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Psychological traumas surface in Paula Vogel’s portrayal of Li’l Bit and Uncle Peck in How I Learned to Drive (1997). Theorizing Peck’s fixation on Li’l Bit is necessitated by his drive to recapture his innocence—an innocence he lost as a young man during WWII—this thesis will seek to explain how Drive can be viewed as a love story by revealing the motivations behind Li’l Bit’s sympathy for Uncle Peck. Recognizing war trauma as the fundamental catalyst for both the action and the tone of the play situates Drive in a territory not yet explored. Furthermore, this thesis will explore the dubious relationship between war-traumatized veterans and pedophilic tendencies by examining this theme in other literature, particularly, J.D. Salinger’s “For Esmé—with Love and Squalor” (1950) and Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita (1955), thus, placing Drive at the nexus in which American drama and war literature coalesce.

This thesis examines how the sociopolitical contexts of the mid-twentieth century influenced readers’ interpretations of Mark Twain’s novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye,” two controversial novels that were subjected to censorship activity. In particular, this thesis will focus on the reception of both of these novels during the 1950s and 1960s, a period marked by two major events: The Civil Rights Movement and the youth counterculture phenomenon. In this study, the reception of “Huckleberry Finn” will be analyzed in the context of the civil rights movement, using news articles published in the 1950s and 1960s to illustrate how the different interpretations of readers prompted school board directors to ban the book from junior high and high school reading lists.

In this thesis I aim to analyze the modern classic book The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (1951) in an attempt to determine whether one can categorize it as a Young Adult book or not. The novel itself was published as an adult book, but my research shows that it gets both mentioned and used as an example as a novel that has influenced Young Adult literature since its publication. Furthermore, it features many of the criteria that define Young Adult literature. The aforementioned criteria are as follows: death, drugs, war, sex, alcohol, politics, suffering, gender roles, (sexual) liberation, and absent or unaware parents and adults. In addition, Young Adult literature usually uses a first-person perspective, which has led to discussions about whether the said narrator can be trusted or not. The Catcher in the Rye demonstrates many of these criteria – death, war, sex, alcohol, suffering, and parental figures and their roles. In my analysis, I focus on death, parents and the narration, specifically whether or not Holden Caulfield can be classified as an unreliable narrator. By researching the history of Young Adult literature – when it first appears as a genre and how the events come about – as well as looking into the criteria that defines the genre, I perform my analysis by doing a close reading of The Catcher in the Rye. By using my newfound facts, I discuss whether or not the novel can be categorized as Young Adult literature.

