J.D. Salinger: His Life And Wr Essay, Research Paper

J. D. Salinger s life shows an uncanny resemblance to his literature. Even within his most well known, and most socially accepted piece, The Catcher In The Rye, there are hints of his life. The simplest plot in the book resembled Slinger s own life to a tee. Salinger s Nine Stories was no exception. The most elementary knowledge of Salinger s life could lead to a connection between him and the book. Nine Stories, and The Catcher In The Rye are good examples of how Salinger uses his own life to draw inspiration for his Writings.

Born in New York in 1919 as Jerome David Salinger to an Irish Catholic mother, and a Jewish father, Salinger was troubled by the fact that he was half Jewish, especially when he fought in World War II. Salinger was very close with his mother, but in turn he had a very cold relationship with his father, (Morrill).

His father, Sol, owned a business of importing meat and cheese from Eastern Europe. He pushed his son to make money and achieve high social status. He also hoped that he would take over the family business. Salinger made a trip to Poland by his father to see the other end of the meat business that his father wanted to push him into. The slaughterhouses disgusted him so much that he decided at that moment to choose a different career. This conflict with his father ran so deep that when he died Salinger did not even attend his funeral.

As Salinger grew, he flunked out of several schools, public and private, and finally ended up at a military school. He enjoyed the school, and liked the structure and discipline that he was taught.

Throughout his school years, Salinger was quite a loner. He had friends, and was not a complete outcast and yet he still was quite a lonely person. He would have friends in school, and even become quite close with them, but when Friday night came and the boys were going out drinking, Salinger would just as soon stay home.

Although he enjoyed his schooling at Valley Forge Military School, he portrayed it as a hellhole in his book, The Catcher In The Rye, (Morrill). This may be due to his violent and traumatic experiences in WWII.

Soon after Salinger graduated from military school, he joined the army, and fought in WWII. Salinger was a member of the Twelfth Infantry Regiment. Salinger saw hundreds of his fellow soldiers killed in battle. After four month of fighting, and after the liberation of Paris, Salinger checked himself into a military hospital, and went Section 8. After a few weeks of hospital treatment he was released, and soon after was discharged for psychiatric reasons. The fact that Salinger was Jewish also had some impact upon his mental well-being.

Now Salinger is not a particularly disturbed individual, but after experiencing the trauma of war, he understandably had a very strong aversion towards war, and towards the army in general.

After reading The Catcher In The Rye, it could be gathered that Salinger made the military school look so bad because of his aversion from the military. This book may be a kind of venting of feelings for him. Salinger may have been very angry about his military experience while writing this book, and making the military school look bad was just his way of getting revenge for what happened to him in the war.

Holden Caufield is very similar to Salinger in another very obvious way; he is a loner. Holden seems to have friends, but most of the book is written in Holden s thoughts. He never has very much interaction with other characters, and this is very similar to Salinger s life.

As previously stated, Salinger is a loner, and as of present he is a recluse. He lives out in the boondocks away from society, and out of reach of the media. In my opinion, Holden is the character that Salinger would have liked to be. Holden didn t like the army, kept to himself for the most part, and seemed to have a good sense of who he was. Salinger on the other hand didn t learn to not like the military until he saw his buddies shot down by the enemy, and he was forced into recluse because of unwanted publicity Salinger was not a recluse prior to the writing of The Catcher In The Rye, but he still led a very private life and wanted to be left alone just like Holden. I imagine that Salinger also considers many people to be phonies .

Salinger wrote some characteristics for Holden that are directly opposite from Salinger s own personality. Holden often refers to himself as yellow, or cowardly. He would always be able to think of the perfect thing to say but would never have the guts to say it. Salinger on the other hand is a very straightforward person.

Again, Salinger is a recluse. He lives away from society, and has little interaction with society. This is what Holden would like to do. He talked about moving to Canada, and starting a life there away from society and the city life that he knows. Salinger acted upon this notion instead of just talking about it, and is probably happier because of it.

