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Summary and Analysis of Franny Part 1
"Franny" Part 1 Summary: Lane Coutell waits with several other upper-crust college boys for their dates to arrive by train on a cold Saturday morning. The big football game against Yale is this weekend. He rereads a letter from his girlfriend, Franny. In it, she describes loving his letter and her anticipation of the weekend. She writes that she is reading and loving the Greek poet Sappho, and makes several more declarations of love to him. In a postscript, she says her father's "growth" is benign, and that Lane need not worry about what happened over a recent Friday night - she doesn't think her parents even heard them come in. She concludes by admitting she feels "unintelligent" when she writes to him, and asks if they can have a nice weekend without his analyzing everything and her. A classmate, Roy Sorenson, interrupts Lane and asks if he understood their reading assignment of the German poet Rilke. Lane says he thinks so. With cigarettes in hand, the boys watch the arriving train. Lane spots Franny, noticing especially her coat. She hugs and kisses him, and asks if he received her letter. After she clarifies which letter, he answers yes, and asks her about the pea-green clothbound book she is carrying. She puts it away and they walk out, with Franny making most of the small talk. He apologizes for not being able to get her a room in the best guest house, but she expresses contentment with what he got, though inwardly she is frustrated by his "ineptness," as when he once allowed another man to take their taxi. Lane tells her the plan to get lunch, and Franny says she's missed him, though she quickly realizes that this is a lie. In Sickler's, a preferred restaurant of the college intellectuals, Franny and Lane drink martinis. Lane is pleased to be seen with a girl who is not only exceedingly pretty, but doesn't fall too deeply into a collegiate stereotype. Franny notices his satisfaction with this, but she feels guilty for having observed it. Lane, dominating the conversation, speaks about his recent "A" paper that criticized the lack of "testicularity" (or "masculinity," he explains to Franny) of French writer Gustave Flaubert. He says he wants to read it to her, and connects his theory of Flaubert as a "goddam word-squeezer" to modern psychoanalysis. After a silence, he says that his professor wants Lane to publish the paper. Franny says he's talking like a "section man" - a graduate student who takes over class when a professor is out, and invariably criticizes and ruins the author the class is studying, then boasts about his thesis. Lane is hurt, and she apologizes. Franny indecisively orders another round of martinis. She says she feels "way off" today, and promises to snap out of it soon. She says she's tired of people like the section men, and admits that if she'd had the courage, she wouldn't have returned to school this year. Lane says she's making generalizations, that there are "incompetent" people everywhere, and that her school has two of the best poets in her English Department. She says they're not real poets, then asks to drop the subject. Lane keeps pressing her, and Franny finally says that poets are supposed to "leave something beautiful" with the reader, and that the ones he mentioned only get into your head. Lane counters that a month ago she said she liked one of the two poets, and she admits she does, but that she's "sick of liking peopleI wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect." Looking pale, she excuses herself to the bathroom. Lane sits back, all his previous excitement gone. When he spots a classmate in the room, he pretends to look "attractively bored." "Franny" Part 1 Analysis: Our introduction to Lane immediately paints him as an egotistical, pretentious, image-conscious student destined to be one of the "section men" Franny describes. He is a poster boy for the bourgeois intellectual elite of the late 1950s/early 60s, smoking cigarettes while wearing his Burberry coat and cashmere muffler. His egotism is his main characteristic; he is interested only in things which pertain directly to him. For example, he doesn't "give a damn" about the lipstick stain on Sorenson's coat lapel, but he takes special pride in the fact that "he was the only one on the platform who really knew Franny's coat," and that he had once kissed her lapel. His modesty is always false; no doubt he believes he completely understands Rilke, and he relishes talking in supposedly humble tones about his Flaubert paper. And while Lane physically stands apart from the other boys at the train station, attempting to assert his individuality, he is the greatest conformist of them all, doing everything he can to look like he belongs (note his pleasure in being seen with Franny, an "unimpeachably right-looking girl," in the restaurant). The teenaged Freud once wrote that the greatest egotist is the one to whom the thought has never occurred. Lane is a good example of this. When the egotist does turn his attention away from himself, it is generally to criticize. His Flaubert paper is only an exercise in vicious criticism, an attempt to emasculate through literary psychoanalysis a canonized author. In fact, when we use rudimentary psychoanalysis on Lane, it's fairly clear why he feels the need to emasculate. Consider his own lack of "testicularity" in the story about the other man's taking Lane's taxi, or Lane's overall delicate, feminine appearance (his slender fingers) and habits (he drinks martinis) that he compensates for with manly curses. One can almost picture him mentally picking apart the grammatical and spelling errors in Franny's loving, spontaneous letter to him, and we can imagine the excessively formal, cold letters he writes. It's obvious to the reader that Franny, with her insight and empathy, is far more intelligent than Lane will ever be, though he would never admit this (his assuming she does not know the word "testicularity" is a perfect example of this). With his marriage of egotism and criticism, Lane detaches himself from the world in ultimately dishonest ways. He feigns lack of an expression when the train arrives, and when Franny leaves him for the bathroom. His version of detachment is a model of how not to behave; later in the book, a different, more positive idea of detachment will develop. Franny is also detached, and even dishonest at times, but always with a good reason. She pretends to be happy with Lane's lesser guest house and squeezes his arm with "simulated affection," both to make Lane feel better. Moreover, when she notes Lane's satisfaction in being seen with her, she turns the focus to her guilt for having observed it. Her greatest sensation of guilt comes with her greatest act of self-deception: when she proclaims how much she's missed Lane. She knows she is lying and, as with Holden Caulfield in Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, we see that Franny may be dishonest with others, but she is always honest with herself. This honesty is evident in her desire for a world of beauty and love, one which the section men and the famous poets at her college cannot understand. She is, it seems so far, literally sickened by her destructively analytical surroundings. The green book she carries with her may yield some clues to her state of mind, since she hides it from Lane and especially since Salinger frequently uses the color green to symbolize innocence (note the green ink on Holden's baseball glove and the prostitute's green dress in The Catcher in the Rye, or his short story "Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes").
