Against obsenity
Looking back, one can now discern at least four phases in Salinger's career. His early stories generally portray characters that feel estranged and marooned because of World War II. The Catcher in the Rye and Salinger's attempt in that book to deal with estrangement and isolation through a Zen-inspired awakening and lonely benevolence represent his second phase. The third phase, seen in Nine Stories involves bringing together the principles of Zen art and the tradition of the short story. The fourth phase is one of which Salinger's work becomes more and more experimental, resulting in the philosophical mood of his last two books, Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters: and Seymour: An Introduction. These four stages indicate that Salinger should be read as a writer who is seeking solutions, as a writer who is trying to give direction to his thought based on an initial disturbing event; that event being World War II. (Encarta CD-ROM). The Catcher and the Rye appeared in a sober and realistic time, a period when there was a general disenchantment with ideologies, with schemes of solution of the world. Salinger's novel, like the decade for which it has become emblematic, begins with the words, "If you re
The influence of Holden's example on an entire generation of readers is impossible to measure, but it is sufficient to ignore in considering the development of the American youth in the 1960's. However extensive the influence of Sali8nger's most notorious character, he is a major reason for Salinger's fame and popularity. In the real and relevant idiom of Holden, Salinger caught and dissected modern society through a symbolic structure of language and motif, and episode that is as masterful as anything I n contemporary literature. Salinger fights obscenity with an amazing and divine mixture of vulgarity, existential anguish, an it does this through a style that moves the narrative effortly along a colloquial surface that suddenly parts to reveal the terror and beauty of the spiritual drama that Holden enacts. It may be Salinger's only novel, but it is still one of the best we have. A major theme in the New Testament is that to enter the Kingdom of Heaven one must have the purity of heart that can be achieved only by becoming like little children (Holy Bible). Or, as Robert G. Jacobs has stated it, " For Salinger, childhood is the source of the good in human life, it is that state human beings are genuine and open in their love for one another. It is when people become conscious in their relationships to one another, become adults, that they become "phony" and logical and to love the reasons for more than the loved person." That Holden himself sees childhood, as a source of good in human life is indicated in the title of the novel. He goes to Phoebe and tells her, " I thought it was if a body catch a body, " I said. " Anyway I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around -nobody big, I mean- except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy
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Approximate Word count = 1251
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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