In his novel The Catcher in the Rye, critics believe that Salinger portrays his post-war self through the character Holden Caulfield, yet because of Salinger’s solitary ways, none know for sure. Because of the extremely obscene language, rebellion towards the adult world, and apparent mental health issues, Holden Caulfield exemplifies the life of J. D. Salinger. Jerome David Salinger, born January 1, 1919 of father Sal Salinger, a successful Jewish meat importer, and mother Miria Jillrich Salinger, an Irish immigrant, lived with a very bright yet rebellious disposition (Garrett 201).
Salinger’s history remained hidden from public eyes, for when interviewers pressed for information on his childhood, “he has been known to spread rumors: he was a goalie for the Montreal hockey team” (201).
Salinger attended a private preparatory school in Manhattan called McBurney. At the end of his first year at this school, he flunked out. His father, very concerned for his son’s education, enrolled Salinger in Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania (202).
“One of his classmates remembered crawling through the fence with him after lights out to poach local beer taps” (202).
After Salinger graduated the military academy in 1936, he attended New York University, Ursivus College, and Columbia University (Nassa 389).
Salinger’s writing career took off in 1939 by writing short stories in Whit Burnett’s writing group at Columbia University. Burnett remembered Salinger as “a quiet student who made no comments and was primarily interested in playwriting” (Garrett 204).
The Term Paper on Types of Writing 3
Compare and Contrast This type of writing allows the writer to point out similarities and differences about topics, subjects or objects. Compare means to identify how your topics are alike or similar. You state what they have in common. On the other hand, contrast means to identify what is different about your your topic. When contrasting, you state what makes the topic, subject or object unique ...
Once Salinger finished his education, he dove head first into the real world. Following his career of writing in college, he worked as an entertainer on the Swedish Liner, M. S.
Kungsholen throughout 1941 in the Caribbean. After his tour on the Kungsholen, Salinger enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1942. He served in Europe during World War II, throughout most of the war, and became a staff sergeant. By the end of the war, he received five battle stars (Nassa 389).
Salinger’s early publishing began during war time through magazines like The New Yorker”. When he returned to America, he discovered that his name developed greatly as a well-known, up-and-coming author. His celebrity burdened him since the aftershocks of war maimed his ability to cope with such fame.
In 1951, Salinger published his first and only novel The Catcher in the Rye. Four years after the publication of the controversial novel, the puissance of the limelight pushed Salinger to flee from Manhattan to a modest, hilltop cottage in Cornish (Sater Internet).
Despite the popular belief that he married a French physician and divorced in 1947, Salinger married 19-year-old Claire Douglas on February 17, 1959 and they raised two children together: Margaret and Matthew, only to divorce by 1967 (Garrett 201).
During his marriage, his interactions with others decreased amazingly: I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those dear mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any ***dam stupid useless conversations 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 conversation for the rest of my life. Everybody’d think I was just a poor dear mute bastard and they’d leave me alone. Sater Internet) Once he could no longer take the paranoia, Salinger ceased to produce fictional works for public consumption. Salinger found a “marvelous peace in not publishing” but the life in solitude only added to the famed author’s mystique and public image. Fans caused his image to thrive by speculating his behavior and spreading rumors. His fan base, larger than ever, viewed him as a crazy, paranoid man who would physically threaten any trespasser. The guests that Salinger’s fans rumored him to heed spanned a wide variety of personas: from a foreign lover young enough to be his daughter to a Middle-Eastern medicine man.
The Essay on Big Media’s War on Fan Websites
It seems like the fight between legal departments at major movie and TV studios and fan producers of websites has reached a fever pitch. In late September, the legal department of Fox TV sent out notices to cease and desist to two webmasters of fan "King Of The Hill" websites. Fox Primetime has cracked down on fan sites before, most notably those saluting "The X-Files." It boggles the mind why fan ...
In all reality, Salinger spent the majority of his time locked away in a concrete bunker with no windows, writing stories, which he hid in a vault that would never be seen by anyone until after his death. In memoirs later released by Salinger’s daughter Margaret and his past lover Joyce Mayzard, it would be revealed that the strangest of his stories would be based on solid fact. Even the people closest to Salinger observed nothing but murky ideas as to what he locked inside the secret vault.
Over the years, he hinted that various new stories and the completion of the Glass family saga remained hidden behind the concrete walls, yet the likelihood that the only writing to be found give evidence of Salinger’s mental stability fading away stands most probable. Many critics believe that once the vault opens fans “are going to be disappointed” (Sater Internet).
The book that plunged Salinger into the limelight, his one and only novel The Catcher in the Rye, holds the belief to be a literary self-portrait. The main character Holden Caulfield portrays an anxious, pubescent boy growing up during the post war period following World War II.
Holden acts as a corrupted teen, bounced from school to school, who flunks all of his classes. Once he flunks out of Pencey Prep, Caulfield decides to run away to New York to escape the phonies at Pencey. When he arrived to New York, he gets greeted by phonies of a different nature. He crossed paths with a diminished jazz singer, a young prostitute and her pimp, old family friends and girlfriends, teachers from the past, and two holy nuns while he avoids the arrival home until his parents receive a letter notifying them that their son failed.
Holden’s unfortunate mishaps with said phonies drive him into a spiraling depression to the point where he reaches out to his younger sister for help. At the end of the novel the reader can believe that Holden’s family institutionalized him for his depression and anger issues. Many people who read Salinger’s novel show signs of depression and/or anger issues following their readings. Salinger’s readers become taken over by Holden, they “speak of him as if they’d actually met him; they used his words, his way of speaking. They laughed as if he had made them laugh, because of what he said and how he looked at things” (Coles Internet).
The Homework on The Issues With Balancing School,work And Family
Having a family is a big responsiblity. When you add having three children with going to school and work, it can make life very hectic. Going to school and having a job takes a lot of work. Not only for the person who is dealing with all of these commitments, but for the entire family. They all have to work together as one unit to make it all not only possible, but successful. There are six ...
Because of the novel’s vulgar, obscene language, Australia and South America banned the novel, condemned by the National Organization for Decent Literature in Nevada, removed from public shelves in the sixties in three separate states, and removed from required reading lists in colleges and high schools across the United States (Thomas Internet).
Even as late as the eighties The Catcher in the Rye’s infamy grew as it gave Mark David Chapman motive to murder the acclaimed rock star John Lennon on December 8, 1980. Despite the novel’s snowballing discredit, Salinger’s fan base grew to new found heights.
Caulfield and Salinger share a mass amount of likenesses. Despite the fictional character being much younger than Salinger, they shared many of the same struggles. The pair both flunked out of high school, sent out to different schools, and suffered the mentally crippling effects of the post-World War II era. In different ways, Holden and Salinger secluded themselves from the real world. Salinger kept himself away from society in a concrete box with nothing but his mind to accompany him. Holden fled away from the world against his will in a mental institution with no company but his memories.
