Suffering Awareness

The present dissertation attempts to use the Marxist theory to analyze the theme of The Catcher in the Rye. It starts with a discussion of the American teenager's growth after World War Two and will discuss in detail the author's suffering awareness.In the dissertation, alienation and quest are closely intermingled themes to be analyzed from three sections: Section One indicates that social background arouses suffering awareness through the introduction of American cultures and social history; Section Two reveals that alienation aggravates suffering through the elaboration of alienation; Section Three concludes that love and understanding alleviate suffering through the protagonist's odyssey of quest.To sum up, the dissertation explores Salinger's intended message through the teenager's psychological odyssey; it points out Salinger's indignation and lament resulted from the loss of goodness and moral paralysis in the alienated society. But, Salinger, instead of sinking into pessimism, is in desperate quest of goodness and faithfulness. So, The Catcher in the Rye, to some degree, is an epoch-making work, for it diagnoses the symptoms of the era. It is a work of representation of alienation and a work of anti-alienation. This dissertation hopes to benefit the new understanding of the study on Salinger and his works.