post #6

I have been an awful procrastinator about keeping up with my blogs. It's an extremely terrible and unforgivable habit at times, and I know it's no longer acceptable! I've been extremely thorough in my thoughts and ideas about my paper, and I have kept up with my reading, but being that I am behind on my blogs and I'm sorry to say this will mess up the process a bit. I have finished all three of my books at this point, but I wrote extensive blogs on the first, but my next two books will only have one post each. I realize this is inconsistent, but in no way was my thought process as messy and out of order as my blog.

Anyways, After finishing Franny and Zooey, I read Nine Stories, which was very interesting and thought provoking in many ways. While reading Salinger's second book of short stories, I found that Salinger is consistent in his use of certain reoccurring characters and themes.

Salinger is fond of using the same characters repeatedly. "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" chronicles the story of Seymour's suicide, Seymour was a character mentioned several times in Franny and Zooey, his suicide impacted the protagonists greatly, but he was only mentioned.

Also, in "Down at the Dinghy", in Nine Stories, BooBoo, another member of the glass family, becomes the main character instead of a footnote. Salinger seems to be very fond of certain characters, or even different characters with very similar personalities and ideas. He often makes children very witty, men very unsure of themselves and intellectual, and women very careless and vain. This is a theme that follows all three of his novels, and it makes me wonder about Salinger himself. I think there may be several parallels to Salinger's own life and the lives of his characters.

Also, from reading Nine Stories, I've noticed the reoccurring theme of struggling intellectual youth. The story "Teddy", simply follows the life of a boy genius and the incompetent adults around him. Take the following conversation between the child star and an adult: "'But I could get out of the finite dimensions fairly often when I was four." Teddy said, as an afterthought. Nicholson nodded. 'You did?' he said. 'You could?'" (p.189)

Children are ever present in Salinger's novels. In many of his stories they are seen as superior to the adults, and often are looked to for inspiration. For example in "For Esme with Love and Squalor", a witty young girl inspires a melancholy soldier to write. Youth is an important reoccurring theme in Salinger's novels, and I believe it would be a good topic of discussion in my thesis. I also want to explore a bit more about Salinger's life to find parallels between him and his characters, as I feel this would also be a good point of contribution to my thesis.