J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [131]
Through the story, readers are introduced to the remarkable character of Teddy McArdle, the ultimate enlightened child. Young Teddy is a mystic-savant, a seer so far advanced in his spiritual quest for oneness with God that his attachment to the physical world around him, including his parents, has reached the point of evaporation. The story takes place aboard an ocean liner. Teddy, his parents, and his sister, Booper, are returning to the United States from a European trip, where Teddy, the subject of academic curiosity for most of his life, has been grilled, recorded, poked, and prodded by academics and casual partygoers like a show dog.
The story’s opening scene is set in the stateroom of Teddy’s parents, who, sunburned and apparently hungover, are trying to sleep late despite the activities of the precocious genius. Teddy’s brilliant mind ticks away at light speed on impossible levels. His father, a bellicose actor and not in the best of moods, struggles to assert his authority over his child. Teddy’s mother lies under the covers in bed, taunting her husband and listlessly issuing commands to Teddy in an attempt to irritate his father. Teddy’s interactions with his parents are detached. He hears them only on the surface, and it’s plain that he places little weight on their words or attitudes.
Standing on his parents’ Gladstone suitcase, Teddy leans out of the porthole as if it were the interface between two worlds, the spiritual and the material, the world of reality and the world of illusion. He becomes fascinated when he spots a mass of orange peel that has been thrown into the ocean. As the pieces begin to sink, he ponders how they will soon exist only in his mind and how their existence actually depended upon his noticing them in the first place. While he peers out of the porthole in solipsistic contemplation, his parents insult and snap at each other. Salinger’s descriptions of his characters accentuate the differences between them. Teddy’s priorities are spiritual ones, and he is only dimly concerned with the physical world around him.
Teddy’s parents are described as being materialistic and self-centered. They squabble over the quality of their luggage, which Teddy uses as a stool. Teddy’s father is obsessed with retrieving his expensive Leica camera, which Teddy has given to his sister, Booper, as a toy, unconcerned about its material worth.
Teddy’s interest in the orange peel speaks of the Zen notion of impermanence and the Vedantic belief that separate existence is an illusion. It also foreshadows the story’s ending. Leaving his parents’ stateroom in search of his sister, Teddy cautions his parents that they may never see him again outside their minds. “After I go out this door,” he reports, “I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances.… I may be an orange peel.” Despite this morose prediction, he still refuses to give his mother “a nice, big” kiss before leaving.
Teddy has acquired what Sri Ramakrishna called “God-consciousness.” He perceives the inner spirit rather than the outward appearance. He also has little regard for the labels that he feels Western minds wrongly attach to people and objects. In contrast, his parents perceive only the shell. They appear indifferent to his enlightenment and insist upon treating him like a child. Their spiritual delinquency is the source of their discourse and the reason Teddy appears cold to them. While still respecting their position as his parents, he perceives the immaturity of their inner spirits and reacts accordingly.
After experiencing Teddy’s relationship with his parents, it may seem odd that Teddy is amazingly tolerant of his sister, Booper, who is perhaps the most vicious child ever discharged by Salinger’s imagination. But