Jerome David Salinger

1. Jerome David Salinger Fursaeva Alena, Piskareva Anastasia

2. Biography. Early years • Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York on January 1, 1919 • He had only one sibling, an older sister, Doris (1912–2001) • In youth, Salinger attended public schools on theWest Side of Manhattan • In 1932, the family moved to Park Avenue, and Salinger was enrolled at the McBurney School a nearby private school.Salinger had trouble fitting in at his new school and took measures to conform, such as calling himself Jerry. His family called him Sonny • At McBurney wrote for the school newspaper and appeared in plays. • He "showed an innate talent for drama", though his father opposed the idea of his becoming an actor.

3. His parents then enrolled him at Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania • Salinger began writing stories "under the covers” (at night), with the aid of a flashlight". •  Salinger was the literary editor of the class yearbook, Crossed Sabres. He also participated in the Glee Club, Aviation Club, French Club • New York University in 1936, but dropped out • 1938, Salinger attended Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania (dropped out) • 1939 - Columbia University School of General Studies.

4. In 1942, Salinger started dating Oona O’Neill, daughter of the playwright Eugene O'Neill. Their relationship ended when Oona began seeing Charlie Chaplin, whom she eventually married. • In 1941 Salinger began submitting short stories to The New Yorker, but seven of Salinger's stories were rejected by the magazine • During the World War II Salinger arranged to meet with Ernest Hemingway, a writer who had influenced him a lot • Hemingway was impressed by Salinger's writing and they writers began corresponding • Salinger's experiences in the war affected him emotionally. He was hospitalized for a few weeks for combat stress reaction after Germany was defeated,and he later told his daughter: "You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live."

5. In 1947, the author submitted a short story titled simply "The Bananafish" to The New Yorker. William Maxwell, the magazine's fiction editor, was impressed enough with "the singular quality of the story" that the magazine asked Salinger to continue revising it. He spent a year reworking it with New Yorker editors and the magazine accepted the story, now titled "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", and published it in the January 31, 1948 issue •  "Bananafish" was also the first of Salinger's published stories • On July 16, 1951The Catcher in the Rye was published  • Salinger died of natural causes at his home in New Hampshire on January 27, 2010. He was 91

6. A Perfect Day for Bananafish • Characters: • 1. Muriel Glass, Seymour's wife, is a shallow young woman who faces pressure from her parents to leave her husband in Florida and return to New York by herself. In the story's opening paragraph, the narrator pokes fun at Muriel's annoyance at the long-distance lines being "monopolized" by the advertising men staying in her hotel. Her activities while she waits for her mother to call (tweezing a mole, removing a spot from a suit, moving a button on her Saks blouse, polishing her nails) suggest her preoccupation with her own appearance. Her answering the telephone only on the "fifth or sixth ring" again accents her vanity. • Muriel's "defense" of Seymour while talking to her mother also suggests much about how she views her husband. Her telling her mother that she let Seymour drive suggests a faith in her husband and a willingness to put his past indiscretions (or worse) behind her. When she speaks of the psychiatrist she met in the hotel, however, she reveals what seems to be a lackadaisical attitude toward Seymour's problems: she does not recall the doctor's name ("Rieser or something") and says that she did not really discuss Seymour's troubles with him because the bar was too noisy. The ease with which she then shifts into a conversation about this year's fashions and her hotel room (which is "just all right") suggests a lack of empathy with her husband's plight.

7. 2. Seymour Glass • With his almost nonchalant suicide at the story's end, Seymour has become one of American literature's most enigmatic characters. "Why did he do it?" is a difficult question with which many readers and writers struggle; an overview of the story, however, suggests a few possible routes of inquiry about Seymour's past and present problems. • The reader learns (from Muriel's conversation with her mother) that Seymour served in the United States Army and spent an undisclosed amount of time in a veteran's hospital, presumably for psychiatric evaluation or recovery. Since the story was first published in 1948, the reader can assume that Seymour (like his creator) saw action in World War II that affected him in terrible and unspoken ways. The reader also learns that Seymour tried to crash his father-in-law's car into a tree, attempted some "business" with a window (also presumably self-destructive), said "horrible things" to Muriel's grandmother about "her plans for passing away," tried to do "something with Granny's chair" and harmed "all those lovely pictures from Bermuda." Obviously, Seymour is preoccupied with death, a preoccupation that becomes a reality in the final paragraph. • Seymour's war experiences have left him so badly shaken that he searches for some form of purity in what he sees as a dangerous and corrupt world. Thus, his only two friends at the hotel are Sybil and Sharon: two little girls whose innocence amuses and refreshes Seymour. His parable of the bananafish serves as a possible metaphor for Seymour's troubles: like the bananafish, he has glutted himself full of war and death to the point that he can no longer "get out of the hole again." (This, however, is only a partial explanation for the meaning of the bananafish story: another possibility is that Seymour has been so moved by the purity of Sybil that he can no longer return to a world of Muriels and psychiatrists.) His kissing Sybil's foot is a gesture of respect, a gesture that she (in her innocence) cannot understand, and his suicide is an even more dramatic one that, presumably, his wife will not understand.

