by Elisa C.
I’ve attempted to write why I loved J.D. Salinger’s writings multiple times. I’ve tried to find quotes from The Catcher in the Rye and recount discussions, but everything I write seems all too dramatic and, in Holden Caulfield’s words, phony. I don’t think I had one notable moment with the book, nor did I truly love Holden when I read it. It was only later that I realized Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and my first-period English class pushed me to take the time to read and understand literature.
I realize now that liking The Catcher in the Rye or Holden Caulfield, in general, is not seen as a particularly good thing. Still, if we dismiss Holden entirely, labeling him as just another privileged, whiny teenager, I believe as readers, we both see and miss the point of the novel entirely.
Taken from an excerpt from my 9th-grade final English paper, I wrote, “Holden uses the phrase ‘people never notice anything’ (13) to describe his disappointment in humanity. And as a reader, I was confused about why Holden had these thoughts; Holden is often perceived as someone who does not notice or care for others’ feelings. He was cruel to many other people and had no right to criticize them. But, through Holden’s mismatched internal and external state, I was able to see my self-centeredness. Because Holden and I are constantly focused on the wrongs with society and how others view us, we become unaware of how our own distracted states could hurt others.”
This is why I’ve come to love Salinger’s writings. They take the idea of adolescent suffering and highlight them in their most honest form. Salinger is not supposed to explicitly explain all of Holden’s reasons for doing and thinking things; he’s just meant to document the truth behind what Holden does. To grasp what Salinger is trying to say, we just have to take the time and ask ourselves if we see any parts of ourselves in his characters and what our judgments of these individuals say about us.
Since The Catcher in the Rye, I’ve read several other Salinger stories. The ones I focus on in my capstone are “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” Franny and Zooey, and Raise High the Roofbeam Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction. My capstone project centers around “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” which Salinger fought to get published in The New Yorker and was his first published story after fighting in the war. Seymour Glass, the short story's main character, explains to a little girl, Sybil, about these creatures called bananafish, which live in the ocean and eat bananas. But, if they eat too many bananas, they will get “banana fever” and die.
Just a brief introduction about Salinger: he was raised by a Christian mother and Jewish father. And he himself dabbled in numerous other religions such as Zen Buddhism, Catholicism, Vedantic Hinduism, Christian Science, and Dianetics. As a teenager, Salinger failed out of high school and was sent off to military school, where he would later fight in World War II and return with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Through my capstone, I’ve studied the significance of the bananafish in “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” and how Salinger’s life may give us clues as to what he was trying to say. Was Salinger asking a question or proposing one for his readers? Was literature a means of exploration or demand to society?
Taking ideas from William Weigand’s “J. D. Salinger: Seventy-Eight Bananas” journal article, the bananafish may serve as a blueprint for the main characters of Salinger’s stories. The main character in each story suffers from an internal issue caused by an overabundance of experiences. As the bananafish refuses to differentiate between the good and the bad and let go of any experiences, it becomes more bloated and susceptible to suffering. I was interested in this topic because Weigand argued that Salinger suggested a solution for the bananafish was to return back to society.
Rather than overwhelming oneself with isolation in one’s thoughts, Salinger was saying that an end to his characters’ suffering was to start acting by accepting some parts of society. At the beginning of the bananafish’s healing process, they will feel a little “phony” by refusing themselves or past ways of thinking. But, to avoid banana fever, individuals must try to get out of their minds and into the real world, where they allow themselves to accept the society they live in.
I’m not convinced Salinger completely believed this idea he might have been proposing. After The Catcher in the Rye (1951) became popular, Salinger became a recluse and rejected society, denying interviews and withdrawing from public life. After presenting my capstone to a faculty panel, a teacher asked if I thought writing for Salinger was, therefore, his means of action. I think Salinger's writing may have been his way of rejecting the bananafish inside of him and purging all of his thoughts. These stories post-Catcher, specifically his Nine Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963), may have been Salinger’s way of testing the different lives he could have lived. There are numerous parallels between Salinger’s history and those in his stories. He probably put parts of himself into his characters and attempted to answer his own “what-if?”s. By living through his characters, Salinger was removing the bananafish from inside of him with writing as the healing medium.
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