Theme Research:Initiation In Nine Stories

Jerome David Salinger is an exceptional novelist in contemporary American literature. Adolescents who suffer from war-related trauma and precocious children are featured in almost all of his works. Among his works, Salinger depicts a group of characters who have different styles of life but sharing a similar fate. The author’s thoughts on the current situation and mediation about the spiritual world are conveyed by the mouths of roles in the novels. In Salinger’s writing, the hero always experiences some kind of ineffable spiritual epiphany, and in the short story collection Nine Stories, there are nine main characters standing on the eve of explosion in which senses clasp and crack with each other. The characters see with their inner eyes and think by breaking the limit of tradition to rethink the past and create a brand new vista of the future.Although the collection is not titled by a special name but Nine Stories, there is still a reason why the author personally selected the works to gather them together. This book is the only short story collection of Salinger’s; there should be of its unique meaning and value. This thesis aims to look for clues and themes throughout the folio from macro and micro aspects, by referring to the archetypal criticism, fictional narrative theory, rhetoric strategy, semantics and pragmatics. Discover the philosophical reflection implicated inside the works. The dissertation consists of the following five components:First, the introduction section introduces Salinger’s life experiences, literary period and style, the similarity between some writers and Salinger, some famous scholars’evaluation and the main research achievements on Salinger’s works in the world.The first chapter discusses the correlation of the short story collection and the theme of initiation. Introduce the prototype of the initiation, ancient and modern works themed of initiation and the similarity between them and Nine Stories, the Zen koan in the preface that flicks the heart of the book and directly touchs the soul of Nine Stories.The second chapter analyzes the content of the collection to elicit the theme of initiation. The collection’s characters are divided into two categories in accordance with their own labels:the chosen ones and the guiding ones. Then focus on the ceremonial effect when the two groups meet collision.The third chapter analyzes from the perspective of the deconstraction of novel’s formation to express the theme of initiation. This part analyzes the merit of time and space setting, disruptive character dialogue, the whole collection of stories’ oval structure, box-in-box story telling style and the eye of the storm at the end of the story. Summarize the effect of these techniques in the service of the theme.Conclusion is made on the base of the above chapters’ points that the author not only gives the characters a complete journey to reach the rite of initiation, but also highlights initiation by the writing style. Salinger even tries to inspire readers to retrospect their lives and souls and rethink the truth of the world through all his works.