Catcher In The Rye: A Literary Analysis

Similar observations are made by academic writer and author Sarah Graham in her book entitled Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. In this book, Graham addresses a variety of reading techniques, themes, and comparisons/contrasts in regards to Salinger’s most popular novel, but she specifically addresses the main theme of Holden’s attempt to escape the phony 1950’s materialistic focused society surrounding him. Graham begins her take on this theme of escaping society with a chapter on Holden’s rebellion: “Developing the theme of rebellion, Holden’s visit to Mr. Spencer confirms that he is opposed to the conventional ideas that school and society encourage in order to promote stability” (34). During this visit to Mr. Spencer’s house that Graham
refers to, Holden has a conversation that is extremely telling of his need to rebel against the typical societal standards that he grew up surrounded by. Graham comments on this conversation by writing, “Spencer, Holden’s History teacher affirms the Headmaster’s view that ‘Life is a game’ that should be played by the rules, but Holden silently disagrees: ‘Game my ass” (Graham 35). The fact that Holden replies with such a sarcastic, opinionated response showcases his need to rebel against the so-called advice of his elders (in this case his educated teacher) and refuses to follow the path that is set out for him. This scene represents Holden’s inability to appreciate any rules within the life he is living, and he wants to live it his own way rather than the expected way of the adults before him. Ultimately, Holden represents the rebellion against the 1950’s American Dream stereotype.
He sees adults and friends who succumb to these norms, and he outwardly looks down upon them and call them phonies of society. As an author, J.D. Salinger created Holden Caulfield as a character to challenge the expected norms of this time period, and as a whole, the novel addresses the challenge of accepting societal norms and diverging from norms to create a different lifestyle. For Holden, although many other reasons attribute to his refusal to accept society, he mainly believes that the 1950’s American Dream culture valuing marriage, family and education is not one that he wishes to be associated with. It is also crucial to note that by the end of the novel, Holden ends up in a mental institution, the location from which he narrates Catcher in the Rye. This element of the novel is crucial to our understanding of Holden as a character; he seems to have rejected the values and views of the post-war era so intensely, he is literally unable to function and has been
institutionalized.
This critique of the American Dream is not limited just to the literary genre of fiction, but rather, it expands across many genres of 1950’s American Literature, including dramas and plays.
The 1950’s released many plays and playwrights that would be remembered and studied for years to come, but Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night specifically addressed the theme of rebelling against traditional American norms in a very interesting way. O’Neill, born on October 16, 1888, was one of the most admired playwrights of all time. His talent and love for writing provocative and moving plays such as Long Day’s Journey Into Night directly represent many of the trials and tribulations he faced in his own upbringing. He was the son of Mary Ellen O’Neill and James O'Neill, a stage actor whose career got cut short due to having children; a haunting similarity to James Tyrone’s character in Long Day’s Journey Into Night (bio.com). According to O’Neill’s online biography, “after Eugene was born, his mother developed an addiction to morphine. She had been given the drug to help her through her particularly difficult childbirth. Ella was also still grieving for Eugene's older brother, Edmund, who had died of the measles three years earlier” (bio.com). Obviously, O’Neill took inspiration from his own troubled life of growing into a troubled family in the early 20th century, and created a play that would later become world renowned for its challenging story line and enticing
characters. When O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night was published in the early 1950’s, he happened to be hitting upon a culture in which audiences would respond to his portrait of a family that tried to live and embrace the “American Dream,” but to no prevail. Many women of the 50’s were able to relate to O’Neill’s creation of a mother-figure who felt trapped by her own household and family, and many father-figures related to the societal pressure to become the “breadwinner” of the family. Therefore, his exposition of a troubled family attempting to put on a front in an attempt to appease the American Dream became even more enticing for readers and theater goers in the United States. Long Day’s Journey Into Night opens with a scene in the family room of the Tyrone’s summer home, and O’Neill wastes no time getting into the many issues that surround the Tyrone family. Most notably, in just the first act, we learn that Mary, the mother and wife of the play, has recently returned from addiction treatment. After this issue is revealed, the Tyrone family’s problems seem to constantly progress and add up: Edmond is suffering from Tuberculosis, Mr. Tyrone is revealed to be a partial alcoholic and overly frugal man, and Jamie Tyrone Jr. is a “failure” according to his father and is still living at home and cannot hold a job. The list of issues within the family seems to never end, but every issue seems to focus around Mary’s morphine addiction, and the fact that she is still suffering and letting her addiction affect the rest of her family. Despite the fact that each Tyrone family member is obviously flawed