Moran is an instructor of English and American literature. In this essay, Moran argues that Salinger's story trivializes the very subject it is meant to explore.

If suicide isn't at the top of the list of compelling infirmities for creative men, the suicide poet or artist, one can't help noticing, has always been given a very considerable amount of avid attention.—Buddy Glass, discussing his older brother in Seymour: An Introduction

Partly because of the shock value of its ending and partly because Salinger is an author whose withdrawal from the world gives all his work the stamp of "serious art," "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" is often puzzled over by students and critics with all the reverence of the faithful. Not "getting" why Seymour kills himself is, according to many of Salinger's fans, the whole point, or at least part of the point. Suicide, they...