Franny And Zooey

Essay by PaperNerd ContributorHigh School, 11th grade April 2001

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In the story book Franny and Zooey by JD Salinger, Franny Glass is beginning to have doubts about the meaning of life. When her brother Seymour dies, it leaves her questioning her own existence. She turns spirituality in search of a solution. She becomes obsessed with a book called The Way of the Pilgrim, in which a Russian peasant finds inner peace by repeating a simple prayer over and over again, until it literally becomes a part of him. Franny tries this procedure herself, until it leads to a nervous breakdown. Both Franny's brother, Zooey, and Franny's mother are worried sick over Franny, but both have considerably different approaches to handling the situation. As Franny lay on the couch, Zooey tries to coax her to let go of what happened to their brother, and live her life.

Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City, NY on January 1, 1919, to a Jewish father, Sol Salinger.

His sister, Doris Salinger, was 8 years older than Jerome was. He went to school on the West side of Manhattan, soon after failing. He was then sent to the Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania. There he wrote his first stories. After graduating, he attended the summer session at NYU. He then went to Vienna to learn the Polish ham business. When he soon returned, he entered into college again at Ursinus College, where he wrote the column "The Skipped Dilemma."� His first published story, "The Young Folks,"� appeared in the March/April, 1940, issue of Story. He was drafted into the army in 1942. On D-day, June 6, 1944, he landed on Utah Beach with the Fourth Army Division. He was assigned to interrogate captured German and French civilians to identify Gestapo agents. While in France, he met Ernest Hemingway. After the war, Salinger was hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, but still continued to write and publish stories. When he returned to New York in 1947, he signed a contract with The New Yorker as a storywriter. At this point in his life Salinger desired isolation. He left Greenwich Village and moved to Tarrytown, New York. In 1951, After publishing The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger went to Europe to avoid the publicity, then spent a year traveling in Mexico. In 1955, Salinger