Down At The Dinghy

1 Pages 326 Words

Down at the Dinghy

In my opinion, “Down at the Dinghy” was by far J.D. Salinger’s best short story included in the novel, Nine Stories. This story is about a Jewish family from New York. They are on vacation at a nice, quaint, little lake. The tale evolves around a mother and her son. The son always attempts to run away and the mother simply cannot comprehend why he does such a thing. The relationship between the two is very, very weak. Until one day when the son is on his father’s boat, the mother approaches him. He is fascinated by the fact that her key chain holds ten keys, far more than his father. She first pretends to throw them into the lake, and then gives them to him. He takes them, and then throws them into the lake. They walk back together and live happily ever after.
At first, this short story confused me to a certain extent. I couldn’t understand why it just ended like that. It didn’t really give any sort of closure and it left me hanging to believe where the duo went from there. I wasn’t sure what made this drastic change in emotion between the two. Then, it hit me. The moral of this story is through all the darkness, enlightenment always emerges. The two had a very poor relationship, until one day, through an event so small such as this, the boy realized that his mother really did care about him. They came to grips with each other, just like every mother/son combination should. The mother tried so hard to get things to work out between the two, and it completely surprised me that an incident so small could bring out so much good. And thus emerges my opinion that this work of Salinger, was the best in the book....