A Perfect Day For Bananafish And Moore's Two Boys

In Salinger’s A Perfect Day for Bananafish and Moore’s Two Boys, both of the main protagonists battle with the adult world, and savoring their childhood innocence. This is a direct result of an encounter with a traumatic event in A Perfect Day for Bananafish, and reliance on biblical text to replace sin. Both look for refuge in children, a small sign of lingering innocence, who make things simpler and clearer. However, they find this realm of naivety to be nearly impossible. They are left confused and afraid of the adult world and what it might entail. In both of these short stories, the main characters continually search for their lost innocence through children.
A Perfect Day for Bananafish depicts this absence of innocence through the main character, Seymour’s search for lost innocence by communicating with the youth, while avoiding the materialistic adult world. Once Seymour encounters by Sybil, a young girl at the beach, he begins to treat her with the utmost respect. He values her

She also resorts to religious means to ensure this innocence, “She read Bible poetry in the shade on the ground” (1). She reads the bible in the park on numerous occasions. Mary is able to feel spiritually enlightened by the Bible, reliving her innocence. Mary reads the Bible in order to seek religious redemption, as she continues to date two men, committing sin herself. In doing this Mary acts as a child, leading two men on as she sits and reads the Bible. Throughout the story Mary wears the color white, a color normally associated with innocence and pureness. White most nearly means cleaning the slate and starting anew. Mary wishes constantly to start anew from these boys and regain her lost innocence. She also hopes to salvage her purity by attaching to the little girl who comes by the park to talk to