J.D. Salinger Essay, Research Paper

Jerome David Salinger was born on January 1, 1919 in New York City. His parents were Sol and Marie Salinger. He had an older sister named Doris. There is really small personal information about Salinger because of his insisting on protecting his privateness.

J. D. earned mean classs in grade school. At age 13, Salinger was enrolled in the esteemed McBurney School in Manhattan, but he was dismissed with neglecting classs after a twelvemonth. He graduated from Valley Forge Military Academy. This school was the theoretical account for The Catcher in the Rye & # 8217 ; s Pencey Prep. There he wrote his first narratives. He attended Ursinus University in Pennsylvania, but dropped out in the center of his first semester. He alternatively took a class in short narrative composing at Columbia.

In 1942, Salinger was drafted into the ground forces. He was a member of the Fourth Army Division that made D-Day celebrated. After WWII, he was hospitalized in Germany for psychiatric intervention. While in Germany, he met one of his heroes, Ernest Hemingway. He returned to the U. S. in 1947.

In 1951, Salinger & # 8217 ; s merely full-length novel was published. However, it was the work that made him celebrated, and still sells some 250,000 transcripts yearly. The fresh took its rubric from a line by Robert Burns, in which the supporter Holden Caulfied misquoting it sees himself as a & # 8216 ; backstop in the rye & # 8217 ; who must maintain the universe & # 8217 ; s kids from falling off & # 8217 ; some loony drop & # 8217 ; . The? Catcher in the Rye? is a narrative of a sixteen-year-old hero-narrator Holden Caulfield. He is full of desperation and solitariness because of the & # 8220 ; phony & # 8221 ; post war epoch in which he is populating. Knowing that he is about to be expelled from prep school for hapless classs, Holden decides to run off merely before Christmas. He spends the following few yearss rolling in New York City, depicting in a mixture of schoolboy slang and poesy, his feelings about himself, his household, the universe that surrounds him, and his pursuit for the true, the good, the existent, and the inexperienced person. Holden is thought by many to be the most similar to the writer.

In 1953, he moved to Cornish, New Hampshire into a bungalow overlooking the Connecticut River. Here he allowed himself to be interviewed by sixteen-year-old Shirley Blaney for the New Hampshire Daily Eagle. When he foremost moved to New Hampshire, Salinger spent a batch of his trim clip with local adolescents ; it was in 1953 that he published? Nine Stories? , a aggregation of short narratives presenting the Glass household. Salinger published three other narratives incorporating the Glass household ; ? Franny and Zooey? ( 1961 ) , Raise High the Roof Beam ( 1963 ) , and The Carpenters ( 1964 ) .

On February 17, 1955, J. D. married Claire Douglas. ? Franny? was written for her as a nuptials nowadays. J. D. and Claire had two kids, Matthew and Peggy. The twosome divorced in 1967. Since the late 80s Salinger has been married to Colleen O & # 8217 ; Neill.

Over the old ages, Salinger withdrew from the public oculus. He ever refused to subscribe autographs, give talks, give interviews, ne’er consented to be in? Who & # 8217 ; s Who? , and kept an unlisted phone figure. To protect his privateness, he built a fencing environing his house. One neighbour said, & # 8220 ; You can merely acquire every bit far as the garage. The lone manner to acquire to the house is by traveling through a 50-foot cement tunnel from the garage. The tunnel is patrolled by Canis familiariss, and the house is situated on a hill so he could see you coming for miles. & # 8221 ;

Because of J. D. Salinger & # 8217 ; s insisting on persisting his privateness and the willingness of his household and friends to help him in making so, small biographical information on Salinger is available, particularly sing his ulterior life. Furthermore, Salinger & # 8217 ; s wont of intentionally misdirecting manque biographers with false information further complicates the image ; nevertheless, some elements of Salinger & # 8217 ; s life are by and large accepted as true.

Rumors spread from clip to clip, that Salinger will print another novel, but from late 60 & # 8217 ; s he has successfully avoided promotion. & # 8220 ; I like to compose. I love to compose. But I write merely for myself and my ain pleasance, & # 8221 ; said Salinger in 1974 to a New York Times letter writer. However, harmonizing to Joyce Maynard, who was near to the writer for a long clip from the 1970s, Salinger still writes, but cipher is allowed to see the work.

Jerry Burt of Plainfield, N.H. , who was friends with Salinger in the sixtiess and lives near the writer, told The Associated Press that Salinger said in 1978 that he & # 8217 ; d written 15 or 16 other books. Burt said the books were seemingly hidden in a walk-in safe in Salinger & # 8217 ; s place. During a visit, he saw the safe unfastened, but said it was dark indoors and he couldn? t Tell if there were any books. & # 8220 ; He told me he had his finished manuscripts in at that place, & # 8221 ; Burt said. & # 8220 ; I didn & # 8217 ; t see them. Who knows now? He may hold burned them all. He may hold published them under another name. He didn & # 8217 ; Ts have any thought at the clip what he was traveling to make with them. J. D. loathes the corporate facets of publication. He has had his agents burn or throw away his correspondence.

Some of his plants include? A Perfect Day for Bananafish? , which introduced Seymour Glass, who commits self-destruction ; ? Franny and Zooey? ; ? Raise the High Roof Beam? ; ? Carpenters? ; ? Seymour: An Introduction? ; ? Nine Stories? , and? Hapworth 16, 1924? .

