• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1422 0

child. Even those familiar with Seymour’s character from previous stories cannot help but be taken aback by his vocabulary and the way he addresses his parents. He refers to his brother as “that magnificent, elusive, comical lad,” explaining that Buddy is “engaged elsewhere,” much to Seymour’s “eternal amusement and sorrow.”12 Such language strikes the reader as being pretentious, pedantic, and more than a bit sanctimonious—especially coming from the pen of a seven-year-old child. Salinger quickly attempts to counterbalance the impression by allowing Seymour to admit that he and Buddy miss their family “like sheer hell.” The disparity of tone more than keeps readers off balance; it points to Seymour’s tendency to shift between adult sensibilities and childish reactions throughout the novella. Nothing in “Hapworth” is absolute. For every apparent conclusion presented by the text, readers can find a statement that calls it into question. Salinger indirectly sums up the shifting nature of “Hapworth” in the second paragraph when Seymour gives his opinion on an English composition book he has been reading, calling it “alternately priceless and sheer crap.”

The bulk of Seymour’s letter, which seems to have been written in installments, is a recount of events at Camp Hapworth. As he is laid up in the camp infirmary (“forcibly abed”) after suffering a leg injury, Seymour has time to write the long letter and to contemplate his position at camp and his relationships with God, the counselors, and other campers, as well as the members of his family.

According to Seymour, the Glass brothers don’t seem to fit into any group at camp. They have but three friends: Mrs. Happy, the pregnant wife of the head counselor; John Kolb, described as kind and dauntless; and the bedwetting Griffith Hammersmith, who follows Seymour and Buddy like a shadow and whose rich and pretentious mother is disappointed to find that the brothers are her son’s best friends. Seymour complains to his family that most of the other boys, who are otherwise “the salt of the earth,” abandon their kindness when surrounded by their friends. He compares these cliques to the wider world, grieving that at Camp Hapworth, “as elsewhere on this touching planet, imitation is the watchword and prestige the highest ambition.” In fact, Camp Hapworth is, to the seven-year-old poet-saint, a microcosm of the larger world itself.

Although claiming that he and Buddy are trying their best to get along with others at camp, the difference in their interests inevitably causes rifts. They get into trouble for not participating with the rest of the group. Rather than singing at “Pow Wow” or spending their time arranging their belongings according to regulation, the brothers slip away by themselves to meditate, read, and write—Seymour an astounding twenty-five poems in sixteen days and Buddy an equally awe-inspiring six short stories.

Consequently, like Holden Caulfield in “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls,” Seymour confesses that he and his brother are being ostracized by the other campers. At first readers are inclined to feel sympathy for the boys for being outcast by their peers, but it soon becomes apparent that their discomfort is due not to the callousness of other campers or to Seymour’s sensitivity or brilliant intellect. Seymour admits his intolerance for the spiritual immaturity of those around him, and it becomes clear that his own snobbery has estranged him and Buddy from the rest of the camp. Seymour attempts to be forgiving of the other children because of their young age, but he condemns the counselors without mercy, confessing to a daily urge to smash them over the head with a shovel as punishment for their stupidity. These are shocking words for an enlightened God seeker having just entered the age of accountability, and they do nothing to endear Seymour’s character to the reader.

The most definitive example of Seymour’s derision for others is the incident that has exiled him to the infirmary. The morning before Seymour begins his letter, Mr. Happy took the campers on an