Summary and Analysis of Franny Part 2
"Franny" Part 2 Summary: In the empty restroom, Franny, perspiring and very pale, enters the furthest stall and locks it. She sits down in a cramped position, cries for five minutes, then stops suddenly. She takes out her green book, puts it on her lap, presses it to her chest, then returns it to her bag. She freshens her appearance and walks out of the bathroom looking stunning. She apologizes to Lane for her delay. He asks if she is all right; she replies that she is now. She says she's not hungry and wants only a chicken sandwich and a glass of milk, which annoys Lane. He orders frog's legs and snails, then tells her about the plans to go to the game in his friend Wally Campbell's car. She says she doesn't know who he is, which bothers him as she's met him several times. She apologizes for not being able to remember, "Especially when they look like everybody else, and talk and dress like everybody else." She immediately regrets her criticism, though she continues describing how predictable the Wally Campbells of the world can be, such as the way they name-drop. She says that those who "go bohemian" also conform, just in a different way. Franny wonders if she's going crazy, and Lane tells her that she looks very pale. Their food arrives. Lane tells her he's been worried about her the last few weeks, but she tells him to eat his snails. He tells her to eat, but when she looks at her sandwich she becomes nauseated. Lane asks her how her play is, but she says she quit it and the theatre department. She says acting made her feel like an "egomaniac," and that she was embarrassed to be in some of the plays. They argue about the leading man she played against in "Playboy of the Western World" in summer stock; she thinks he was too lyrical, while Lane believes if the critics thought he was good, then he was. She says she's sick of ego. Lane asks if she's afraid of competing. She says she's not, but she's afraid she "will" compete, which is why she quit theatre. The waiter brings Lane's frog's legs and salad, and asks if Franny wants to send back her untouched sandwich, an offer she declines. She sweats more, and Lane asks if she wants to use his handkerchief. She roots through her handbag, bringing out items, to find a tissue. Lane spots her book and asks what it is. Franny nervously says she just brought it for the train ride, and puts it back. She puts away her other items, and talks about the gold-plated swizzle stick which she can't bear to throw away. Lane presses her to talk about the book. She reveals it's called The Way of the Pilgrim, that her religion professor mentioned it, and that she took it out of the library and keeps forgetting to return it. She summarizes the book, which an anonymous 33-year-old Russian peasant wrote in the 19th-century. It starts with the peasant's wanting to know what the Bible's command to "pray incessantly" means. He searches throughout Russia for the answer, and is directed to a religious text called the "Philokalia" which explains an advanced method of prayer. He perfects the method, then continues walking and spreading the word. Franny says that sums up the book, then describes a religious couple the pilgrim meets whom she loves. Lane says he wants to show Franny his paper on Flaubert, then ignores her recommendation that he read the book. She describes the pilgrim's method of praying, which uses the Jesus Prayer: "'Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.'" The word "mercy," she explains, is important since it has so many meanings. After repeating the prayer for a long time, it becomes "self-active" and synchronizes with the person's heartbeat, becoming a truly incessant prayer, and mystically purifies the person's outlook. As Franny describes this, she becomes less and less aware of Lane's presence. She continues explaining the prayer; one does not need to have faith in the beginning, for the prayer takes care of itself through pure repetition. She relates this feature to the Nembutsu sects of Buddhism and to other religions whose practitioners repeat their word for "God." Lane is skeptical, and asks if Franny really believes in it. She ignores the question and says she simply finds it a fascinating coincidence that all these religions preach repetition of a mantra. Lane asks what the result is of the prayer, and Franny says one gets to see God. The waiter takes away Franny's sandwich. Lane orders coffee and critiques the prayer, and the religions which have incessant praying, for not taking psychology into account. He says he loves Franny, and she excuses herself to go to the bathroom. On the way there, she faints by the bar. She awakens five minutes later in the manager's office, dazed. Lane is concerned, and tells her not to worry about making the game when she asks about it. He tells her to rest at the guest house, then says maybe he can find a back staircase to visit her. He asks her "how long it's been," then realizes it was "that Friday night" last month. He tells her he'll have someone get her water, and he'll hail a cab. He leaves, and Franny's lips repetitively form "soundless words." "Franny" Part 2 Analysis: First, to clear up some longstanding confusion regarding Franny's fainting: when "Franny" was