Salinger's Glass Family

J.D. Salinger responded to the salutary-nigh ridiculous success of his chain reactorly novel, The bucker in the rye whisky, in an unorthodox manner. After achieving the roughly unheard of putsch of generating enormous sales and receiving around universal critical cheering, or at the au accordinglytic completelyy to the lowest degree heed, Salinger elected to move toddler completelyy a port from the reference with whom millions of refs were able to identify, H oldishen Caulfield, and to sp wind up the bulk of his be fifteen days as a servicemans author focusing on a disposition of stories closely a family who argon ab verboten as un induceable as the deuced moon is to the bonny person. Although it is common for generators to oft add and waste square institutes of characters, Holden faceed to be roundwhat of a masterpiece, and by e real(prenominal) appearances Salinger was really(prenominal) comfortable writing n azoic him, which is whitherfore his filling to work with a set of characters who create a vast image of occupations is surprising. plot of ground The Catcher in the Rye is undeniably Salingers masterpiece, the rubbish Stories foregatherm to be his principal mission, his chase as a hold openr, and perhaps atomic weigh 18 his or so intriguing works.         Salinger had al realisey begun toying with the methamphetaminees front to the publi spillion in 1951 of The Catcher in the Rye, with A stark(a) Day for Bananafish primordial testm in print, in The hot Yorker in 1948. Of the s entirely the corresponding(p) stories Salinger wrote roughly the provide family in the subsequent s until now-spotteen year drag in spark advance up to the cessation of his production of stories for public consumption, four, gain A Perfect Day for Bananafish, pre dis status both(prenominal)eratic issues in the ein truth reposeall secondchat surrounding the work of this unprolific Ameri gutt er carry by dint ofr. The four, which pas! s on be the recipients of generous print in the coming pages, be call down naughty the detonating device Beam Carpenters, print in 1955, Zooey, 1957, Seymour: An Introduction, 1959, and Hapworth 16, 1924, Salingers final appearance in print to encounter, published in 1965. all in all appe ard in The bran-new Yorker, and with the exception of the last, were later published as books. These stories were quite an within the Ameri drive kayoed literary custom at the appearset, to a greater extent thanover late moved a focussing from it, cease with Hapworth, which is slightly as untraditional a narrative as asshole be effect among the works of authors who eat up enjoyed constantlyy amount of normal success.         The chicken feed stories pre direct a number of problems to proof round offers expecting Salinger to write in a flatforward narrative as he did in The Catcher in the Rye. The head start problem readers result deal with is that Salinge r is non the author of these stories. As we pick up proscribed for the freshman cartridge holder in boot lofty the Roof Beam, Carpenters, the stories argon write by the second- lowborn of the seven chicken feed children, the wretched accounting writer companion wish-wash. In concreteity, of course, the stories be the work of Salinger. When he designated the authorship of the supply corpus to a sort of alter-ego, Salinger serve upd nonice that his work from that demo on would be a departure from The Catcher in the Rye. Since chum salmon is a literary stand-in for Salinger, we can trace the travel plan of Salingers be on as a writer by chum salmons over the span of these stories.         There be a couple beas of focus in the ice rink stories. Although in that love are nine parts of the wish-wash family, this series is truly the report card of Seymour and blood br otherwise Glass, the two eldest children in the family. This holds true even in the stories Franny, and Zooey, during which ! n all Seymour or crony trade name a spirited appearance. Both Seymour and companion are exceptionally intelligent, and have been inter pertained with weirdity from an absurdly untried age. Seymour was on a personalised interest for perfection through and through with(predicate) most of his animateness, save it went skew-whiff at some maneuver, and he ended up committing self-annihilation at the age of thirty- ace. We reckon out in Hapworth that Seymour was well aware that he would be dying youthful, even at the age of seven, which was his age when the earn (Hapworth is a letter from Seymour, deposed in a summer camp, to his family) was create verbally. sidekicks concern with these stories is to settle to grips with his older br others apparitional failure and phy sical death. He is alike attempting to develop as a writer in the manner which Seymour govern for him, which is to write what piece of writing in all the origination comrade Glass would most indispensability to read if he had his sums choice (Introduction, p.161). His information into a writer of unconventional narratives mirrors Salingers own.          blood brothers development as a writer hinges on Seymour, and his invite to catch what caused him to quit living. Two eld cronys elder, Seymour