? The Catcher in the Rye? , the lone Salinger book that I have had the ple

asure of reading, has been coated in contention since it was banned in America after it’s first publication. John Lennon’s bravo, Mark Chapman, asked the former Beatle to subscribe a transcript of the book the twenty-four hours that he murdered Lennon. Police found the book in his ownership upon groking the psychologically disturbed Chapman. However, the book itself contains nil that could be attributed with taking Chapman to move as he did. It could hold been any book that he was reading the twenty-four hours he decided to kill John Lennon, and as a consequence of the fact that it was The Catcher in the Rye, a book depicting a nervous dislocation, media speculated widely about the possible connexion. This gave the book even more ill fame. So what is The Catcher in the Rye really about?

Superficially, Catcher is narrative of a immature adult male & # 8217 ; s ejection from yet another school. Holden Caufield, a adolescent turning up in 1950 & # 8217 ; s New York, has been expelled from school for hapless accomplishment one time once more. In an effort to cover with this he leaves school a few yearss prior to the terminal of term, and goes to New York to & # 8216 ; take a holiday & # 8217 ; before returning to his parents & # 8217 ; inevitable wrath. Told as a soliloquy, the book describes Holden & # 8217 ; s ideas and activities over these few yearss, during which he reveals a developing nervous dislocation, symptomised by his turns of unexplained depression, unprompted disbursement and by and large uneven, fickle behaviour.

However, during his psychological conflict, life continues on about Holden as it ever had, with the bulk of people disregarding him. Increasingly through the novel we are challenged to believe about how society positions each other. Does our society intentionally disregard our being and ever-present sense of isolation? And if so, when Caufield begins to examine and look into his ain sense of emptiness and isolation, before eventually declaring that the universe is full of & # 8216 ; hypocrites & # 8217 ; with each one out for their ain hypocrite addition, is Holden really the 1 who is traveling insane, or is it society which has lost it & # 8217 ; s mind for neglecting to admit the hopelessness of their ain lives?

Holden & # 8217 ; s runing cap seems to be a symbol of his individualism and his & # 8220 ; runing & # 8221 ; or seeking for significance in life. Though most people in his society would non have on such a cap because it was non stylish, Holden wears it because it is utile, with cushioned earpads for the cold, and waterproofing for the rain. The cap was besides used and non really expensive. This seems to bespeak that he has non bought into the mercenary value of society. Though this gives him an individualism that he so urgently is seeking for, it besides alienates him. In the terminal Holden gives the runing cap to his sister Phoebe. This seems to typify the passing on of something he has learned in his adolescence, something no school could of all time learn him, the valuing of individualism. Because he loved his sister so much, he wanted her to go in single herself, non merely another hypocrite in a bogus society. He determines that he is the reasonable 1 in the universe. Many people can place with Holden because we all feel in some manner isolated. This is the footing for the narrative. The reader identifies with Holden because he/she feels isolated every bit good. However, Salinger makes us rethink our relation to Holden when he describes diagnosed status.

The & # 8220 ; Catcher in the Rye & # 8221 ; is Holden & # 8217 ; s dream ; it is what he wants to go. It is the defender of artlessness and the inexperienced persons. The & # 8220 ; catcher & # 8221 ; symbolizes Holden & # 8217 ; s belief that artlessness is lost when one realizes the true & # 8220 ; phoniness & # 8221 ; of society. He wants to protect his sister and the other inexperienced persons from this phoniness. This thought is represented by the kids playing in a field of rye on the border on a drop. Holden would be the defender of the kids, catching them if they were of all time to fall off the border. Holden & # 8217 ; s want to be the & # 8220 ; backstop in the rye & # 8221 ; symbolizes his desire to set up a moral order, one that would exceed the false security of philistinism. He wants to salvage his sister from this value of society.

Holden is similar to his Godhead, J. D. Salinger, in many ways. Salinger, like Holden, although really bright, had problem with school. They were both kicked out of homework schools. Another manner that Holden is like Salinger is that they both exhausted clip in a mental establishment. Holden is really stating this narrative from interior of an establishment. Holden and Salinger besides both had sisters that they adored and respected. Holden & # 8217 ; s sister, Pheobe, is about the lone individual throughout the novel that he speaks really extremely of.

Salinger & # 8217 ; s plants frequently reflect his ain life. In his famed narrative & # 8216 ; For Esme & # 8211 ; With Love and Squalor & # 8217 ; Salinger depicted a exhausted American soldier, who starts correspondence with a thirteen-year-old British miss, which helps him to acquire a clasp of life once more. Salinger himself was hospitalized for emphasis harmonizing to his biographer Ian Hamilton. Twenty narratives published in Collier & # 8217 ; s, Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, and New Yorker between 1941 and 1948 appeared in 1974 in a pirated edition called & # 8216 ; The Complete Uncollected Stories of J.D. Salinger & # 8217 ; s. Many of the narratives reflect Salinger & # 8217 ; s ain service in the ground forces. All of his characters, Holden, his household, the Glass household, etc. depict facets of his ain life. In an interview in 1974, mentioning to his life Salinger stated, & # 8220 ; It & # 8217 ; s all in the books, all you have to make is read them. & # 8221 ;