Jerome Salinger
Born on January 1, 1919, Jerome David Salinger was to become one of
America’s
greatest contemporary authors. In 1938 Salinger briefly attended
Ursinus College
in Pennsylvania where he wrote a column, "Skipped Diploma,"
which featured
movie reviews for his college newspaper. Salinger made his
writing debut when he
published his first short story, "The Young Folks," in
Whit Burnett’s
Story magazine (French, xiii). He was paid only
twenty-five dollars. In 1939, at
the age of 20, Salinger had not acquired any
readers. He later enrolled in a
creative writing class at Columbia
University. Salinger was very much interested
in becoming an actor and a
playwright, which was quite odd because he would
later in life become a
recluse (Wenke, 3). Salinger adjusted his writing style
to fit the literary
marketplace. He was writing for money and began writing for
magazines like
Good Housekeeping and Mademoiselle. Many of Salinger’s
characters have unique
character traits. "Salinger presents a number of
stories that consider
characters who become involved in degrading, often phony
social contexts,"
states a major critic (Wenke, 7). These characters are often
young and have
experienced a lot of emotional turmoil. They have been rejected
by society
and mainly categorized as "misfits." This alienation of the
personality is
often viewed as a sign of weakness by society when in fact the
outcasts
ultimately gain strength from their experiences as shown in Nine
Stories,
The Catcher in the Rye, and Franny and Zooey. Salinger is telling a
tale of
the human condition in its reality through his novels. Nine Stories is
a
collection of short stories of people who are uncertain of the next path to
take
in life. They are lonely, needy, and searching for love. One of these
stories,
"A Perfect Day for Bananafish," is the story of a young couple
who try to
understand their life together and the true meaning of love.
Seymour Glass has
just been released from the Army Hospital and he is unable
to adjust to life
with his "crass wife Muriel amidst the lavish and vulgar
atmosphere of their
post-war second honeymoon" (Gwynn & Blotner, 19). It
has often been called"the loveless tunnel of love." Salinger portrays Muriel in
the first part of
the story as superficial. She believes that everything and
everyone operates on
her time: She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped
exactly nothing. She
looked as if her phone had been ringing continually ever
since she had reached
puberty. Muriel has an indifferent attitude about life.
She seems simple and
very insecure. Muriel finds it funny that her husband
calls her "Miss
Spiritual Tramp of 1948." This tells the reader that she
lacks self- esteem.
Her simple attitude shows when she is talking to her
mother on the phone about
going to Bingo one night: "Anyway, after Bingo he
and his wife asked me if I
wouldn’t like to join them for a drink. So I did.
His wife was horrible. You
remember that awful dinner dress we saw in
Bonwit’s window? The one you said
that you’d have to have a tiny, tiny."
Muriel implies that she disliked the
lady because of what she was wearing.
She alienates herself from society by
believing that she is better that
everyone else. Because of Muriel’s
personality, Seymour cannot confide in her
or feel any love in his marriage.
This is why he turns to the little girl
at the beach for companionship. Seymour
finds a friend and a listener in
Sybil. But the friendship of Sybil cannot mend
Seymour’s broken heart. He
gains some strength in himself when he finds a
friend in Sybil, but he cannot
seem to get past his failed marriage. Seymour is
so desperate for love that
he commits suicide: Then he went over to one of the
pieces of luggage, opened
it, and from under a pile of shorts and undershirts he
took out an Ortgies
caliber 7.65 automatic. He released the magazine, looked at
it, then
reinserted it. He cocked the piece. Then he went over and sat down on
the
unoccupied twin bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol and fired a
bullet
through his right temple. "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" is a story
about a
young woman who tries to make sense out of all the confusion in her
life. Eloise
finds a loyal and trustworthy friend in Mary Jane. They are on
the same path in
life. Salinger suggests that they have stayed friends for so
long because
neither of them graduated from college. Eloise left college
because she was
caught with a soldier in the elevator. Mary Jane left college
because she was to
marry a soldier in jail. Eloise feels like an outsider in
her own family. She
makes a comment about her daughter looking more like her
husband and his mother.
She says that when the three of them are together
they look like triplets.
Ramona, Elosie’s daughter, appears to be the
only person who is free to be who
she wants to be. Ramona has a childlike,
spontaneous imaginative power and she
is on the verge of these qualities
being taken from her by her mother who is
referred to as "Uncle Wiggily
(Bloom, 83). Uncle Wiggily represents a person
that is standing in the way of
Ramona being her true self. In essence, Eloise
envies her daughter Ramona.
Ramona is the one who does as she pleases, such as
scratching herself and
picking her nose at any time. Ramona is the stronger of
the two, mentally.