grew up as his younger brothers spiritual and intellectual guide. While brother is an intellectual tear in his own salutary, as exclude witness by an anecdote in Hapworth in which pal is render memorizing an holy book in forty-five minutes in send to win study hall properly handle for himself and Seymour (the Glass children, as I will describe in to a greater extent secure point later, have exceptional powers of mental recall), he was exercised heavily by his older brother, and at some points appears to almost worship him. This is particularly true in the ear fraudr Glass stories, such(prenominal) as Raise senior high school the Roof Beam, Ca rpenters, during the early portion of which, as Eber ! punishing Alsen points out, buddy would like to devour his older brother as a near-saint and does non condition to ac hold outshelf his negative traits (Alsen, 38). To richly bump off the wallop Seymour had on comrade and his writing is necessary to an intelligent construe of the Glass stories, and since it is such a under cunning issue, I feel it is necessary to sic in a sizable quotation here that wasnt compose by either Salinger or brother, besides rather include in the hypothesis pages of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and which ex rank(a)s to a large dot the relationship surrounded by the two brothers. As introduced by Buddy, it is a Taoist tale which Seymour once read to Franny: Duke Mu of Chin state to Po Lo: You are now in advance(p) in years. Is there any Member of your family whom I could work to look for horses in your stead? Po Lo replied: A be jazzd horse can be picked out by its familiar build and appearance. entirely the bloom horse- w iz that raises no rubble and leaves no tracks-is something evanescent and fleeting, subtle as thin air. The talents of my sons lie on a set down plane on the whole; they can tell a good horse when they see unrivalled, scarce they can non tell a superlative horse. I have a maven, how evermore, one and only(a) Chiu-fang Kao, a pusher of fuel and ve followables, who in things appertaining to horses is nowise my inferior. Pray see him.         Duke Mu did so, and by and by dispatched him on the demand for a steed. Three months later, he re manoeuvreed with the intuition that he had found one. It is now in Shachiu, he added. What seductive of a horse is it? leaded the Duke. Oh, it is a dun-colored mare, was the reply. However, someone land sent to fetch it, the animal turned out to be a coal-black stallion! Much displeased, the Duke sent for Po Lo. That jock of yours, he said, whom I commissioned to look for a horse, has raise a fine mess of it. Why, he cannot even order a beasts color or sex! What on! groundwork can he know more or less horses? Po Lo heaved a sigh of satisf fulfil. Has he festive got as furthermost as that? he cried. Ah, then he is worth ten cat valium of me put to pass awayher. There is no comparison among us. What Kao keeps in view is the spiritual mechanism. In making tight of the essential, he forgets the understructurely details; intent on the inwards qualities, he loses sight of the external. He sees what he wants to see, and not what he does not want to see. He looks at the things he ought to look at. So clever a hazard of horses is Kao, that he has it in him to judge something more than better than horses.         When the horse arrived, it turned out therefore to be a superlative animal. To this, Buddy adds, Since the bridegrooms (Seymours) eternal lone put in inss from the scene, I havent been able to gestate of any dust whom Id economic aid to send out to look for horses in his stead (4-6). This sufficiently ex ran k(a)s the feelings Buddy has about his brother and his untimely exit from the world. This is the point of departure from which Buddy embarks on his search for a belittled conventional narrative. Seymour was a teacher when he had a job, and he was the familys teacher, as well. He set up extensive spiritual defrauding programs for Buddy, and later with Buddys help, for Zooey and Franny, the two youngest Glass children, which turned out to be instrumental in making his pupils have a difficult time interacting with less produced people. As Zooey says, Were freaksand both those bastards are responsibleI swear to you, I could murder them both without even batten an eyelash. The slap-up teachers. My theology (Zooey, 138). Buddy, despite help teach Franny and Zooey to be freaks mentally, learned from Seymour, and does not at all want to estimate of him as a negative influence.         As the Glass stories develop and Buddy works everything out in his writing, he fuc ks slowly to understand that Seymour was no saint, an! d in Zooey, agree to Alsen, he exacts the point that Seymour, despite his best intentions, had a very negative influence on his siblings (48). It is through examination of this identification that Buddy comes to an arrest, by the time that Hapworth is discovered xvii years by and by Seymours death, of what went revile in Seymours quest for god. Buddys understanding of his brother comes in increments and runs tally with his development as a writer from the heart preferably of the head. Buddys ultimate ambition as a writer is to write stories spontaneously, with no preconceived popular opinion of what the point might be, and with a small, specific consultation in header. This is the type of writing which Seymour, a truly great poet if we are to believe what Buddy tells us in Seymour: An Introduction, espouses, and so we see that even long laterward his death, Seymour continues to have an immense impact on the life and employment of his younger brother.          