"I wish I knew why people think its 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." (186)
Here, Salinger uses Teddy to present a definition of humanity: we are human because we have emotion. However, this is not the definition that Teddy (or Salinger) believes, as shortly after this he says, "I don't see what [emotions are] good for." (186) This indicates a dismissal of the notion that humans are defined by the fact that they can feel emotions, since emotions are good for nothing especially not something as important as differentiating humans from the rest of life on earth. However, this is complicated by the fact that Teddy's father called him "inhuman." Teddy does not feel emotions because he sees no reason to. This could mean that Salinger is agreeing with the definition of humans by emotion, and is excluding Teddy from this definition. But, as we find out on the next page Teddy does feel emotion, he loves God, though even this basic emotion is felt in a strange way.
"Yes, sure, I love Him. But I don't love Him sentimentally. He never said anybody had to love him sentimentally," Teddy said. "If I were God, I certainly wouldn't want people to love me sentimentally. It's too unreliable." (187)Essentially, what Teddy said here is "I do love God, but I don't love him with emotion." This makes no sense to me since love itself is an emotion. Teddy describes his love for his parents as an affinity as opposed to how Nicholson thinks of love. The word affinity lacks emotion. It is more a statement of relation than a statement of feeling. This also suggests that Teddy is not human. At the end of this story, it is still unclear whether Salinger has portrayed Teddy as human. Is Teddy human, or is he some cold, emotionless alien?
I do think that being human involves a certain degree of emotional depth and emotional intelligence (although I am quite the sentimental fool). Everyone has emotions, but for some people they're buried deep down below the surface, sometimes beyond access (especially since our society places such a premium on the "macho-man" image, and categorizes emotions as weak). If Teddy does have emotions, he is able to bury them very deep down -- he's not trying to buy into the tough guy image, but he does seem to believe that emotions are a weakness, a disadvantage. I would say that he's human, but he's found a way to block out his emotions.
ReplyDeleteHaving emotions is simply part of what makes us human. Emotional responses are essential to the human experience. To me, it almost appears as though Teddy's trying to block out these feelings to construct a cold facade. He wants those around him to think of him as different. Though he may not say it explicitly, he enjoys knowing the things he knows and being so superior with respect to those surrounding him. By the end, one theory behind his death could be that he's simply bored with how superior he's become. He knows so much, that even scholarly adults offer little to no expansion on the thoughts and beliefs he holds. Therefore, this emotionless character he builds for himself, even though it goes along with his beliefs, serves to further complicate how others view him. It makes him more unique, more peculiar, and more intriguing.
ReplyDeleteOne theory that I ran into in one of these blogs was that "Teddy" is actually meant to be a story about mental illness, about what can go wrong. In that light, the ideas that Elissa and Martin articulate above might actually be Salinger's real intentions in this story. We might read Teddy's diatribes as being meant to take with a grain of salt.
ReplyDeleteI think that in Teddy it is pretty heavily implied that Teddy, despite his human form, isn't quite a standard human. To me, he felt a lot like a messiah. This is for two reasons: the first is that he is gifted with existential knowledge in a way that feels "mystical". The second is that when he see him he is travelling the world in order to share his knowledge with all who care to know. In most religions, their messiahs are not fully human but rather partially of divine origin. So in response to the question of if he is human, I would respond: kinda.
ReplyDeleteI think Teddy has presented a view that being human isn't necessarily about being emotional or loving. His emotionlessness is more out of a rejection of the material world than actually robotic behavior, it seemed to me. You mention the passage where Teddy states he loves God, but left out the earlier portion that Teddy says he doesn't love him the way Nicholson wants him to. The fact that Teddy anticipates the Nicholson's misunderstanding shows Teddy's empathy for Nicholson, and also his unique view of emotion.
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