Eloise resents Ramona’s imaginary friend Jimmy Jimmerono.
One critic
explains, "But Jimmy stands in the same relation to Ramona as Walt
does to
Eloise—a symbol of the secret image of love, unhampered by
awful
reality"(Gwynn & Blotner, 22). Walt is Eloise’s old love.
Ramona
displays Jimmy’s physical characteristics as being unique, while Walt
is
unique because of his humor and tenderness. At the end of the story Eloise
had
still not been saved. When she is drunk she feels free to be herself and
express
herself. Eloise learns the true meaning of love with her past
experience with
Walt. She learns to love herself and is willing to move
on in life knowing that
it will get better with time. Salinger’s greatest
masterpiece, The Catcher in
the Rye, has served as a "firestorm for
controversy and debate" (Lomazoff,
1). The way that Salinger portrayed
Holden Caulfield has been a factor in the
controversial nature of this book.
Holden is a strong-minded person with
strong-minded opinions of the world and
the people. His uncanny personality
makes the reader want to question his
sanity. Holden has reached a point in his
life where he doesn’t care anymore.
He has flunked out of three Pennsylvania
prep schools. This symbolizes that
Holden is not truly ready for the adult world
even though he believes that he
is. He refuses to work to his full potential.
Holden is a little boy
playing grown-up. He is self-centered and very arrogant:
Then I tried to
get them in a little intelligent conversation, but it was
practically
impossible, you had to twist their arms. You could hardly tell which
was the
stupidest of the three of them. He puts other people’s social behavior
down
as if to say that he is of higher intelligence, "They didn’t invite me
to sit
down at their table—mostly because they were ignorant—but I sat down
anyway."
This shows Holden’s impatient nature. Another odd quality of
Holden’s is
that he believes that the world we live in and the people that we
live with
are phony. An early example of this in the novel is when Old Spencer
is
telling Holden about how great his parents are and Holden responds in
a
negative fashion: "Grand" there is a word I really hate. It’s a phony.
I
could just puke every time I hear it. The center issue of Holden’s
perception
of falseness in this world is his inability to communicate with
other people. He
wants to be a loner and stay by himself: "I figured that I
could get a job at
a filling station somewhere, putting gas in other people’s
cars. I didn’t
care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people don’t
know me and I
don’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I
was one of
those deaf mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any god dam
stupid useless
conversation with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me
something, they’d have
to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to
me. They’d get bored as
hell doing that after a while, and then I’d be
through with having
conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody’d think
I wasjust a poor
deaf-mute bastard and they’d leave me alone... I’d cook all
my own food, and
latter on, if I wanted to get married or something, I’d meet
this beautiful
girl that was also deaf-mute and we’d get married. She’d come
and live in my
cabin with me, and if she wanted to say something to she’d
have to write it
down on a piece of paper, like everybody else". Holden truly
hates all the
phoniness in this world that he doesn’t want to communicate
with anyone, even
his soon-to-be-wife. This depicts Holden’s innocence. He
has his whole life
planned out and he believes that this is really going to
happen. Holden might
think that he is ready for adulthood but from someone
else’s point of view he
sounds that he is very unsure of adulthood. Holden’s
innocence is also
portrayed in a more sincere fashion when he is talking to
his sister, Phoebe,
about a vision that he had, "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 cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch
everybody if they
start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and
they don’t look
where they are going I have to come out from somewhere and
catch them. That’s
all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and
all. I know
it’s crazy, but that’s the only I’d really like to be. I know
it’s
crazy." Holden believes that he can save little children from all the
hurt and
pain in the world. Holden is really a good guy stuck in a bad world
and he is
trying to make the best out of all the misfortunes that come his
way, but his is
loosing the battle. "Whereas he aims for stability and truth,
the adult world
cannot survive without suspense and lies. It is a testament
to his innocence and
decent spirit that Holden would place the safety and
well-being of children as a
goal in his lifetime" (Lomazoff, 8). This
innocent trait that Holden poses
makes him to openly show his affection for
his sister. He wants the best for
her. Holden makes her life his first
priority. When Phoebe tries to leave her
school to follow Holden, he is
instantly against it. The disappointed look on
Phoebe’s face at Holden’s
refusal breaks his heart. Holden takes Phoebe to
the park to make up for
this. Holden’s attitude about life gradually changes
as he watches Phoebe on
the carrousel: I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the
way old Phoebe kept
going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so
damn happy, if
you want to know the truth. I don’t know why. It was just that
she looked so
damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue
coat and
all. When Holden promises that he would return home Phoebe becomes
happy
again. The bond between Holden and Phoebe is very strong. She is
his
inspiration and he is her role model. Holden wants to do right in his
life for
Phoebe. He wants to be a better person for her. Franny and Zooey
is the story of
a young girl who feels alone in the world. Franny Grass
suffers an emotional and
spiritual breakdown while attending college. She has
abandoned all of her hopes
and dreams, and the only pleasure she has in life
is reading from her little
pea-green book. Loneliness is an emotional
affliction that is very widespread in
our society (Gelinas, 5). It affects
everyone at any point of his or her lives.