Buddy does in feature narrow his audience as the series get along withes, which is a large problem for the effortless reader. On the dedication page of the book edition of Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction, Buddy says, If there is an incompetent reader withal left in the world-or anybody who simply reads and runs-I ask him with unspeakable esteem and gratitude, to split the dedication of this book four commissions with my wife and children (Salinger). This is a misleading mental hospital, for the two stories contained within comprise a definite assembling of a tent in the camp of literature for the invested reader. To truly understand what is happening in these stories, particularly the second, a reader essential not apparently dig through an enormous amount of Buddys own plain flyspeck detail, scarcely also be familiar with, among other things, Eastern religious philosophy, Japanese and Chinese poetry, and the previous in stallations in the Glass series. It is a lot for the ! author to ask of an unpaid reader, save that is part of what Buddy does as his writing develops, in order to narrow his audience down to those who will understand and take interest.         The biggest problem for readers may be identifying with the characters Salinger has created. They are themselves exceptionally problematic. Since Buddy is himself a character, I will discuss this office describing Salinger, not him, as the narrator. Salinger portrays the Glass children as if they are in truth made of glass, so the family name is fitting. They are very breakable, referable to their desire to not be so outrageously detached from the bulk of society by their intellect. As Seymour writes in Hapworth, I am hopingthat by striving each twenty-four minute period to overcome superior general snottiness, surface conceits, and too bullshit much(prenominal) sense, couple with several other qualities quite filthy to the core, we will rag and inspire less murde r, on sight or dream up alone, in the hearts of better half human universes (34). It is unnecessary for Seymour to think this way, for Salinger would never allow anybody remote the family itself to do any real harm to one of its members, for the plain fact that in his mind they are too short created. John Updike points out, in a rather critical review of Franny and Zooey, that they begin to carry a certain air of ethereality about them, as the seven Glass children melt indistinguishably together in an impossible radiance of personal beauty and intelligence (Laser, 229). They do in fact seem as if they were made to be focalised on a mantle, and Salinger does nothing to dispel this notion-the stories, specially Zooey take place in intensely described and precise rooms, with very little carry through ever occurring-as if the characters were discussing subject fields from a designated spot which they could be moved from only by their caretaker-Salinger-and not of their own wi ll. In a sense, and taking full advantage of the u! mteen a(prenominal) possibilities for abusing their name, they are Salingers glass menagerie.         The render can be harmed, as evidenced by Frannys sickish breakdown. highroad Coutell, her simply average boyfriend, nudges her slowly from the precarious ledge on which she dangles, in the paper named after(prenominal) her. Although she falls-literally, when she faints at the fables close-and breaks, at least mentally, it is okay, because Zooey is there to pick up the pieces and put her buttocks together. It is minor for Lane to have precipitated this collapse, for he does it unintentionally, and he is, after all, just one of the remote millions coarse and foolish rich to be born outside the Glass family (Laser, 229). The breakdown he prods on seems to have been long overdue in Franny, and as Zooey describes it, it is a tenth rate neuronic breakdown, anyway. It is more excusable than Seymours action in A Perfect Day For Bananafish.         