“A Perfect Day for Bananafish”
The mythical bananafish are given life through a simile which instantly brings them into focus:
"Well, they swim into a hole where there's a lot of bananas. They're very ordinary-looking fish when they swim in. But once they get in, they behave like pigs.”
“The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls”
A description of place and character is subtly implied by the setting and simile in this story. From just a few words, one can glean much information:
“At about three-thirty I came out on the porch and the Cape Cod air made me a little dizzy, as though it were stuff brewed too strong.”
“The Heart of a Broken Story”
The centerpiece of this story—captured in a paragraph unto itself—is an observation by the narrator that somehow manages to be vague while also utterly meaningless yet still conveys the point trying to be made:
“Now, there are two kinds of femme fatale. There is the femme fatale who is a femme fatale in every sense of the world, and there is the femme fatale who is not a femme a fatale in every sense of the word.”
“Teddy”
“Teddy” is mostly famous—or infamous—for its ambiguous ending. Exactly what has happened is never fully explained and so there exists two equally logical possibilities. The following metaphorical comparison to discarded garbage floating out of view on the surface of the water is a very strong piece of evidence pointing to one of those possible outcomes, however:
“After I go out this door, I may only exist in the minds of all my acquaintances," he said. "I may be an orange peel."
“For Esme—with Love and Squalor”
The narrator of this undergoes what seems to be a severe change in personality from the first episode in the second episode. By then, a year later, the narrator has experienced first-hand the realities of war and finds they are at odds with the jingoistic patriotism with which war is portrayed. The first episode contains a metaphorical image that will illuminate the difference which overcomes him:
“I ignored the flashes of lightning around me. They either had your number on them or they didn't.”
