Characters’ Alienation And Self-redemption In J·D Salinger’s Nine Stories

J.D.Salinger is a famous contemporary American writer. Because of the catcher in the rye, he won the wide attention of American society. In 1952, Mr. Salinger published a collection of nine short novels, named nine stories. Nine stories not only represents his self-salvation, but also displays the spiritual crisis and the survival crisis of postwar Americans. Although it didn’t earn a great fame in the same as the catcher in the rye, this work is still worthy studying the unique characteristics of language, narrative skills and created social values and spirit values.This essay is based on nine stories, having a study of characters’ alienation and self-salvation and analyzing the causes of alienation from the angle of alienation and self-salvation by using the theory of alienation and the method of close reading. The text is divided into three chapters. The first chapter mainly elaborated characters’ alienation in nine stories. Such as, self-split, self-contradiction and self-subversion. Alienation of relationships with others, including the profitability of friendships, the defamiliarization of parent-child relationships, the apathy of couples. Alienation between characters and their living environment or working environment. Then readers can understand the characters of dissimilation in the works more deeply. The second chapter mainly talks the self-salvation in the process of alienation by love, restoring religious faith and rebuilding relationships. The third chapter mainly analyzes reasons of alienation. External causes include the war, industrialization and racial discrimination. Internal causes include lack of spiritual life and moral bankruptcy. Based on past researches, the paper analyzes dissimilation of characters in nine stories systematically, surveys the development of characters’ alienation and the process of self-salvation overall and enriches the alienation theme and self-salvation research about short stories of Salinger. Nine stories not only performs the main theme, but has a significance of calling people to face the alienation. It is a great work that arouses people to save the human nature.