Contemporary Literary Criticism | Salinger, J.D. - Salinger’s Works

Salinger’s Works

• SYNOPSES
• CRITICAL SUMMARY
• ART IMITATING LIFE
• THE PLACE OF SALINGER’S WORKS IN LITERARY HISTORY
• ADAPTATIONS OF SALINGER’S WORK
• NOTES

SYNOPSES

BOOKS

The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951.

The narrator, seventeen-year-old Holden Caulfield, now recuperating in a psychiatric institution, tells the story of the “madman stuff”¹ that happened to him the preceding Christmas after he flunked out of Pencey Preparatory School in Pennsylvania. Emotionally fragile, Holden has never recovered from the death of his younger brother, Allie, who died from leukemia four years earlier. Holden’s narrative begins at the time of his preparations to leave Pencey. He makes a brief visit to his history...

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