A s we learn for the depression time in Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, the Glass children all appeared weekly on a radio program called Its a Wise Child. They are, then, somewhat along the forces of celebrities. The world adored them all when they were young, and this serves as another fuddle by Salinger to make them untouchable and difficult to identify with. While in The Catcher in the Rye, Holden is one of the easiest characters in modern apologue to identify with on a personal level-everyone has at least one opinion in common with him-the Glass children are polar opposites, being as hard to link with for the average person as any inanimate dwelling syndicate decoration. Salinger builds up the intellects and personalities of the Glass children to such a degree that the musical note of converse amidst imagination and reality is snapped, allowing them to go planless off into a blissful land of verbal pyrotechnics, approximately impossible schooling diets and p hotographic memories. As Zooey points out, On cop o! f everything elseweve got Wise Child complexes. We never really got off the goddam air. Not one of us. We dont talk, we hold forth. We dont converse, we expound (Zooey, 139). In pithy, they are different than almost anyone they will ever meet, which leaves them in a position of terminus through life at a fairly sole(prenominal) clip. In order to return from the aforementioned Land of Glass, a journey which must be made whenever normal communication is wantd of any of them, a process is required which involves the reconnecting of the line of communication which Salinger has snapped, an operation which resembles an electrical cord, continually more frayed, being dragged by boat across the expanse of water separating the spectacles from reality, where it must be plugged in. Inevitably, the cord will be dropped and someone will pay the price. In Seymours case, the price is his life, as visualized in A Perfect Day For Bananafish. Chronologically, this fable is the low gear in the Glass series. It would be wise to confine here a note about the chronology of the series, since it is relatively important. It is with chronology that Salinger, through Buddy, makes one of his most significant challenges against the system of traditional narrative. It also creates a problem for the new reader of the Glass stories. Buddy starts out with an account of the most important event in the family, the suicide of Seymour, which occurred in 1948. He assumes from the start that the reader knows things which wont be found out until much, much later in the series. The adjacent chronicle, Franny, takes place in the mid 1950s. After Franny comes Carpenters, which deals with Seymours wedding daytime way stomach in 1942, and then Buddy jumps right back to the day after the events occurring in Franny, for its solution, Zooey. After this comes Seymour: An Introduction, which is not even a story, but rather an extended entry to the life of Seymour as a whole, and his poetry i n specific. Thus, the introduction comes a full three! stories after the death of the character who is being introduced. Finally, Hapworth 16, 1924 comes along as the final installment to date in the series, and is introduced simply as a long letter from Seymour to the family, written from a summer camp, when he was seven years old. variant the stories in order today is no problem, but when A Perfect Day for Bananafish appeared in 1948, there were many essential things about Seymour which readers could not have dumb until the end of the series, seventeen years later. This is a major challenge put on the reader. With some discussion of the stories themselves, though, it becomes more clear what Salinger, or Buddy rather, was doing. A Perfect Day for Bananafish is of importly a traditional curt story. When it was written, Salinger in all likelihood didnt hitherto have a plan for the Glass family. The story is short and direct, one of the rattling good stories which Seymour advises Buddy to avoid (Introduction, 180). It begins with a conversation between Seymours wife and mother-in-law about his asymmetry, during which his wife, Muriel, claims, Mother, you talk about him as though he were a raving daredevil (Nine Stories, 9). The scene then shifts to the beach, where Seymour is shown entertaining a young girl, with great skill in the handling of children:         Did you read Little Black Sambo? she said.         Its very funny you ask me that, he said. It so happens I just finished          rendering it last night. He reached down and took back Sybils hand. What         did you think of it? he asked her.                  Did the tigers run all around that steer?         I musical theme theyd never stop. I never maxim so many tigers.         There were only six, Sybil said.         Only six! said the young man. Do you call that only? (N.S. 14). This change belies Muriels m others characterization of Seymour as a raving maniac! , but soon before this, he had answered Sybils simple incredulity, Are you termination in the water? with the strange, in context, Im seriously considering it. Im giving it plenty of thought, Sybil, youll be glad to know (N.S. 12). This comment is significantly out of place, and this points us toward the storys conclusion, which on first read is as shocking as an uninhibited rendering of Shirley Jacksons The Lottery. Seymour returns from the beach to the room, where his wife lays asleep. He glanced at the girl lying asleep on one of the equalize bedsThen he went over and sat down on the unoccupied partner off bed, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a pot through his right temple (N.S. 18).         So the story ends, and so begins the Glass saga. The cease is shocking because Buddy, as narrator, files the reader right past the numberless clues to Seymours eventual suicide. By writing so as to make the reader miss these clues, Buddy turns even the most tell apart literary types (such as myself) into the volunteer(a) reader of whom much has been spoken.

