Seymour And Buddy Character Analysis

Seymour and Buddy are the 2 older brothers of Franny and Zooey who are the main characters. They have to deal with their problems after Franny the youngest breaks down and goes home.Seymour and Buddy being the 2 older brothers greatly affected their siblings Franny and Zooey. Seymour and Buddy are mentioned all throughout the story and they never appear directly in the story other than through some narration from Buddy. Yet their influence is shown strongly throughout the story.That influence comes from the fact that Seymour and Buddy taught them when they were young. It is during this upbringing that many of the issues Franny and Zooey have their roots as well some events later on such as Seymour’s death.

Seymour’s death came from many …show more content…
Within the letter it is revealed that Zooey was doubting finishing his Phd and whether to become an actor or not. Having gone through his own issues very similar to that of Franny's Zooey places the blame on to Seymour and Buddy. “Seymour, Seymour, Seymour, Buddy, Buddy, Buddy” Zooey says mockingly at Bessie showing that he is “so sick of their names I could cut my throat”. “Haunted” is the word he uses to describe Seymour and Buddy and saying the “whole goddamn house stinks of ghost” which shows that he feels weighed down and burdened such as if by a ghost. “I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one” is in reference to Buddy which Zooey feels that Buddy being alive makes the haunting worse .”Why the hell doesn’t he just kill himself” is Zooey preferring that his own brother die than keep giving them problems even saying “I could murder them both without even batting an eyelash”. “I’m a twenty-year-old-freak and she’s a twenty-year-old-freak, and both of those bastards are responsible” is Zooey saying it simply that Seymour and Buddy are to blame for them being freaks which he gives an example of “I can’t even sit down to lunch with a man any more and hold up my end of a decent conversation. I either get so bored or so goddam preachy that if the son of a bitch had any sense, he’d break his chair over my …show more content…
.Franny and Zooey have to explore their past throughout the book to resolve Franny’s issues showing that is where the root of her problems lie.“We’ve got ‘Wise Child’ complexes. We’ve never really got off the goddam air. Not one of us.” this is Zooey tracing back Franny’s and his own issues back to the time they were on tv and that they haven’t moved on from that time. That time was when they were being raised by Seymour and Buddy and which has caused them all these issues with themselves and the world around