Cette thèse se propose de relire l’œuvre de J. D. Salinger à la lumière de l'usage que fait l'écrivain des motifs du détour et du suspens, tous deux caractérisés par un fonctionnement ambivalent. L'écriture de Salinger, fondamentalement introspective, prend par bien des aspects des allures de quête, à la fois identitaire et littéraire. L'exploration de l'identité qu'elle met en scène implique notamment un détour par l'altérité, auteur et personnages revêtant un certain nombre de masques, au risque parfois de refuser de s'en défaire ensuite. L'auteur se devine également derrière ses pratiques d'écriture, dont la dimension obsessionnelle révèle un profond désir de maîtrise de son travail, qui l'amène parfois à se perdre dans ses textes et s'apparente finalement davantage à une attitude de fuite qu'à la recherche d'un idéal littéraire. Dans l’œuvre salingerienne, le détour participe d'une réflexion sur les concepts de norme et de déviance, ainsi que sur le thème de l'errance. D'abord perçu comme néfaste, il apparaît à terme comme un moyen privilégié d'accéder à des révélations insoupçonnées. L’éloge de l'écart que l'on observe sur le plan thématique trouve un écho dans l'utilisation par les personnages-narrateurs de stratégies narratives louant les mérites du détour. La digression, le fragment, le renvoi aux marges du texte ainsi que l'intertextualité – autant d'outils interrogeant la distinction généralement établie entre le centre et la périphérie, entre l'accessoire et l'essentiel – révèlent toute leur efficacité lorsqu'ils sont employés pour aborder des sujets qui échappent aux cadres traditionnels. Le décentrement du texte passe également dans certains cas par un recours à la métatextualité qui permet notamment à l'écrivain de prolonger et de mettre en scène la réflexion qu'il mène sur son écriture. Les encarts métatextuels, parce qu'ils viennent interrompre temporairement la narration, peuvent aussi être considérés comme des manifestations du suspens dans le texte, suspens d'abord employé par Salinger pour interroger les notions de progression et de stase. Son œuvre présente simultanément une réflexion sur la résistance au passage du temps et la notion d'entre-deux, l'auteur affectionnant particulièrement la représentation de périodes liminales, à la fois lieux du mouvement et lieux hors du temps. Par ailleurs, l'écrivain s'attache par diverses stratégies narratives déployées dans ses textes à suspendre l’interprétation du sens, qui se révèle mouvant, différé, voire tout simplement retenu, lorsqu'il ne s'abîme pas dans l'absurde ou le non-sens. Ce faisant, Salinger interroge la validité de toute interprétation, plaidant pour une approche plus intuitive de l'art, et s'efforce du même geste de repousser indéfiniment l'achèvement de son œuvre, trahissant par là l'urgence éprouvée de mettre à distance l'angoisse mortifère qui l'obsède. / The aim of this PhD research is to try to shed new light on J. D. Salinger's work by focusing on the writer's use of two inherently ambivalent motifs, namely detour and suspension. Salinger's writing, partly because of its introspective nature, often takes on the appearance of a quest, both personal and artistic. It stages the author's exploration of his own identity, which implies exploring otherness through the use of masks worn by both characters and writer, who sometimes refuse to later put them down. The study of Salinger's writing practices shows an obsessional dimension indicative of his powerful desire to control every aspect of his work, sometimes leading him to fully immerse himself in the world of fiction – an attitude in the end more evocative of evasion than of a search for literary perfection. In Salinger's work, the representation of detours is the starting point of a reflection on the concepts of norm and deviance, as well as on the theme of wandering. While it first appears as harmful, the detour motif eventually shows its potential for the revelation of unsuspected truths. Deviation is thus presented in a positive light, and its effectiveness as a writing strategy is repeatedly praised. Such stylistic devices as digression, fragmentation, or intertextuality are called upon to question the classical distinction between center and margins, between what is essential and what is incidental. Those devices are most effective when it comes to dealing with topics unfit for traditional approaches. The author’s will to decenter the text also involves the use of metatextuality, which serves the writer's exploration of his own writing and its staging for the reader's benefit. Metatextual passages, as they temporarily bring the narration to a halt, may also be seen as manifestations of suspension. In his work, Salinger first uses suspension to question the notions of progress and stasis. His texts invite the reader to engage in a reflection on the characters' resistance to the passing of time as well as the notion of in-betweenness. Indeed, the author has specialized in the depiction of those liminal periods in the lives of individuals, which are characterized by change and an out-of-time quality. Moreover, the writer makes use of different stylistic devices to suspend the reader’s access to the meaning of his stories. In most of them meaning remains unstable and unsure, whether elucidation is deferred or simply refused to the reader, who is also confronted to manifestations of the absurd or even utter nonsense. Salinger thus challenges the value of interpretation, pleading for a more intuitive approach to art, and makes sure he indefinitely postpones the completion of his own work, in the same way that his characters develop strategies to postpone their confrontation with death.

J.D. Salinger's "Hapworth 16, 1924," his last published work, is notorious for the initial critical silence it received, as well as the subsequent general consensus that it was a text to revile if not avoid. This thesis proposes that while "Hapworth" is a difficult and perplexing piece, there is a good deal about it that deserves if not outright praise, then a close critical re-examination. Assuming the "author" of the story is not the seven-year-old version of "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" suicide Seymour Glass, as the story purports, but his grieving younger brother Buddy, who has spent the years since his brother's death trying to come to terms with it. "Hapworth" is Buddy's final--and perhaps finally successful--attempt to do so.

This Diploma thesis deals with the character of Holden Caulfield, the main protagonist of J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye, identifying him as a liminal character. It is concerned with the term liminality and inbetweennes. It focuses on evidence of his inbetweennes by means of the examples from the novel itself. It illustrates the examples of his position between childhood and adulthood by way of some of Holden's manners, behaviour and talks.

This thesis explores the use of language in J.D. Salinger’s “For Esmé—With Love and Squalor,” “A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” and Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters. It establishes a narrative pattern in which sensitive individuals such as Seymour Glass and Sergeant X are isolated by the insensitivity of the superficial modern world, attempt to communicate their concerns to others through an exchange of language in material forms, and ultimately find relief in silence. By analyzing various examples of linguistic artifacts and the impact they have on both sender and receiver, this thesis identifies criteria for successful communication as well as reasons for the failure of language which may be useful for the study of these and other works by Salinger. This thesis also considers the intersection of binaries such as silence and noise, and the ways Salinger presents them both thematically and formally.

The Master's Thesis deals with the theme of coming-of-age in American literature. The aim of the theoretical part is to provide theoretical framework and the subsequent examination of common narrative strategies and themes characteristic of this specific genre. We will focus more closely on the three key themes of identity, sexuality and death. In the practical part of this thesis these main themes and their use will be examined in selected novels of American literature; Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and Jeffrey Eugenides The Virgin Suicides.