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Catcher In The Rye: Trouble In Society

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Trouble in Society America up to the 1950’s endured many challenges such as World War II. During the 1950’s American society needed to reconstruct itself in order to overcome these traumas. Unfortunately because these changes were so difficult, Americans dearly wanted to turn a blind eye to reality. As a response to this disillusionment, writers such as Allen Ginsberg started the Beat movement to bring change in American Society. Catcher in the Rye provides space for Salinger to expose hypocracises while Holden explores to find his place in this pretentious society by representing the little buddha achieving zen. Within Catcher in the Rye, Salinger not only writes about the changes of American society, but also the effects on the individual …show more content…

The “need” to conform lead to a desire in conservative values. As a result, individualism was greatly undermined. A big conservative value was the stress for women to stay home and look after their husband. Legendary composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein mocked this image in his opera Trouble in Tahiti. In Bernstein’s opera he refers to the affairs done by the husband and his secretary, while his wife stays home and prepares dinner. The issue brought up in the opera is that the lives of everyone at home and work have become separated. In Catcher in the rye, Holden asks Sally to live with him and travel but Sally stresses the importance off the “traditional male role”. It’s not until Holden becomes an adult within society that Sally promises to Holden that “There’ll be oodles of marvelous places to go” (Salinger 213). For Holden this is impossible because growing up and conforming to society was his biggest fear. This was also a big fear for Allen Ginsberg, an activist in the Beat movement. Although Salinger was not associated with the Beat movement, there is a strong connection between Salinger and the movement. The biggest similarity between Salinger and Ginsberg is the stress for the individual. In Ginsberg's poem Ginsberg’s nonconformism; America is ran by “responsibility”, that “Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s serious

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Salinger, is also a very lonely character who loved to ostracize himself. In the documentary, “Salinger”, we find out that as a married man who had a child, Salinger would go off into his own “barn” that he would spend days writing in. The constant spending of time in the barn, took it’s toll on his daughter, whom didn’t get many chances to spend time with her father. Another example of Salinger’s ostracization from the world is shown, when we are told about how after writing his book, “The Catcher In the Rye” he avoided the media completely and didn’t want fame for his work. He even went a far as to completely shut out everyone who knew him before and live an entirely new life, that did not include his family.

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