J.D. Salinger.
There is little information about J.D. Salinger because of his insistence on privacy, but we can still know a bit about his life. His complete name is Jerome David Salinger and was born on January 1, 1919 in New York City. His parents were Sol and Marie Salinger. He had an older sister named Doris. He earned average grades in grade school, but was dismissed from a prestigious prep school for failing grades. He graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy, the model school for The Catcher in the Rye's Pencey Prep, where he wrote his first stories. He attended Ursinus University in Pennsylvania, but dropped out in the middle of his first semester. He took a course in short story writing at Columbia. The publisher of Story magazine taught the course
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In 1942, Salinger was drafted into the army. He was a member of the Fourth Army Division that made D-Day famous. After WWII, he was hospitalized in Germany for psychiatric treatment. While in Germany, he met one of his heroes, Ernest Hemingway. He returned to the U. S. in 1947.
In 1955, J. D. married Claire Douglas. Franny was written for her as a wedding present. J. D. and Claire had two children, Matthew and Peggy. The couple divorced in 1967.
Today, Salinger supposedly lives in New Hampshire in a cottage by himself. He still refuses to be interviewed, but rumors say he may break his silence by allowing a story of his to be published after about 30 years.
Plot.
The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about a 16 years old boy named Holden Caulfield. It tells a lot of experiences he has been through, almost all of them he hates. The story begins in a Mental Hospital. Holden begins to tell his story to a doctor, I infer. Then it goes back to Holden’s experiences at Pencey, Elkton, Whooton, New York and his house, and it ends up again in the Mental Hospital, where Holden is still talking to the doctor, as if he had been telling everything to him.
He is an idealist boy, which makes his perception about life depressing. He tries to act as an adult, always asking for alcoholic drinks (mainly Scotch’s) in bars and smoking and trying to make himself believe that he can take care of himself.
Holden’s sight of other people is that they are phonies and morons, which he hates a lot. He makes this more evident when he is talking about his log cabin and says that he will establish this rule that nobody who is visiting him there may be a phony, or they better don’t go. The only person who Holden seems to like sincerely is his sister Phoebe, maybe because she is a little girl. Holden shows being fond of children.
J. D. Salinger’s life is projected in this story because he was dismissed from a highschool for failing grades, such as Holden. He also served in the army, in the Fourth Division, something that Holden talks about when he says he’d rather be shut in war than serving to the army. Another detail is that Salinger got into a psychiatric hospital, same way as Holden. And the last thing that is reflected in The Catcher in the Rye about J.D.’s life is that he lives in a small cottage, something as the log cabin that Holden was thinking of when planning to go to Colorado. Because of these statements I can say that this novel tells a lot about the author’s life.
Analysis.
The most common literary term in The Catcher in the Rye is the flashback, as Holden tells the whole story by using it. The story is told in first person point of view, because Holden, apart of being the narrator, is the main character. Inference is also found, specially in the first scene when the boy starts speaking and the reader infers that he is in a Mental Hospital talking to a psychiatrist.
The story has different settings, like Holden’s room at Pencey, Mr. Spencer’s and Mr. Antolini’s houses, the streets of New York, the Mental Hospital, the hotel at New York too, Holden’s house, the theater, etc.
Conclusion.
This novel explores change because it shows how through the four days in which the story takes place, Holden has been realizing that he is not ok. He feels kind of little, but because of his idealism, he sort of thinks that being little is ok or at least not bad at all. Besides, he is always changing his mind about what to do. One moment he feels like giving someone a call and the other he is just not in the mood for it. One moment he wants to go to Colorado to get a job, and the other he just decides to go back home. Holden is a very fickle boy, and despite of trying to act like an adult, he only shows how childish he is through all of his actions.
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