J D Salinger Essay
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A recurring theme in J. D. Salinger's stories concerns people who don't fit in with the traditional American culture. Salinger's most successful tales are of those who cannot adjust to the real world. His main characters are super-intelligent humans who must choose between the phony real world (American culture) and a morally pure, "nice" world. Salinger's "misfit hero[es]" (Levine 498), unlike the rest of society, are caught in the struggle between a superficial world and a conscious morality. In the aftermath of World War II, America was desperate for a homogenous society. Different was definitely not better. "The 50s were a period of supreme disillusionment" (Fifties 514). Those who did not fit the mold were shunned, treated as pariahs in the land of opportunity. "The 50s were a period of supreme disillusionment"-Warren French In "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," Seymour Glass and his new wife Muriel are vacationing at a posh Florida hotel. Salinger uses a telephone conversation between Muriel and her mother to provide background information Seymour, who has caused discomfort to a great number of people (Salinger 81). Seymour drives his father-in-law's car into a tree and accuses other guests at the hotel of staring at a nonexistent tattoo on his back. Muriel brushes these incidents off; she seems amused by Seymour's actions. Muriel is the one person who remain calm in the midst of Seymour's antics, replying to her worried mother "You know Seymour" (Nine 10). Society sees Seymour as a childish adult, going to extremes to get attention (Salinger 82). He prefers the world of children (nice) to that of adults (phony). As the Matron of Honor in Raise High the Roof beam, Carpenters bluntly puts it "...you lead an absolutely freakish life like that when you're a kid, and so naturally you never learn to grow up. You never learn to relate to normal people or anything" (59). The Matron of Honor and Muriel's mother, both equally intolerant of people who are different, represent the real world. Like the rest of Salinger's nonconformists, Seymour sees children as innocent and truly good (Heiserman 496). Seymour's realization that he is not and can never be a true guru of Buddhism leads to his suicide. By getting married, he cannot transcend the temptations of flesh, and is therefore unable to be considered a real guru. Seymour's situation mirrors Salinger's scorn for those who engage in premarital sex (Salinger 58). He would not even allow his characters to do more than kiss, a rarity in his era. Seymour is interested in the company of four-year old Sybil Carpenter, a child he believes he can save from becoming a "phony" (Catcher 127). While swimming with the young girl, Seymour tells a tale of fish that swim into holes filled with bananas. These bananafish then gorge themselves on the fruit and, too fat to swim out of the holes, die of banana fever. Some critics misinterpret the author's intention in acquainting Sybil and the reader with bananafish. Seymour is not a bananafish; it is the phonies of the world who are guilty of bingeing themselves with meaningless material objects until they become so superficial they are beyond hope of ever attaining spiritual purity (Fifties 515). These people are intentional bananafishes. They are also the inhabitants of the phony world.Seymour, on the other hand, has temporarily lost sight of his religion and is tricked into becoming a "glutton...[with an] insatiable appetite...for attention" (Salinger 84). Even though Seymour knows he is beyond salvation, he still believes he can rescue Sybil. When she admits she saw a bananafish with six bananas in its mouth, Seymour realizes that she is already on the path toward becoming a superficial bananafish. In a few years Sybil will be like her mother, interested only in how another woman has her scarf tied. Three of Salinger's short stories, "Down at the Dinghy," "For Esme -with Love and Squalor," and "Franny and Zooey," written in the middle of his career, are products of Salinger's belief that those unfortunate souls who aren't "seers" could learn to live in this wasteland without becoming contaminated by the moral decay common in our society (Dictionary 436). Salinger still thought, like Seymour, that society could be saved, if only it could see that there is more to people than their appearance. In "Down at the Dinghy," Seymour's sister Boo-Boo coerces her young son Lionel to accept the reality of imperfection in the real world instead of letting him withdraw inside himself (Dictionary 438). Lionel, at an early age, refuses to compromise between corrupt reality and pure spirituality. Instead, he has chosen to imitate the decision of many misfit heroes and hide in privacy (Levine 499). In Franny and Zooey, the youngest Glass child Franny has a nervous breakdown. Influenced by Seymour's interest in eastern philosophy, she is frustrated with the superficial world around her. In the second half of the book, Zooey explains to his younger sister Franny that they and the rest of the Glass family are the problem, not the rest of the world. They are different because they're two oldest brothers, Seymour and Buddy religiously enlightened them: "We're freaks, that's all. Those two bastards got us early and made us into freaks with freakish standards, that's all. We're the Tattooed Lady, and we're never going to have a minute's peace, the rest of our lives, till everybody else is tattooed, too" (Franny 139). As Zooey says, "the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment" (Franny 198)....
Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Inc., 1945. French, Warren. "The Age of Salinger." The Fifties: Fiction, Poetry, Drama n.p.: Everett/Edwards, Inc., 1970. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 12. Detroit, MI.: Gale Research Company, 1980. _____. "J.D. Salinger." Dictionary of Literary Biography. 1978 ed. _____. J.D. Salinger Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1963. Heiserman, Arthur and James E. Miller, Jr. "J.D. Salinger: Some Crazy Cliff." Western Humanities Review Spring 1956, 129-37. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 12. Detroit, MI.:Gale Research Company, 1980. Kermode, Frank. "Fit Audience." The Spectator 30 May 1958, 705-06. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 12. Detroit, MI.: Gale Research Company, 1980. Levine, Paul. "J.D. Salinger: The Development of the Misfit Hero." Twentieth Century Literature October 1958, 92-9. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol. 12. Detroit, MI.: Gale Research Company, 1980. _____. Franny and Zooey. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Inc., 1955. _____. Nine Stories. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Inc., 1948. _____. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, Inc., 1955. Wiener, Gary A. "From Huck to Holden to Bromden: The Nonconformist in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Studies in the Humanities vol. 7 no. 2, 1979, 21-6.MLA Style
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