Jerome David Salinger (1919 - ?

)
For a couple of years Salinger seemed to be the voice of the post war generation
and his main work The catcher in the Rye is still seen as a modern urban version of
Huckleberry Finn. Born in NY Salinger became a professional writer after the war. His
first stories appeared in magazines but moved in Saturday Evening Post and the
New Yorker. The popularity embarrassed him and he often refused to speak to
reporters about his work.
Literary activity divided in:
1. Apprentice 1940-48 short stories and stories on lonely girls and destroyed
artists, on marriage and the so called Caulfield stories only few were included
in his volume 9 Stories the rigorous selection for this volume left 21 stories
buried in magazines.
2. The classic period included A Perfect Day for Banana Fish, Uncle Wiggily in
Connecticut, Just Before the War with the Eschimos, The Laughing Man, Down
at the Dinghy and his master piece The Catcher in the Rye.
3. The period of the Glass saga or of religion through satire and it includes De
Daumier Smiths Blue Period, Teddy, Raise High, The Roof Beam Carpenters,
Franny and Zooey, Seymour: An Introduction and Mapworth 16.
His major work has been the subject of probably more critical pronouncements than
any other. The problem that tormented Holden Caulfield are many sided and as the
end of the novel reveals they are solved by a cycle analyst. Holden passes through
the most difficult period of his adolescents. His not only mentally very near a break
down but also physically ill. Admitting that he has grown 6.5 inches in a year and
got TB, so he had to give up smoking and should have kept a diet to gain weight.
The story in the first person narrative does not attempt to be the full account of the
breakdown of a 16 year old boy, since Holden is bored by all that David Copperfield
crap. Only the events just before he has got run down are presented. Holden is
overwhelmed by emotional and intellectual problems. His mother is nervous
suffering from terrible headaches. He lives in torment , his father is too busy to
succeed to offer parental guidance to his son. The same can be said about his
brother D.B. who Holden says is prostituting himself in Hollywood. He is a
successful short story and script writer. Holden rejects the career for which he is
preparing but the substitutes do not hold water. This problems are not the cause of
his breakdown he simply struggles with no assistance against the phony adult
world. But Holden makes many of the themes that make him call others phony and
seems not similar that this criticism apply to himself. He criticizes Stradlatters
irresponsibility but looses the whole equipment of the fencing team by leaving him
underground. He criticizes Ackley too and does not realize that he lectures Ackley in
a way he himself did not accept on behalf of his literature teacher, he does like
Ackley. Just like Luce he discusses only what he feels like he is talking about. Holden

is not seeking admiration but the understanding that will help him pass through a
series of crisis and the sympathy he doesnt find.
His kid sister Phoebe is dramatically shocked by his decision to run away but when
she insists on going with him he realizes that he cannot hold the responsibility of a
hero. His history teacher, his discussion with Carl do not make matters clearer
during his second night in Europe Holden is avoiding to go back to the Hotel where
he was beaten up by the elevator operator. After a short visit home and a
conversation with Phoebe he makes a call on Antolini his ex-teacher. But Antolini
seems not to realize that at the moment Holden reaches him he is at the height of
his crisis and nearly broken wanting not a piece of advice but a kind of gesture to
conciliate him. The gesture that Antolini makes puzzles the boy and makes him to
question Antolinis moral integrity.
Holden makes the gesture as a homosexual advance towards him and leaves
Antolinis house in a hurry and driven from his last refuge. All his requests for
assistance in search for understanding having failed, Holden is redeemed by
Phoebes unsolicited gesture. She wants to accompany him but Holden has realized
that the nice and peaceful place his looking for does not exist and he is by this
time resigned to the phoniness of the world. He cant take the responsibility for
Phoebe and deprive her of the opportunities opened to her, the most immediate
being that of participating at the school play. Due to Phoebes spontaneous gesture
Holden decides to go home.
The most successful although the least emphasized one is the tracing of the
intellectual development Holden is not a rebel, he simply does not wish to grow up,
because he sees no role for himself in the phony adult world. Holden dreams of the
candor of the infinite childhood, he misses the world of Burns coming through the
Rye and confesses to Phoebe his desire to be a catcher who standing on the edge of
a cliff would catch the little kids if they start to go over.
The cliff appears to be the border between the innocence of childhood and the adult
world. Holden refuses to enter it. It is not clear where Holden changes his mind and
abandons the catcher attitude although Salinger prepared the reader for it through
the novel.
The climax is the moment when he watches his sister ridding on the carousel. He
now accepts the possible change together with the possibility as a reward and
purpose in life the thing with kids is if they want to grab for the golden ring you
have to let them do it and not say anything , if they fall off they fall off but its bad if
you say anything too them.
The author opposes Holdens catcher attitude throughout the story, at the end
Holden abandons the attitude converted by his experiences to a morally sounder
person of life.

J. D. OHara shows 5 picture of life through which Salinger describes the Catcher
attitude, attacks it and replaces it with a better one. All represent life in the same
way, in each is an innocent, danger, threat, and potential savior and Holden who
would like to be a savior certainly appear to need saving.
In chapter 2 when Holden visits his history teacher and thinks about the ducks in
the Central Park, here they are innocent, ice and winter, death are the threat and
the driver is the savior.
The second picture is a planned by the cab driver Horwitzs commands who
switches the topic from ducks to fish: if you was a fish, Mother Natured take care
of you wouldnt she? . Thus the idea of human nature is made to seem impractical
and the possibility of inhuman nature is suggested together with the idea that
innocence need not escape since they are capable of surviving for themselves.
The third picture is in chapter 21 when Phoebe provides Holden with an unspoiled
nature acceptance of life, her version of the innocent/ danger/ savior is contained in
her description of the doctor condemned to life imprisonment because he has stuck
a blanket over a crippled childs face. Phoebe accepted the punishment where
Holden would have appreciated his mercy.
The fourth picture is Holdens idea of a catcher in the rye but by the time his telling
Phoebe the story he has already accepted her understanding of life in which people
meet as equals in the rye field of life and there are no human saviors.
The fifth picture is the dynamic scene in which Phoebe rides the carousel and
Holden decides to return home thus solving the semantic conflicts. Alongside with
Holdens psychological imbalance and immature judgments the language of the
novel is a childish and slangy rhetoric one, which graphically expresses his
frustrated brilliant insight into human condition. Salinger had the ability to capture
the idiom of contemporary speech the informal, colloquial often slangy speech of a
typical teenager of his time. He won the readers and was one of the causes that
ensured the book great success. Together with Salingers accepting the tendency of
contemporary American prose the withdrawal of reality into the world of childhood.