To Esme by J. D. Salinger

The entirety of this story very much reminded me of Band of Brothers. The scene when he went into the church to watch the choir reminded me of one of the episodes when the company watched a choir after the assault on Foy. And when Salinger met the girl in the cafe, it reminded me of when Winters ran into the young boy on a tram. But the way he talked about the girl sometimes made me wonder if he was a pedophile, until later in the story when he talked to her about how devoid of human contact he was and I realized he was just looking for someone to talk to. But the girl seemed to be beyond her age in intelligence, but there were times when I was reminded of how young she really was. However later in the story when it talked of him after the war was over I became slightly confused. He never explained whether it was the war or something else that happened that caused the mental breakdowns and weird habits. It seemed more and more as if he was suffering under post-traumatic-stress, and yet at times it seemed as though he was just under a lot of stress. By the end of the story it seems as if he has found a way to rise up out of his stressful slump and become a normal human being again.