originally published as a short story in The New Yorker in January, 1955, many readers assumed she fainted as a result of her pregnancy. While Lane does mention "that Friday night" as the last time they had sex (which Franny referred to in her letter), such an explanation offers too clear-cut and logical a reason for her fainting, and distracts from the real cause: Franny's spiritual crisis. And a crisis it is, for Franny has reached a breaking point with the egotistical world. It is clear why the pilgrim's prayer appeals to her. She detests egotism above all else, and the prayer is means of detaching oneself, of losing ego. By chanting the name of God, the supplicant focuses only on God, not only himself. Incessant praying, however, is not confined to one religion since, as Franny notes, making it, for her, a deeper form of spirituality. In particular, she comments that the Nembutsu sects of Buddhism also use incessant praying. Salinger was a deep student of Buddhism, and strains of its central tenet - detachment from personal concerns - show up even in 1951's The Catcher in the Rye and in his earlier short stories. This kind of detachment - which Franny herself seems to experience while describing the prayer, losing herself in mystical thought while looking past Lane and his mundane concerns with snail-eating - is completely opposite from Lane's brand of detachment. He separates himself from the outside world and is interested only in his own affairs. Even his anxiety over Franny's health is short-lived and soon turns into selfish plans for a sexual rendezvous at her guest house. The ramifications of the pilgrim's prayer - how it surpasses petty individual concerns - will be developed later in the book. Franny expands her attach against conformity in this section, against the predictable Wally Campbells of the world. We have already seen her categorize the girls on the train according to their colleges, and Lane has established himself as the worst kind of conformist - the one who believes he stands apart while simultaneously craving identification with the group. The 1950s are historically marked as an era of great conformity, and Franny is a sensitive postwar child attuned to the destruction of individuality. She is even wise enough to understand that those who rebel against the status quo - the "bohemians," as she calls them - are conformist in their own way, a common enough idea now that was more original in the pre-Viet Nam age of Beatniks. Another prong of her attack against conformity is her hatred of name-dropping. This foreshadows Franny's turbulent relationship with fame, a theme that will assume greater importance later in the book. But already we know she has retreated from small-time fame as an actor, dropping out of her Theatre Department. She equates acting with ego, and she especially dislikes the actor in "Playboy" for making his part so "lyrical." The word is not incidental; it reminds us that the play was, first, a written work which the actor tried to make into a "lyric," a song. In other words, not only did he dress up the play as a virtual song, but he assumed the voice of the play, taking its speech away from the playwright. Salinger has great contempt for acting and actors, as evidenced in The Catcher in the Rye, and it comes as no surprise for someone who so openly disdains phony "acting" in the social world. One of the great ironies of Franny and Zooey, then, is that it is written almost as a play. Franny and Lane's conversation is much like a two-character dramatic scene, filled mostly with dialogue that distinguishes its speakers through their voices and minor habits. This is an important motif to follow, as Salinger admitting to writing (unproduced) plays when he was younger, and even entertained thoughts of becoming an actor. Salinger's attention to the aforementioned minor habits and small details, however, makes Franny and Zooey rise beyond the complexity of most plays. Lane's status as a member of the American bourgeoisie, the upwardly mobile middle- to upper-class, reveals itself further in his choices of frog's legs and snails. Franny's order, on the other hand, represents her desire for more innocent fare. The milk is an obvious symbol of childhood, while the chicken sandwich is an unpretentious selection. Her inability to eat the chicken also shows her kindness toward the meek. (In Salinger's short story "Just Before the War With the Eskimos," the main character can't bear to throw away the dead Easter chick she finds in her garbage. Perhaps we are meant to read a similar meaning into Franny's not touching her sandwich, and to her reluctance to part with her swizzle-stick, a corny gift, helpless in its own way, which had good intentions.) The bartender wipes a sherry glass dry as Franny faints, and the milk also comes in a glass. Although Salinger has yet to mention it, Franny's last name is Glass, and glass is an important motif through the book. In this instance, glass is a receptacle. But whereas Franny holds information, ideas, and beauty, the sherry glass holds a type of upper-class liquor. Unfortunately for her absorbing mind, she must take the bad with the good in her bourgeois environment, the sherry with the milk, Lane's Flaubert paper with the pilgrim's prayer.