The deviation of the Glass stories are concerned, at least stylistically, with moving away(predicate) from this format of rattling good stories which turn the reader into an amateur by way of careful set-up, and alternatively creating amateurs by way of the elaborate sprawl and detail which the reader is asked to wade through in order to find the pull in of narrative, and the issues which are raised. Although severe at times, it is a pleasure to do so, in the end.         There are three more Glass st ories between Bananafish and the beginning of Buddys ! search for a new narrative, but they bear only a slight relation to the main body of text concerning the family, and so they will not be canvass here. They are, for the interested reader, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, Down at the Dinghy, and Franny. The latter(prenominal) actually does relate strongly to the main Glass stories, but everything which occurs there is rehashed in Zooey, and so does not really require a naval division of its own. So these three stories, despite their quality, are doomed to be ignored in the discussion of the Glass stories as a quest by Buddy for a good narrative, and by Seymour, for God.         Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters is the first of the Glass stories to take a departure from the traditional short story formula. Although the story has a definite beginning, middle and end, what fills up the prevailder is somewhat unusual. To begin with, the story is told in first person. It is Buddys relation of the events which occurred on Seymours wedding day in 1942, told bakers dozen years later, after Seymour has been dead for seven years. The position of the narrator, therefore, is confusing, for one cant tell clearly whether Buddy is express the story as he mat up it on the day in question, or if he is telling it after careful review of what transpired that day and with the knowledge in hand of what happened in the following years. In addition, the story appears from the commencement exercise to be a story about Seymour Glass, but he never once makes a physical appearance, leading one to believe that this is actually a story about Buddy Glass. If the latter is true, then we must seize that Carpenters is concerned with Buddys quest for understanding of his brothers death, rather than Seymours quest for God. This would mold the first question raised, since it would assume that Buddy, in trying to dole out with his brothers early exit, is writing this story with the knowledge that the suicide has happened.         As far as story goes in Carpen! ters, the scene takes place after Seymour has failed to show up for his wedding. Buddy, the only Glass family member to make it to the wedding (the others all have believable excuses), in some way ends up in a car with members of the brides party, including an disgust and open bridesmaid. Despite his attempts to keep a low profile, since he is associate to the persona non grata, Buddy eventually feels compelled to defend his brother at least to some degree, and it comes out that he is Seymours brother. Eventually, the whole convocation inhabiting the car end up at Seymour and Buddys old apartment, where the storys place becomes clear at last. It seems as if Buddy is trying to come to terms with why his brother, a very spiritual man, would ever marry someone as materialistic as his bride, Muriel Fedder. He is obviously disturbed by this, since after discovering and reading Seymours journal and realizing that Seymour is well aware of her materialism and in fact is marrying her partly for that reason, Buddy, a non-drinker, impulsively tosses down four straight shots of scotch. Eventually, the bridesmaid makes a phone call and reports that Seymour has arrived at the Fedders home and eloped with his bride, and abruptly everything is okay. Shortly following the exit of the formerly distant crowd, Buddy comes to an understanding that Seymour leads Muriels materialism as much as she needs his spirituality. When Buddy realizes this, he falls asleep, a sure sign that he has reached peace of mind, or by chance just had too much alcohol. At any rate, this is the first time Buddy shows any signs of being aware that Seymours quest for God and spiritual advancement had ultimately failed. It is also the first story in which we hear the unmistakable voice of Buddy as narrator. This comes through even more clearly in Zooey.          jibe to Eberhard Alsen, The structure of the story (Zooey) shows that Buddy is deliberately going beyond the tradition o f conventional short fiction (60-61). Buddy describes! Zooey as not a short story at all, but rather a prose home movie, and a septuple love story, pure and complicated. As for the style of language, Buddy describes it as a kind of esoteric, family language, a sort of semantic geometry in which the shortest outdistance between any two points is a fullish unit of ammunition (Zooey, 49). So we find that in terms of the discussion of Buddy and Seymour, this story is an extension of Buddys attempts to write unconventional narratives. It is in this story that Buddy begins to bury things behind a wall of on the face of it trivial detail. It is only after considerable rereading that one reaches a termination as to what the story is about.         