Jerome Salinger Essay, Research Paper
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 was just a poor
deaf-mute bastard and they’d leave me alone… I’d cook all my own food, and<br...
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