Salinger’s Alien and Lonely Characters in American Literature

Abstract

The importance of Salinger's works in modern American literature is so much that no critics can ignore it. So, for better understanding its texts, this paper tries to clarify the themes of alienation and loneliness in his masterpiece Catcher in the Rye. The difficulty of understanding the philosophical and social concepts in Salinger's great novel cause that Iranian English language and literature students encounter with so many misunderstandings in his novels the concepts such as modernity, modern man, alienation, loneliness, a labyrinth of life, meanings and loneliness in modern society. The dominant ideologies in the postmodern era incorporate, to a large extent, the notions of alienations, loneliness and modern man. The present paper is aimed at investigating the notions of modern man and alienation, loneliness in the novel written by Salinger.