Okay, so what are the chair references?
(1) BUS CHAIRS. Or, rather, a lack of empty bus chairs.
(2) DENTIST CHAIRS. (When Daumier went to sharpen his teeth and such).
(3) MUSICAL CHAIRS. (The game of musical chairs Daumier sees a week after the bus fiasco).
(4) CHAIR IN HIS ROOM. Or, rather, a lack of a chair in his room.
Okay, so we've identified the major chair appearances. Now, what's similar about these four?
To me, uncomfortable comes to mind. He is uncomfortable in all these situations. Firstly, he has to stand in the bus and get yelled at. Second, I don't think anyone is comfortable at the dentist. The third choice doesn't work as well, because Daumier seems more "left out" than "uncomfortable" with the musical chairs game, but feeling left out/anxious is a sort of uncomfortable feeling, so we'll let it slide. Finally, the lack of a chair in his room makes him super uncomfortable (and when he does finally get a chair, and is therefore comfortable, his productivity skyrockets).
These scenes also seem linked to anxiety, which is something that I think Daumier experiences a lot of (which is why he's so worried about his image, which is why he lies so much). A crowded bus in a big city you just moved to? Anxiety-inducing. The dentist? Anxiety-inducing. Feeling left out of a big game of musical chairs? I guess that can be anxiety-inducing? Not having a chair in your room, wanting a chair in your room, but not wanting to appear disrespectful (and assuming that you believe that asking for a chair is disrespectful)? Anxiety-inducing.
Anxiety and discomfort go together pretty well.
This is about as far as I've gotten because I think going any further is venturing into the realm of light BS. Like, do they symbolize anything, or do they act as markers for other things, etcetera... anything else we try to say would probably not rest on a very strong foundation. The best we can say is that "Chairs seem to be present during scenes/experiences that make our protagonist anxious". That seems pretty defendable.
I wouldn't really want to go further than that because what if Salinger is just messing with us? Can't let him get the last laugh by biting the hook too hard, can we?
I'm still not sure that there's an actual game of musical chairs happening in the streets of New York when the narrator steps outside--but the fact that he uses this analogy to describe a crown still fits the emphasis on chairs throughout the story (which I admit I've never noticed before). If a chair represents a place, the sense that he fits in (he can't get one on the bus, so he hates NY), this might also work with the lack of a chair in his room in Montreal. A chair is one's rightful place, and this narrator doesn't feel he has a rightful place, anywhere.
ReplyDeleteAs for the dentist, it's easy to see the association between a chair and terror in that particular scenario. A part of him is being forcefully removed.