Catcher In The Rye And The Laughing Man Essay

The Laughing Man and The Catcher in the Rye are both fictional works by JD Salinger. The Laughing Man is a short story about a young boy in the Comanche Club where the Chief, a law school student, tells stories; The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about Holden Caulfield, a teenager struggling to come to terms with all the phoniness in the real world. The Laughing Man is narrated in the first person by an unnamed narrator, who is looking back at a period of his life when he was nine years old. As the story goes on, it becomes obvious that the Chief, by telling the narrator and the other Comanches about The Laughing Man, is in some ways describing his own life. One literary element that both works feature is a strong theme. In particular, Salinger examined the themes of

The Comanches allow the Chief to escape into a world where the realities of his life can be avoided. However, by the end of the story the Chief is unable to escape from the realities of the world when his relationship with Mary comes to an end. In other words, he can no longer escape. Holden also mentions escaping society and going to the woods in a cabin somewhere. Holden is trying to escape the world that he sees as phony. However, when Phoebe insists that either he stay or she goes with him, Holden decides that he doesn’t want to escape anymore.

Sadness is a theme in both The Laughing Man and The Catcher in the Rye, however, it is more pronounced in the latter. In The Laughing Man, the Chief becomes very sad because he has to break up with his girlfriend. This sadness results in the death of The Laughing Man, which results in the sadness of the children. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden never seems to be happy. To quantify this: the word depressed and its variations appear 50 times in the novel. Happy appears just seven times. It is safe to say that sadness is a major theme in The Catcher in the