Trauma In Salinger’s Nine Stories:Representations, Reasons And Salvation

J. D. Salinger is an important American novelist who achieves great success in depicting the spiritual suffering of the young generation in the 1950s. Nine Stories, considered by some critics as the most consummated work of his, is a good example of such work with high artistic skill. In it Salinger portrays a group of desperate and anxious people who alienate themselves from the dominant society. At present most domestic researches on Salinger only focus on his masterpiece The Catcher in the Rye but the domestic researches on Nine Stories still remain at the starting stage. So this thesis aims at exploring Salinger’s concern for people’s spiritual trauma as it reflects in Nine Stories.From the perspective of the theory of trauma, this thesis analyzes the protagonists’ trauma through close reading of the collection. Moreover, it explores the causes of Salinger’s concern on people’s trauma in the way of connecting with relevant historical background and his life experiences. The thesis is composed of five chapters. Chapter one introduces the literary achievements of Salinger and his Nine Stories, as well as the research overseas and domestically. And then it gives an introduction to the theoretical perspective and framework of the thesis. Chapter two studies the representations of the spiritual trauma in the work. In the eyes of the protagonists the world is full of ugliness and viciousness. They suffer from a sense of alienation because of the aloofness between human beings and the trauma of war. Chapter three explores what leads to Salinger’s strong concern on people’s spiritual trauma by tracing the social environment in the 1950s and the relevant life experience of the author. Chapter four digs out the potential salvation that Salinger offers in Nine Stories which is the love and Zen Buddhism. Chapter five draws to a conclusion that, by depicting those tortuous people who suffer badly from the spiritual trauma, Salinger intends to evoke people’s attention to their inner world.By exploring Salinger’s Nine Stories from the perspective of trauma theory, this thesis helps to inspire more intensive academic researches on this excellent collection of short stories as well as offer a reference for domestic researches on Salinger.