Seeing art remain utterly static from whom and where it came from over decades of analysis and adaptation is bizarrely unusual. The Mona Lisa has been exalted, stolen, and debated ad nauseam for its cultural substance. Shakespeare’s works have been dissected to bits in classrooms around the world. Even modern media still under the chains of copyright like Citizen Kane still gets parodied and adored by fans and critics alike. Their roles in society remain fluid and ever subject to changing perspectives or needs in society.
Conversely, there’s J.D. Salinger’s magnum opus The Catcher in the Rye. Following the modern, somewhat out-of-order narrative of sixteen-year-old four-time dropout Holden Caulfield trying to assemble some sense of his role …show more content…
If Chapman imagined that Lennon was a threat to the innocence of youth, he certainly took his time in doing anything about it. (Strashower)
To Chapman, at least through Strashower’s analysis, the only way for anybody to end up frozen in that museum with the Eskimos and birds was death, a concept both Chapman and Holden seem bizarrely detached from. To Chapman, “Allie … is the only character to come out unscathed” (Strashower), whereas to Holden, he can’t even realize Allie really is dead, refusing to take part in societal traditions like flowers at the grave, to the point of having Phoebe, the last remnant of innocence in his life, yell at him, screaming “’Allie’s dead—You always say that!’” (Salinger …show more content…
Born Jerome David Salinger, it becomes fairly easy to connect the author’s life events to the trauma and unique details about Holden’s journey, from being “the manager of the school fencing team” (McGrath), as Holden digresses early on when explaining how much of a failure he makes himself out to be, to being “something of a ladies’ man” (McGrath), although that most likely manifests only in Holden’s inner imagination that he himself rejects as a phony movie fantasy, to being “hospitalized for ‘battle fatigue’—often a euphemism for a breakdown” (McGrath), essentially the inspiration behind the glue of Holden’s narrative, that of a hospitalized boy trapped in a changing, horrifying modern world. Salinger actually “checked himself into a mental hospital. Not long after he left, he wrote the first story narrated by Holden Caulfield. "I'm Crazy" was published in Collier's in December 1945” (Kolitz), confirming a real connection for Holden as the self-insert for Salinger in various situations, helping explain his thought processes on the phony cheriness of the world in spite of its true chaos and celebrating the somewhat objectivist success of the individual, particularly in the catcher and Holden’s
Conversely, there’s J.D. Salinger’s magnum opus The Catcher in the Rye. Following the modern, somewhat out-of-order narrative of sixteen-year-old four-time dropout Holden Caulfield trying to assemble some sense of his role …show more content…
If Chapman imagined that Lennon was a threat to the innocence of youth, he certainly took his time in doing anything about it. (Strashower)
To Chapman, at least through Strashower’s analysis, the only way for anybody to end up frozen in that museum with the Eskimos and birds was death, a concept both Chapman and Holden seem bizarrely detached from. To Chapman, “Allie … is the only character to come out unscathed” (Strashower), whereas to Holden, he can’t even realize Allie really is dead, refusing to take part in societal traditions like flowers at the grave, to the point of having Phoebe, the last remnant of innocence in his life, yell at him, screaming “’Allie’s dead—You always say that!’” (Salinger …show more content…
Born Jerome David Salinger, it becomes fairly easy to connect the author’s life events to the trauma and unique details about Holden’s journey, from being “the manager of the school fencing team” (McGrath), as Holden digresses early on when explaining how much of a failure he makes himself out to be, to being “something of a ladies’ man” (McGrath), although that most likely manifests only in Holden’s inner imagination that he himself rejects as a phony movie fantasy, to being “hospitalized for ‘battle fatigue’—often a euphemism for a breakdown” (McGrath), essentially the inspiration behind the glue of Holden’s narrative, that of a hospitalized boy trapped in a changing, horrifying modern world. Salinger actually “checked himself into a mental hospital. Not long after he left, he wrote the first story narrated by Holden Caulfield. "I'm Crazy" was published in Collier's in December 1945” (Kolitz), confirming a real connection for Holden as the self-insert for Salinger in various situations, helping explain his thought processes on the phony cheriness of the world in spite of its true chaos and celebrating the somewhat objectivist success of the individual, particularly in the catcher and Holden’s