Alienation In Pursuit Of Spiritual Growth

In western countries after the Second World War, Mammonism prevails along with the material abundance. People pursue more material enjoyment than spiritual values. In addition, the psychic wounds caused by the war make people universally haunted by spiritual emptiness, emotional apathy, and the loss of frontier individuality. So all forms of alienation appear under such condition.Alienation is centrally the idea of something being separated from or strange to something else. Presented in literary works, it refers to character's estrangement from dominant social culture, social groups, or self.J. D. Salinger is an alienated writer, who alienates himself from the dominant society. He is unsocial in character and unconventional in behavior. His reclusion can be regarded as the behavioral presentation of his alienation. Salinger also portrays many alienated characters in his The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories. These alienated characters include children, adolescents, and adults. They alienate themselves from dominant social culture, groups, and even their self. By studying these characters' alienation, the author of this thesis intends to answer a series of questions: why does Salinger alienate himself from the dominant society? How to prove that the central characters in the two works are alienated protagonists? Why do these characteristics alienate themselves from the dominant society and how do they relieve themselves from alienation? What does Salinger want to express through characters' alienation?The author of this thesis intends to interpret Salinger and the alienated groups in The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories from autobiographical-historical perspective. According to the research, the author of this thesis draws some conclusions as following:First, both Salinger and some characters in The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories are alienated people, who alienate themselves from dominant culture, groups, and even self.