Franny And Zooey And Frazey Analysis

In the beginning of J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Franny Glass is first introduced through her boyfriend, Lane Coutell, reading the letter that she wrote to him. In this letter, Franny repeatedly says “I love you”, complains about poets, talks about her hate for strong men and also questions her intelligence. This letter is important to the story as a whole because it foreshadows Franny’s behavior in the book. This is a glimpse into what leads her to have a mental, emotional, and physical breakdown, that she overcomes in the end. She has this breakdown because she became so worried about the opinions and actions of others. Franny is very critical of herself and others because of the influence her older brothers, Buddy and Seymour had. The letter presents Franny’s characteristics and how she will act later on in the book.

In the letter where Franny says “I think I’m beginning to look down on all poets except Sappho” (Salinger 5), this is foreshadowing how critical she is of other people and how she will display those critical feelings in the story. Franny thinks of poets as “just people that write poems that get published and anthologized” (Salinger 18) because she has such high expectations for everyone and herself. Franny points all of the little mistakes she and others makes because of her obsession with

She is “constitutionally against strong, silent men” (Salinger 5), but this is who Lane is. Franny does this same thing in criticizing him, when they are at dinner. She calls him a “section man” and discreetly describes him when she explains as section man as “a person that takes over a class when the professor isn’t there” (Salinger 14). Franny is incredibly critical towards someone that she supposedly “loves to pieces” (Salinger 4) because she wants everything and everyone around her to be