Authors Note: This is actually my second attempt at
writing a response to the short story "'Teddy" by J.D.
Salinger. My first attempt didn't go over to well because I jumped right into it
too quickly, and when reading a higher level story like this I needed more time
to process my thoughts and really develop my thesis. There were so many
approaches to look at this story from, and it covered many topics that I wanted
to talk about, that is why it took me longer to put my thoughts together. Once
I had a clearer idea and I narrowed my focus, I wrote this response and scraped
my first one; although that wasn't my original intention. In this piece I talk
about our selfish nature and how we look to the wrong things to find
satisfaction. I tried to use a lot of text evidence to back my ideas.
Self-righteous,
self-seeking, selfish -- we stand on our pedestals, looking down upon our
narrow world. We build ourselves up for praise, and please others to
please ourselves. We are naturally selfish people. Our hearts desire for
more, our eyes cast shadows of greed. Happiness, contentment, and peace are
fleeting from our grasp. As human beings, we naturally seek
ourselves first because we desire satisfaction, but it is our selfishness that
actually blocks us from this.
Desire,
greed, and lust are things many people struggle with. For without these what
would temptation be but just a word, what would drive lots of our motives? We
meet an interesting character in the short story "Teddy", the ten
year old boy who proposes the idea that we do not need these emotions at all,
but maybe we need other emotions to control our motives, and to ultimately
produce pleasure in our lives.
"'I
wish I knew why people think it's so important to be emotional,' Teddy said.
‘My mother and father don't think a person's human unless he thinks a lot of
things are very sad or very annoying or very-very unjust, sort of. My father
gets very emotional even when he reads the newspaper. He thinks I'm
inhuman.'" Teddy only mentions emotions that make us unhappy in this
quote; he never says anything about emotions that do make us happy.
This is because Teddy is trying to say that we seek pleasure from many worldly
desires, and in order to feel satisfied we look to what other people have to
say about life. We constantly try to adorn ourselves with new gadgets and
garments to fit in and conform in order to maybe find some contentment. But
Teddy gives us yet another example of our false motives; he shows us that we do
not need outward beauty to be happy.
"He was wearing extremely dirty, white ankle-sneakers, no socks,
seersucker shorts that were both too long for him and at least a size too large
in the seat, an overly laundered t-shirt that had a hole the size of a dime in
the right shoulder, and an incongruously handsome, black alligator belt."
Teddy clearly didn’t pay attention to outward appearance nor did he judge
others on their looks; he searched deeper. He didn't waste
his time fooling with false images; he cared about living for higher purposes.
Teddy focused on who he was as a person, rather than what others saw in him.
I'm not saying we should not look presentable by all means, but I'm saying that
happiness dwells deep within someone, not merely on the surface. When we
discover who we are inwardly, then our outward actions and appearances will
reflect that.
To
unlock this inner peace, we must start at the source of satisfaction somewhere
beyond our conventional approaches to life. The hardest question in life is
asking who you are, but once we have this answered we will not focus on
pleasing ourselves because we will not be searching for more approval. The
generic answers to this question are things dealing with age, gender,
race, and professions, but these are conventional and the logical
approaches to this question. “‘You asked me how I get out of the finite
dimensions when I feel like it. I certainly don't use logic when I do it.
Logic's the first thing you have to get rid of.' "
Teddy's
father's had never asked himself this question, nor did look beyond the surface
of everything; he lived more of a superficial life. He prided himself with his
loud voice, and he selfishly used his gift whenever he could to seek praise
from others. "Mr. McArdle played leading roles on no fewer than three
daytime radio serials when he was in New York, and he had what might be called
a third-class leading man's speaking voice: narcissistically deep and resonant,
functionally prepared at a moment's notice to outmale anyone in the same room
with it, if necessary even a small boy." When we look for outward approval
to drive our sense of emotional contentment, we can get addicted to it, and
live each day only looking for compliments to fill ourselves up. It can become
like a drug that invades and takes over our lives.
When we
get caught up in the busyness of the world and the false signs telling us that
we need to look a certain way to be happy, we can lose sight of the person we
want to be. Logically, we desire to listen to what others have to tell us about
life, but it is when we find our true self that we can find joy and pleasure.
We will only feel completely rested when we give up our worldly motives and
live beyond the surface. We will never be content if we are not happy
about whom we are inside.
