Setting and Chracterization in the "Catcher In The Rye"

Jerome David Salinger was born January 1, 1919 in New York City. At age 11, he was voted "most popular actor" at Camp Wigwam in Harrison, Maine. Salinger's parents decided to offer him the opportunity to be enrolled into a private school, just like his character, Holden Caulfield. Before and even after J.D. Salinger was famous for his works, they were both sort of social outcasts (Pinsker xiii). He " was not working for a degree, didn't care …

…are what smart people would like to have, but cannot have themselves because of superior understanding" (Pinsker 21). Salinger wrote a classic novel at a time where this type of thinking was not encouraged, even though he was not a public figure. He did not mind thinking out of the box even during the "nervous, angst-ridden 1950's" (Pinsker 15), and he serves as one of the greatest novelists and classic American literature writers in the twentieth century.