I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and for my own pleasure, (Jerome David Salinger (1919-)). This is a very famous quote made by Salinger in 1974 to a New York Times reporter. This is another prime example of how Salinger does what he wants and not what other people want him to do.

In Nine Stories, Salinger uses his life as inspiration just as much as he does in his novel. From the first story, A Prefect Day for Bananafish, Salinger discretly inserts incidents from his own life into the story. Even the title of this story is of some significance.

Salinger s father used to hold him in the water and tell him to look for bananafish, (Morill). This may be an insignificant fact, but this story also has another twist that is very interesting.

Seymour is the main conflict/character of Bananafish. He is considered crazy, is very misunderstood, and at the end of the story he commits suicide. According to Joyce Maynard, Salinger too commits suicide, he is just doing it very slowly. (Morill). Like Seymour, Salinger is very misunderstood. He is even more misunderstood because of his reclusive ness. Ms. Maynard may very well be the only person who thinks Salinger is slowly committing suicide, but it definitely is a legitimate theory, especially from someone who knew Salinger personally.

The next story that had a big connection to Salinger s life was Just Before the War with the Eskimos . In this story, Ginnie Mannox is coming home from playing tennis with an acquaintance of hers named Selena Graff. Ginnie didn t really consider herself to be friends with Selena, but the impression was given that Ginnie didn t have too many friends so she ended up playing a lot of tennis with her. Throughout the story Salinger does an excellent job of creating tension between the girls, but at the same time manages to make them seem friendly to each other. This is the type of relationship that Salinger experienced in his childhood and adolescent years.

Salinger didn t have too many close friends when he was in his teenage years. He had friends that he would socialize with at school, but outside of school he was very much a loner and kept to himself for the most part. The relationship between these two girls is in direct connection with Salinger s life as a teenager.

The next story was called The Laughing Man This story was about a group of boys that lived in New Your City. Every school day they would be picked up by a bus and would go play sports until it got dark out. Their leader/bus driver would stop on the side of the road everyday and tell them the story of the laughing man. The kids got very into the laughing man, and were anxious to hear the story everyday. In the middle of baseball season the leader met a girl and started to take her to games; He even let her play in a few. The leader and the girl suddenly stopped talking, and when that happened the laughing man in his stories died. This crushed the boys, and almost forced some of them to tears.

Salinger, like the boys in the story grew up in New York. This story is most likely a reminiscence of childhood trips to the ball-field. Since Salinger did grow up in New York and did participate in sports as a child this story is another excellent example of how Salinger relates his stories to his life.

Down at the Dinghy, is a short story that doesn t have much relationship to Salinger s life until the end. A small child is playing on a boat near his house and his mother comes outside to talk to him. The boy then tells his mother that the hired help in the house has called his father a big sloppy kike. (p.86, Nine Stories) the young child had overheard the help calling his father names, but luckily the father was not near, and the child did not know what the phrase meant.

This relates to Salinger s relationship with his father. In the story, the father was not there, just as Salinger s father was not there for him when he was a child. Even though the father doesn t come up until the very end of the story, it is still leads to a very big connection in Salinger s life.

Throughout the entire book, in all the stories Salinger adds some kind of strange ending. The last sentence in all of the stories didn t relate to the rest of the story at all. For example, in Down at the Dinghy, the end reads: they didn t walk back to the house; they raced. Lionel won.

This is a very clever ending, but it is only clever because it makes no sense at all. Lionel probably did win the race, but it s completely irrelevant to the rest of the story. An ending should sum up the story, and give closure to the main conflict. This ending did neither, and yet it worked so well.

Even something so insignificant as an ending to a story relates to Salinger s life. Like Salinger s life, his endings make no sense to an outsider but to him it probably is all quite simple. Many people want to know more about Salinger s life, and how he lives. This information is for him to know and for us to ponder over. These endings may mean absolutely nothing, but someone who is an avid fan of his work may look into things a little deeper. Even with all characters and plots aside, these stories all share a strong resemblance to their author s life.

J.D. Salinger leads a mysterious life. Not many things are known about him, but even his mysterious lifestyle cannot hide the fact that his writings are strongly related to his own personal life.