in some way, the Tyrone’s desperately wants to become a “normal” family who embrace the American Dream ideal. In order to fully grasp O’Neill’s attempt to showcase a family who is struggling to put on the front of the “perfect” American family, it is crucial to analyze each troubled member of the Tyrone family, as O’Neill does throughout majority of the play. Mary Tyrone, arguably the main character in O’Neill’s play, does not satisfy the 1950’s expectation of the woman being the home maker. In the 1950’s, women were expected to live and exist for their families, and mothers were considered the “heart of the household” (Dunar 24). Although Mary clearly attempts to be the mother figure the Tyrone family desperately needs, she puts on the front to appease the 1950’s society’s standards, similar to Salinger’s concept of being phony, when in reality, her children and family are the exact reason behind her suffering. Mary ultimately blames her husband and children for her lost dreams and morphine addiction. Although Mary claims that she loves her family and her husband, she makes several “dreamy, far-off tone” statements (103). These statements make the reader believe that her pressures to have a family and husband forced her to give up on her dreams of becoming a Nun or a concert pianist. Mary addresses her lost dreams about half-way through the play:
They were a musicians hands. I used to love the piano. I worked so hard at my music in the convent – if you can call it work when you do something you love. Mother Elizabeth and my music teacher both said I had more talent than any student they remembered. My father paid for special lessons. He spoiled me. He would do anything I asked. He would have sent me to Europe to study after I graduated from the Convent. I might have gone – if I hadn’t fallen in love with Mr. Tyrone. Or I might have become a nun. I had two dreams. To be a nun, that was the more beautiful one. To become a concert pianist, that was the other. (103)
Mary goes on to say that she has not “touched a piano in so many years. I couldn’t play . . . even if I wanted to. It was hopeless. One night stands, cheap hotels, dirty trains, leaving children, never having a home – She stares at her hands with fascinated disgust” (104). This entire scene is extremely telling of the life that Mary could have had if it were not for her family. She speaks about her previous lifestyle with great love and admiration, but also with immense regret, almost as if she wishes her life would have turned out differently than it has. Mary specifically mentions how she “might have gone” to Europe to study her passion if she “hadn’t fallen in love with Mr. Tyrone” and spent her time appeasing his career by staying in “cheap hotels” and “never having a home,” hinting that she gave up her dream for Mr. Tyrone’s American dream instead (103). Clearly Mary is not content with her life of raising a family, and as a 1950’s house wife, Mary follows American society’s imposition to raise a family, and this belief should be enough to make her, and any woman for that matter, happy.
Even though Mary blatantly states that her life might have turned out different if it was not for her husband, her tone throughout this entire scene is the expression of her bitterness towards Mr. Tyrone for “forcing” her away from her true passions, and into a family she arguably never wanted. Mary Tyrone makes numerous remarks about regretting her children, and her children being the cause of her suffering and sickness: “Even traveling with you season after season, with week after week of dirty rooms of filthy hotels . . . I still kept healthy. But bearing Edmund was the last straw. I was so sick afterwards” (35). Worse, she blames her oldest child, Jamie, for the death of Eugene, their middle child: “I’ve always believed Jamie did it on purpose. He was jealous of the baby. He hated him . . . I’ve never been able to forgive him for that” (36). As a wife and mother in the 1950’s when so many families were being created to fit the societal norm within the “American Dream,” Mary Tyrone viewing her children as the source of suffering would have been strongly looked down upon.
To support the claim that mothers of the 1950’s were socially encouraged to fully embrace motherhood, academic critic Andrew Dunar writes, “the mother in the 1950’s was supposed to be the ‘backbone’ and the ‘glue’ that held all family members together’” (28). Quite oppositely, Mary seems to be the very person who is tearing the Tyrone family apart. Although she resents James for removing her from her passions in life, and resents her children for causing her sickness, the glaring issue that Mary suffers from revolves around a morphine addiction. Throughout the entire day of Long Day’s Journey into Night, Mary becomes more and more intoxicated with morphine. We learn that she has struggled with the addiction for years, ever since James, her extremely frugal husband, hired an “ignorant quack of a cheap hotel doctor” to prescribe her morphine after childbirth. Specifically, Mr. Tyrone reminds Mary of her constant struggle with her addiction in the past, and one specific evening when her addiction got out of hand and impacted the family in a negative way: “I hope you’ll lay in a good stock ahead so we’ll never have another night like the one when you screamed for it, and ran out of the house in your nightdress half crazy, to try and throw yourself off the dock!” (123). James clearly blames Mary for causing havoc in the Tyrone household, and he holds her accountable for their growing problems, rather than praising her for creating a successful family unit. Mary’s inability to embrace motherhood and all that it represented in the 1950’s speaks to her inability to be the mother figure who was so highly valued in regards to the American Dream.