Nestor Carcache
Period 4 Comp/Lit
3/30/13
Nine Stories Essay
Salinger’s depiction of love in Nine Stories is very ambiguous. The depiction of love is
portrayed by two people in the stories. Love can be sweet, love can be sour, love can be soft,
and love can be rough. Salinger’s descriptive talents led him to create a picture for the reader to
realize what love is. Not all the stories in the novel involve love, but love is a theme for some
stories. In For Esmè – with Love and Squalor, the love is shared between Esmè and X. In The
Laughing Man, the chief shows his love for Mary Hudson.
The love shown in For Esmè—with Love and Squalor is the relieving kind of love.
When someone is in love and their significant other helps then cheer up when they are down, the
sense of relief falls all over the other. In the short story, Esmè and X meet each other in
England. They spoke and gave each other their addresses before the departed. Sergeant X went
to war and Esmè hoped to see him when he got back. She wished him luck in the war. Sergeant
X went into depression trying to recover from the war. His friend tries to bring him out of
depression, but failed. He received a letter from Esmè and when he finished reading the letter,
Sergeant X felt a sense of relief in his struggle. He knew that everything would be okay in the
end. Their actions of love in the story show how Salinger used his story to prove that sweet love
causes a sense a relief on one’s mind.
In The Laughing Man, the narrator is in a flashback. The narrator describes the chief, the
leader of the Comanche Club, as unattractive, but beautiful to the narrator. The troop respects
the chief for his athleticism and storytelling. Every day after the troop had finished with
everything, the chief would tell a story of the Laughing Man. Every story the chief told was
connected, like a series. In the chief’s stories, the Laughing Man was a hero. The chief met
Mary Hudson, a beautiful tomboy. He instantly fell in love and decided to introduce her to his
boys. The stories of the Laughing Man were based on the mood of the chief’s and Mary’s
relationship. When Mary and the chief spoke, they went to the troop acting differently than
usual. The chief’s story ended with the Laughing Man getting killed. The troop is sad, but the
story resembled the way the chief felt. In this short story, Salinger showed how love can
sometimes be hurtful. When someone in love gets hurt, their actions prove the way they feel.
The chief killed the Laughing Man in the story because he was hurt. Salinger used the chief as a
symbol of pain and sorrow in the short story.
Salinger is a wise man who knows many points of views to a theme. The author had
creativity to show how love can be in different perspectives. The theme of love was given to the
short stories in order to show interest to the reader. The scenarios in the stories serve as a
symbol to how love can be taken in. Love can be as harsh as it is relieving, but it all depends on
how the mind accepts it. Salinger’s point to the reader was to not only think in one point of
view. He wanted to show that even if there are negative outcomes of love, a positive mentality
can help heal and recover the mind. The two short stories are Salinger’s way of telling the reader
to never give up no matter how hard love may hit you.