8. 3. Muriel's Mother • Like her daughter, Muriel's mother is a woman concerned with Seymour and his problems, but aloof at the same time. On one hand, she voices concern over Seymour's problems and her daughter's safety; on the other, her proposed solutions to these problems involve Muriel abandoning her husband and taking a "lovely cruise" by herself. (Her adding that Muriel's father is "more than willing to pay for it," suggests she feels that solutions to psychological problems can be bought.) • 4. Dr. Sivetski • Dr. Sivetski is Muriel's family physician. Muriel learns that her father spoke to him about Seymour's mental illness and that Dr. Sivetski warned that Seymour may "completely lose control of himself."

9. Themes • 1. Alienation • The most obvious example of this state of affairs is the war, which destroyed a part of Seymour that he is only able to recognize in the two children he befriends at the hotel. Muriel is almost completely self-absorbed • Despite the fact that he married her, there is nothing in the story to suggest that Seymour can make any kind of real contact with his new wife: Salinger never puts them in the same scene until the very end, when Seymour (significantly) does not wake her up before killing himself. • Seymour quite possibly realizes that such innocence and freedom from the hypocrisy of adulthood has vanished from his own life—which leads to his decision to forsake that life, in favor of a better one elsewhere.

10. 2. Suicide • One reason could be that Seymour feels such despair at the thought of his own fall from innocence that he kills himself to prevent his soul from becoming more tainted. • Another possibility is the obverse: Seymour is, at heart, a child—but a child who (unlike Sybil) demands attention from his loved ones, to the point where his suicide is something like a temper tantrum at the injustices of the adult world. • Salinger's leaving the meaning of Seymour's suicide open to such wide avenues of interpretation suggests the ultimate impossibility of fully fathoming the mind of any person who willingly destroys him or herself.

11. The Catcher in the Rye The Catcher in the Rye is told from the first-person point of view of Holden Caulfield, a teenager living in New York City in the late 1940s. Holden's ambivalence about the adult world drives the novel's conflicts and provokes questions about human behavior.

13. Plot summary • In the beginning and in the end of the novel – from what is implied to be a sanatorium, Holden reflects on his adventures before the previous Christmas (from Saturday to Monday) • Saturday to early Sunday Holden leaves Pencey because he has been expelled from the school and feels disgusted with his teachers and peers. (Chapter 1) Holden rents a cheap hotel room in New York City, where he is assaulted by a prostitute and a liftman. (Chapter 9) • Sunday to early Monday Holden's date with Sally Hayes ends in a fight. (Chapter 15) Holden asks Carl Luce for advice, but the meeting ends in a fight. (Chapter 18)

14. Plot summary • Sunday to early Monday Holden walks to Central Park to find the ducks. (Chapter 20) Holden sneaks into his apartment to talk with Phoebe. (Chapter 21) Holden visits Mr. Antolini, leaving after Mr. Antolini appears to make a pass at him. (Chapter 25) • Monday Holden decides to hitchhike west and leaves a note for Phoebe to meet him. (Chapter 25) Phoebe and Holden walk to the carousel. (Chapter 25) Holden watches Phoebe ride the carousel, feeling so happy he could cry. (Chapter 25)

17. About the title • Holden describes to his sister his fantasy of being “the catcher in the rye,” which was inspired by a song he heard a little boy singing: “If a body catch a body comin’ through the rye.” • Phoebe tells him that the words are “If a body meet a body coming through the rye,” from a poem by Robert Burns. • Holden imagines children at play in a field of rye that ends at a cliff and says he would like to be the "catcher" who protects the children from falling. The symbol of the catcher in the rye shows Holden's ambivalence about becoming an adult.

18. Interpretation • The “catcher in the rye” takes the loss of innocence as its primary concern and can be understood as a metaphor for entering adulthood. • As Holden watches Phoebe on the carousel, engaging in childlike behaviour, he is overcome with happiness. • By taking her to the zoo, he allows her to maintain her childlike state, thus being a successful “catcher in the rye.” During this time, however, watching her and the other children on the carousel, he has also come to accept that he cannot save everyone: “If they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off.”

19. Meaning of the name • Holden - “hold on” • Caulfield can be separated into “caul” and “field” • Desire is to “hold on” to the protective covering (the caul) that encloses the field of innocence (the same field he wishes to keep the children from leaving). • Wants to remain true and innocent in a world full of, as he puts it, “phonies.” Salinger once admitted that the novel was semi-autobiographical.

20. The Caulfield family The Caulfield family was one Salinger had already explored in a number of stories that had been published by different magazines. Holden appeared in some of those stories, even narrating one, but he was not as richly fleshed out in them as he would be in “The Catcher in the Rye”.

21. Publication and reception • The novel, unlike the other stories of the Caulfield family, had difficulties getting published. • The Catcher in the Rye’s reception was lukewarm at first. Many critics were impressed by Holden as a character and, specifically, by his style of narration. • Salinger was able to create a character whose relatability stemmed from his unreliability—something that resonated with many readers. Others, however, felt that the novel was amateur and unnecessarily coarse.

22. Thanks for your attention!