideas. “I wouldn’t tell [schoolchildren] an elephant has a trunk.  I might show them an elephant.”(195) This means Teddy’s knowledge of the world is on a different level beyond words and definitions, beyond the finite dimensions and more in touch with the “Thatness” of an object.  The function and presence of a priori knowledge is in Teddy’s claim “I grew my own body.  Nobody else did it for me.  So if I grew it, I must have known how to grow it.  Unconsciously, at least.”(197)

            In many ways, the story of Theodore McArdle is about the battle between two different schools of knowledge:  the Intuitive versus the Empirical.  The main character is an opponent to the Empirical ideas of Western philosophy.  The idea of Empirical thought is that something must be experienced before it is considered a knowable subject.  Teddy distinguishes the illusion of this type of thought process.

“Well, if Sven [a deck steward] dreamed tonight that his dog died, he’d have a very, very bad night’s sleep because he’s very fond of that dog.  But when he woke up in the morning, everything would be all right.  He’d know it was only a dream.”(194)

Sven experienced the emotions which Teddy despises, mostly ones of sorrow, during his dream.  Because Sven knew it was a dream he experienced, he was able to forget the emotions completely by logic.  Teddy calls these types of people “apple-eaters”.

            The term “apple-eaters” derives from a theory Teddy presents to Nicholson about Adam in the Garden of Eden.  To Teddy, the apple Adam ate was full of logic, a logic that relegated the world to intellectual stuff and processes of measure. (191)  He adds, “I never saw such a bunch of apple-eaters”(191).

            Perhaps the most integral part of the Gynecological (study of knowledge) presence in the story is the instance a garbage can of orange peels is dumped out a porthole.  Teddy sees these orange peels from his parent’s room.  “It’s interesting that I know about them being there.  If I hadn’t seen them, then I wouldn’t know they were there, and if I didn’t know they were there, I wouldn’t be able to say that they even exist.”(171)  After he’s interrupted by his mother to find Booper, he adds, “In a few minutes, the only place they’ll still be floating will be inside my mind.”(171)  The orange peels represent any bit of data or timed event a being experiences.  The experience is stored and then it is prone to exist only in an abstract sense.  Rene Descartes worked many years to tackle this problem.

            Descartes called his own orange peels his Mind-Body problem.  He wondered, if whatever he experienced and knew was really there in the first place.  He summed his solution with the incredibly famous “Cogito ergo sum” or “I think, therefore I am”.  His logic was thus:  There is an experience ex. The floating orange peels, a demon is attempting to trick my mind with an illusory world ex. The orange peels sinking out of sight, but I recognize there is a trickery at hand so I wake from the dream and see the experience as it really is meant to be seen ex. Teddy says “After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances, I may be an orange peel.”(173-174).

            The focus of Teddy’s meditation throughout the story is an attempt to empty all of the logic out of his head, to vomit up the apple so to speak.  Teddy wants to see an elephant before it is big and even see the grass before it is green.  The young boy sees God above all of the simple human ideas.  “I was six when I saw that everything was God…My sister was only a very tiny child then, and she was drinking her milk, and all of a sudden I saw that she was God and the milk was God.  I mean, all she was doing was pouring God into God.”(189).  This is a type of knowledge that cannot be finitely expressed with logic.  It is the intuitive knowledge Teddy speaks from.

            In a way, Teddy is gifted to be able to think so clearly and freely without emotions.  Even though he apparently knows when and how his demise will come about, he doesn’t stop learning new words, he writes in his notebook,

“Words and expressions to look up in library tomorrow when you return  the books-

Nephritis, myriad, gift-horse, cunning, and triumvirate.”(180-181)

            There is also a shame in the story of the way Teddy is treated by those around him.  His parents ignore their son’s philosophical endeavors, his sister, Booper, “I hate you!  I hate everybody in this ocean!”(178), and the doctors grill him with questions that are profitable to their company.  Only Nicholson treats Teddy with a bit of respect usually reserved for a Yogi, the holy man.  Through Nicholson the story continues and Teddy never dies, a literal and metaphysical reincarnation.

Selected Bibliography

French, Warren J.D Salinger Revisited. Boston, Ma.  Twayne Publishers., 1988

Salinger, Jerome David Nine Stories. Boston, Ma.  Little Brown and Co, 1953

Salinger, Jerome David Franny and Zooey. Boston, Ma. Little Brown and Co.,1961

Salinger, Jerome David Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenters and Seymour: An         Introduction. Boston, Ma.  Little Brown and Co., 1963