1. Introduction

lt;!--[if !supportLists]--gt;1.1 lt;!--[endif]--gt; Research background

1.1.1 About Jerome David Salinger

J.D.Salinger(1919~2010), a famous American novelist and short story writer, best known for his first novel The Catcher in the Rye written in 1951, which has become one of the two ”modern classics” in the contemporary American literature.(The other one is Ralph Ellison#8217;s The invisible Mon published in 1952)

Salinger had an unhappy childhood though he was in a rich family. When he was 15, he was sent to a military school in Pennsylvania. It#8217;s said that the novel The Catcher in the Rye describes the life of that boarding school.

In 1936, Salinger graduated from the military school and got his only diploma in his life. He also got in some other school, but he never finished even any of them. In 1942, Salinger joined the army and in 1944, he went to the battlefields of Europe where made him feel fear. In 1946, Salinger retired and returned to New York and began to focus on the writing. In 1951, Salinger released his first novel The Catcher in the Rye which obtained a great success.

1.1.2 About The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is about escape. Salinger#8217;s description of adolescent alienation and lose of innocence in the leading role Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read, selling around 250,000 copies a year. Such great impact is closely related to the social and historical background of the novel. In 1950s, as the winner in the Second World War, America got a lot of benefits from the war and then it became the richest and the most powerful country in the world.

Junior Holden tried to escape from reality when he was expelled from school. However his strength was so weak that he could not escape the limited world, but to be regarded as mental illness people and to be sent to the place of nursing homes to accept the treatment of psychological experts. For Holden, the final was a little tragedy and inevitable. Because he was so weak, fragile, sensitive and he was full of suspicion and mistrust to the world. He neither couldn#8217;t be a normal, healthy child to fit the social standards, nor became a distorted boy. From the novel, we can see his weakness. He wanted to escape all the time but to resisted the world such as the failure education system, his rude classmates or the social situation. His character is doomed to his failure in that society.