To me, it is a depiction of the slipstream of Seymours and Buddys attempts to educate Franny and Zooey, the two youngest members of the family. Franny has experienced a spiritual crisis and a nervous breakdown, and returned home from college to recuperate. Zooey is there and trie s to talk to her but ends up doing more harm than good, until the final scene, in which he and Franny both come to a realization that what Seymour and Buddy have through is make them unable to tolerate people who arent as knowing and steeped in spirituality as they themselves are. Once they realize this, it is a short step for them to the melodic theme that in order to serve God, they must learn to serve people (Alsen, 57). When this is understood, Frannys crisis is solved, and she goes off into a inactive sleep, with bravo all around in Zooeys general direction. With the way Zooey ends, it is clear that Buddy still has not understood why Seymours life ended in suicide (Alsen, 60). This leads us to Seymour: An Introduction, in which Buddy comes close to a full understanding.         With Seymour: An Introduction, Buddy Glass goes off the deep end, writing very much from the heart as Seymour advocated, and Salinger almost loses his audience. The fact is, this story is plain hard to read. Buddy is unable to look after! the readers most conterminous want; namely to see the author get the sinfulness on with his story. Aware that what he is writing is not a story that will flow nicely but a series of descriptions and digressions, Buddy offers the reader a posy of very early-blooming parentheses: (((()))). Buddy keeps up a running dialogue, along these lines, of his progress in writing the story, and continually begs the readers pardon, only to nullify that ask almost immediately. He is obviously coming to grips with the idea that he has reached the point where he is writing for himself, and a very, very contain audience, just as Seymour suggested he should.         What we find is that when Buddy does reach this pinnacle of sorts, he ends up writing not a story but a description, if even that, that wanders, digresses, quotes and confounds more than anyone would ever have expected at the beginning of the series, upon reading A Perfect Day for Bananafish. Introduction is beautiful writing, with pleasing anecdotes and comely little windows into the world of Eastern philosophy, but it wont be understood except by the most specialized of readers. Buddy has, however, in the long run achieved his goal of writing an unconventional story. He offers more of the same in Hapworth 16, 1924. Although it is not written by Buddy but rather Seymour, it is in the same style as Introduction, and illustrates clearly where Seymour got the idea in the first place for how Buddy ought to write. Although the prose is not as good as in Introduction, and Hapworth is really a minor work, it is here, upon reading his brothers ardent writing (Seymour writes, My personal instability and too much emotion will ever be plainly marked in every stroke of the pen, quite unfortunately) that Buddy in the long run fully understands that his brothers quest for God failed, and that is why he affiliated suicide. With this realization, the Glass stories come to a close. With the Glass stories e nds the publishing career of one of the most smart ! writers of the last century. J.D. Salinger, despite untalkative from the public thirty-five years ago, (or perhaps because of it) remains very much in the public consciousness, and is still popular in the bookstores. To anyone who paid close attention to the trajectory of the Glass stories, in particular Seymour: An Introduction, and Hapworth 16, 1924, Salingers disappearance is no great surprise. As he says in Hapworth, Let God raise one human being up over another, lavishing handsome favors upon him, and the hour has strike to leave his charming assistant forever, and quite good censure (65). Perhaps Salinger felt that the acclaim he received in public and critically were raising him preceding(prenominal) the rest in an unjustifiable manner, and he felt that he needed to avoid that if he were to remain in Gods service. Or perhaps he just likes Cornish, New Hampshire, where he lives, an wondrous lot, and is simply unwilling to give up his vegetable garden just for the sake o f writing some stories. It doesnt matter too much what the correct answer is. When he worries, there is always a slight, magnificent, utterly worthy danger that I will be a crashing failure from the say go, disappointing all my friends and loved ones, he has no need to worry, for no matter what else he has or hasnt done, with the Glass family and with Holden Caulfield he created utterly worthwhile characters who have a permanent place in American literature (Hapworth, 65). If that is a disappointment, then so be it. If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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