Catcher in the Rye
"Salinger's Reality" Being one of the most widely read authors in the English language, J. D. Salinger has successfully kept himself out of the public eye for most of his career (Grodin 1). Growing up during the times of the Great Depression, the 1920's and 1930's, Salinger never really felt any direct affects from it. His father was a prosperous Jewish importer, and his mother, a Scots-Irish house wife (DiscAut 1). During his childhood, Salinger's family was well off, and could afford to send him to several private prep schools. Most of which he was expelled from. He finally graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy in 1936, with ideas for characters that he had found in the people at his school (DiscAut 1). He later attended Columbia University, concentrating mainly on writing. Here he would meet Whit Burnett, the founder of Story and the one who got the ball rolling for Salinger's short story writing talent. Salinger has developed a writing style in which he uses his characters to explain how people fall victim to society: its pressures and expectations. Some say that the only true way to discover Salinger's true self, is to study The Catcher in the Rye. Research shows that Salinger's values are directly portrayed in Holden'
s personality, the main character in his only novel. "Self-critical, curious, and compassionate, Holden is a moral idealist whose attitude is governed by a dogmatic hatred of hypocrisy"(DiscAut 1). In many ways, this is true about Salinger. In his writings, Salinger searches for the meaning of life, and "comments on the flaws and merits of American Society"(DiscAut 1), as does Holden. Holden has been expelled from many prep schools, lives in New York, and is under extreme pressure from his parents who urge his success. Basically, this is Salinger in a nut shell. One of the driving forces behind Salinger's ideology of society is that of his experiences in World War II. He views war as the ultimate obscenity of life, of which no one should be exposed to. Loss of Innocence is the most reoccurring theme in Salinger's writing and is the premise of Catcher. Holden's dead brother, Allie, serves as the symbol of preserved innocence in that, Allie will never see or understand this hell, we call life (DiscAut 2). He is considered a "virgin to society" and the symbol of unblemished goodness (DiscAut 2). Phoebe, Holden's sister serves as Allie's living counterpart and Holden's salvation (DiscAut 2). She is the innocent child in Holden's life whom he tries desperately to preserve. Other characters such as; Ackley the tough guy, "He was exactly the kind of guy that wouldn't get out of your light when you asked him too" (Salinger 21); Stradlater the pig-headed snob, "The reason he fixed himself up to look so good was because he was madly in love with himself" (27); Marsalla, the brainless jock; and Headmaster Thurmer, the pompous schoolmaster all originated from Salinger's experiences at Valley Forge. There he met the ideal stereotypes that fulfill Catcher's examples of phonies(DiscAut 2) and Pencey's motto, "Since 1888, we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men" (Salinger 2). Lastly, in the final moments of Catcher, Holden goes to visit his sister Phoebe at her elementary school. He sees vulgarities and other obscenities vandled upon the wall. There he realizes that he has no control over the world and that things do change despite his attempts to preserve them (DiscAut 2). He says, "It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the 'Fuck You' signs in the world. It's impossible" (202). Holden's ultimate response to this realization is a mental breakdown, while Salinger's is total seclusion. Clearly, The Catcher in the Rye is an allusion to Salinger's troubled past and also to his conception of society. In 1953, Salinger published a collection of short stories, entitled Nine Stories. The encompassing theme in all of these stories is that all of the main characters come to a sudden realization that they either can't deal with, or take their new found enlightenment and begin the journey of recovery (DiscAut 3). In A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Seymour Glass, a retired war veteran discusses with Sybil (the innocent) the life and nature of a bananafish which Seymour describes as, "they swim into a hole where there's lot
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2086
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page double spaced)
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