J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [151]
The value of acceptance through faith is symbolized by the character of Muriel’s tiny great-uncle. He is by far the most attractive character of the story and the only one who does not pass judgment. Salinger amplifies his connection with the themes of acceptance through faith and God-consciousness by depicting him as a deaf-mute. The next-to-final scene of “Carpenters” leaves Buddy Glass alone with this symbol, signifying that Buddy has obtained these capabilities through his experience. In the story’s closing line, Buddy considers sending this character’s cigar butt (suddenly used up after remaining unlit throughout the story) along with a blank sheet of paper (symbols of acceptance and indiscrimination) to Seymour as a wedding present—proof of the lessons he has learned.
“Carpenters” has been acclaimed as Salinger’s most masterful character study. Its players are completely natural human beings and its dialogue moves along at a pace. Atop its underlying questions on the nature of humanity and examples of God-consciousness, the story exudes a playfulness that Salinger’s shorter New Yorker stories never accommodated. “Carpenters” was crafted to deliver the sheer joy of reading, and there is every indication that Salinger wrote it with an exhilarating joy of authorship. There is a feeling of wholesomeness as readers are drawn into the lives of the members of the Glass family, as Salinger’s new vehicle of exploration. Much of this feeling is due to familiarity with the story’s characters, but more is due to the attitude with which Salinger wrote “Carpenters” and readers absorb it. Every word of this story, every silence, every sideward glance, bears meaning. But it is often meaning that needs little analysis. Much of “Carpenters” is enjoyable simply because it reflects the average moments of average lives. Salinger crafted the Glass family, and Seymour Glass in particular, to call attention to the divine beauty alive within us all.
In Salinger’s own life, the story held a meaning that was intensely personal and supremely positive. The character of Seymour Glass represented Salinger’s affirmation of humanity—the presence of divinity within each human being that triumphs over despair. As a creation, Seymour represented the victory of Salinger’s faith in humanity, which after years of doubt slowly resurrected until it came ablaze through the Glass family. The Caulfields had questioned the meaning of life. They often fell short of their goals and regularly complained. The Glass family instead confirms the meaning of life; yet they are no less ordinary than the Caulfields. The powers that Seymour developed through his concentration upon God were powers that Salinger believed to be within everyone. Personally, Salinger would hold the image of Seymour Glass, in Seymour’s ever-increasing saintliness, up to his own life as an example not of how he envisioned himself but as a goal to attain.
On the dust jacket of the 1961 hardcover edition of Franny and Zooey, Salinger wrote an author’s note that applies to “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters” with exactness. It clarifies his personal vision of the Glass family sagas as a body of work and reveals the tenderness that he felt for them:
Both stories are early, critical entries in a narrative series I’m doing about a family of settlers in twentieth-century New York, the Glasses.… I love working on these Glass stories, I’ve been waiting for them most of my life, and I think I have fairly decent, monomaniacal plans to finish them with due care and all-available skill.6
Salinger’s introduction of that family of settlers to the world was a gamble. His name was already synonymous with another fictional family, that of Holden Caulfield, a family the world had embraced and come to love. The public craved tales of the Caulfields, and Salinger was aware that many readers would be reluctant to embrace a competing group of characters.
But after two attempts at religious fiction that he considered unsuccessful, Salinger felt he had finally found the ideal vehicle to convey his