Franny clearly suffers from
this affliction. She writes a letter to Lane Coutell,
her boyfriend, telling
him that she is coming out to visit him. The letter is
emotional and happy,
this is ironic because when Franny visits Lane she is
anything but happy.
Lane meets Franny at the train station to pick her up. There
is an immediate
tension between the two because they have not seen each other in
while.
Nevertheless, they try to ignore it. When they arrive at the
restaurant,
Lane dominates the conversation. He is unaware, for the most
part, that Franny
has hardly said a word. Franny accepts the idea of Lane
playing a dominant role
in their relationship. She understands that they are
not on equal standing.
Despite this, Franny believes that she has found
love with her boyfriend. She
adores him as much as any girlfriend adores her
boyfriend. Franny is often
afraid of not being on the same level as Lane. In
one example Lane is reminding
Franny of his that she met some time ago:
"Oh. I remember... Listen, don’t
hate me because I can’t remember some person
immediately. Especially when they
look like everybody else, and talk and
dress and act like everybody else." It
is clearly obvious that she is afraid
of not living up to his expectations.
Franny doesn’t see Lane as her soul
mate, she is with him because of her fear
of being lonely: She found herself
looking at Lane as if he was a stranger, or a
poster advertising a brand of
linoleum, across the aisle of a subway car. Again
she felt the trickle of
disloyalty and guilty, which seemed to be the order of
the day, and reacted
to it by reaching over to cover Lane’s hand with her own.
Two surprises
take place during dinner. Franny tells Lane that she has quit
drama at
school. Lane is shocked because he knows that Franny loves acting and
she is
good at it. When Franny excuses herself the second time, she faints on
the
way to the bathroom. Lane is very worries and insists that she rest.
But
again, Franny is putting Lane’s needs before her own by encouraging him
that
she is okay and they could still have a nice night. The second part of
the story
takes place when Franny has returned home to get some rest. Her
brother, Zooey
Glass, and their mother are very concerned about her. He
believes that the
little pea-green book that Franny has is clear foolishness.
He insists on giving
Franny advice on life or about any issue of the
moment. Franny finds herself
still stressed with her mother forcing her to
eat chicken soup and her
brother’s constant nagging. Zooey is a
straightforward person. He sees the
false love in Franny’s and Lane’s
relationship even though they do not.
Towards the end of the novel,
Franny starts to consider her brother’s advice.
He tells her that it is
not wise to be caught up in her book. He tells her that
she can still be an
actress and know God. In essence, he tells her that their
family is very
different from other families, and what you decide to do with
your life
determines the type of person that you are. Franny takes Zooey’s
advice to
heart. She finally understands who she is and begins to put her life
in
perspective. Franny now knew what to do with her life and she was
content:
For some minutes, before she fell into a deep, dreamless Sleep,
she just lay
quite, smiling at the ceiling. J.D. Salinger, a master of
contemporary writing,
has astounded his audiences for years. The common theme
expressed in many of
Salinger’s novels is the alienated personality. He
has a way of capturing this
theme through his characters. Due to this
alienation many of these characters
experience loneliness, unhappiness,
uncertainty, and the feeling of being lost:
"He moves steadily away from
old-fashioned stories of the sort that lead us to
believe that life has
leading characters and minor characters, important details
and unimportant
details, beginnings, middles, ends" (Bryfonski, 521). Many
critics acclaim
that Nine Stories and The Catcher in The Rye are Salinger’s
most famous and
important works (Bryfonski, 521). The Glass family saga starting
in Nine
Stories and continuing in and ending in Franny and Zooey shows how the
lack
of love and the influence of society can lead to destruction unless you
find
enough inner strength to rise above it. Many of Salinger’s characters
are
connected to other fictional characters by other authors. In The Catcher
in The
Rye, the young Holden Caulfield is compared by critics to
Huckleberry Finn: He
has a colloquialism as marked as Huck’s...Like Huck,
Holden is neither comical
or misanthrope. He is an observer. Unlike Huck, he
makes judgements by the
dozen, but these are not to be taken seriously; they
are concepts (Lomazoff, 7).
Holden is also compared to Hamlet but to a
lesser degree; they are both not
totally in the minds. The majority of
Salinger’s characters learn from being
alienated. Through learning this one
aspect, they gain strength from it to move
on.