Why did Seymour Glass throw a rock at Charlotte? Because she was too pretty? But what's wrong with that?

One Answer

1. It must be borne in mind that this was not the burning of the Golden Temple — that is, some conscious decision to kill the beauty of the moment. Simur is still quite small there, he doesn't really understand what he's doing yet. And his action was just the result of an inner urge that he just didn't know how to solve. But where this urge came from is a rather complicated question.

   All of these bright childs were essentially a bit of spiritual savants, of which Simur was the most gifted, and as a result, the most lost. Even as a child, he felt the wrongness of himself, those around him, the wrongness of the world and everything that was happening in general. Last but not least, his role in all of this.

   After all, Salinger's world is always wrong: you reach into the laundry basket and rip your arm open to the bone, pack explosives and explode with them, your daughter reports the death of her imaginary friend, and immediately comes up with a new one, the Laughing Man's story that has been building for months ends with a completely meaningless death.

   And in the midst of all this, Seymour Glass, who understands all this, is forced to entertain the radio audience with some clever thoughts every morning. Probably realizing even then that he couldn't explain anything to anyone.

   Meanwhile, these bright Childs may understand everything, but they have no place to know what to do, how to live, how to behave. It is clear that no one can be trusted here: if the existing rules had somehow worked, the world would probably have looked somehow different. That's why Seymour doesn't have an effective guide to tell him what to do when he suddenly sees a scene in which everything is perfect: Charlotte is just sitting by the roadside with a cat. And everything.

   But he already knows that this can't happen. Calm perfection, a moment of beauty, happiness-all this must be disturbed, unsettled by something from the outside. This is something that always happens inevitably.

   In general, perhaps for a second, quite instinctively and not consciously, Seymour thought that the most appropriate response to this moment of beauty would be to throw a stone at her. He repeats it in his very nature, as children, without understanding, repeat phrases they heard in the subway.

   But the worst part of it, of course, is that this is exactly the kind of world — an irrational one in which violence and tragedy are meaningless — that the kind, intelligent, understanding twelve — year-old Seymour continued.

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