Imaginative Children and High Maintenance Wives

In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", we meet Sybil, who is a highly imaginative little girl. For example, when Seymour tells her the tale of the bananafish, she immediately claims to have seen one, and even gives details to back it up. "Did he [the bananfish] have any bananas in his mouth?" Seymour asks, and Sybil replies, "Yes. Six." (Salinger 24) In "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut", we meet Ramona, another extremely imaginative child. She has several imaginary friends, and believes in them so strongly that she sleeps on the far side of her bed at night to avoid hurting them. In "Just Before the War with the Eskimos", Franklin also seems like an imaginative individual, and while he is technically an adult, there is a childlike quality about him that is similar to the quirkiness shared by Sybil and Ramona. Another reoccurring theme in the three stories is that of high maintenance wives. In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", Muriel comes off as somewhat vain, and seems to enjoy being pampered. Eloise from "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" is even more high maintenance. She complains about her life, including her husband's incompetence and her daughter's strangeness, and grieves over her college boyfriend Walt. Also, in "Just Before the War with the Eskimos", Serena says that her mother is sick with pneumonia and must not be disturbed. Thus, these two themes, high maintenance women and quirky and creative children, seem to come up frequently in Salinger's work.