Summary and Analysis of Zooey Part 1
"Zooey" Part 1 Summary: A first-person narrator announces that he will offer not a short story, but a "prose home movie," even though the "three featured players" wish he would not distribute it. He briefly describes the varying objections of the "leading lady" (Franny), the other female (Bessie), and finally the leading man (Zooey), who believes the story is too mystical. The narrator says he has been producing his prose home movies since he was 15, and thinks that it is not mystical, but a love story. He explains that he learned of the story through discussion with the three characters, all family members. He concludes by revealing that their last name is Glass and that the story will start as the youngest Glass boy reads a letter from his "eldest living brother," Buddy - who is the narrator, and who promises to leave himself "in the third person" for the remainder of the story (though it is still told in first-person narrative form). Buddy narrates the story, which begins as 25-year-old Zooey Glass rereads a four-year-old letter in the bathtub. He is given a length description. Physically, his body is "slight" and his face is "surpassingly handsome," saved from being too handsome by a slightly protruding ear. Zooey has been a highly successful television actor for three years, but he began publicly performing at age 7 with his six siblings (not all of whom appeared at the same time) on the long-running children's radio quiz show, "It's a Wise Child." (Buddy interrupts with a footnote, in which he runs through what the other siblings [besides Franny] are up to: the eldest, Seymour, committed suicide in 1948 in Florida; the second oldest, Buddy, is a "'writer-in-residence'" at a girls' college in upstate New York, and lives alone in a small, Spartan house; Boo Boo is a mother; Walt, one of the twins, died in WWII; Waker, the other twin, is a Roman Catholic priest.) All the children were stars on the show, and the public either despised or worshipped them. Most consider Seymour the "'best'" performer, while Zooey is second. Zooey had also been the most psychologically examined, presumably to discover the origins of his "precocious wit." Buddy describes the letter to Zooey as hyperbolic in many areas, notably length, and that it is the kind of letter the recipient carries with him long after receiving it. He transcribes the letter. In the letter, dated Mar. 18, 1951, Buddy tells Zooey he just finished reading a letter from their mother, Bessie, urging him to remove his phone in New York and install one in his house in the country. He likes the phone as it reminds him of Seymour. He tells Zooey to be kinder to Bessie, and admits that her letter really urged him to write Zooey and convince him to get a Ph.D. (in Math) before he dove into acting. Buddy mentions that he never got his B.A. degree because he was a snob in college, and because he knew he could never catch up to Seymour. He doesn't think Zooey needs a higher degree for job security, and even thinks he would have been a "better-adjusted actor" had he and Seymour not thrown in their heavier literary loves into Zooey's "recommend home reading" when he was young. Buddy is anxious over the prospect of Zooey, a natural-born actor, ending up in the hackneyed, superficial world of movies. Buddy writes that it's three year to the day that Seymour killed himself. He also says that he gives a weekly lecture on Zen Buddhism to the faculty and undergraduates at his college. He says what provoked him to write Zooey more than his mother's entreaties was a haiku-style poem he found in Seymour's suicide hotel room. He says he and Seymour were reluctant to educate Zooey in the ways of knowledge until his mind had reached the Zen state of "no-knowledge" - that is, pure consciousness and communion with God, or "satori." Therefore, they educated Franny and Zooey first in the teachings of religious men before literary men. Buddy says he knows Zooey resented their lectures and the "metaphysical sittings in particular." He says that though he was worried for Franny and Zooey after Seymour's death, he could not come home for more than a year for fear of the questions they would ask him. This afternoon, he writes, he remembered Seymour once telling him that the purpose of religious study was to unlearn the differences between opposites such as boys and girls, day and night, etc. The memory made Buddy want to write a letter to Zooey with something "happy and exciting" in mind, but now it's lost, which is why he lectured him about acting. He urges Zooey to act, but to do so with all his "might." He concludes by asking Zooey for forgiveness for what Seymour called Buddy's "permanent affliction" of cleverness. "Zooey" Part 1 Analysis: Buddy's description of his story as a "prose home movie" is mostly accurate. While "Zooey" - after this introductory section - follows "Franny" as being a sort of two-person play, with extended dialogue at the expense of interior description, it is decorated with Buddy's ornate prose. And since Buddy shares Franny's critique of acting as an art which inevitably falls short (remember her lament that one has to be a genius to play the role of "Playboy of the Western World"), his linguistic artistry in describing the nuanced gestures and habits of his siblings shows the deficits of movies which, as he claims, depict only superficial stereotypes. Buddy's critique is predictable when we realize that Salinger, who despises most movies (though he was known to love the Marx brothers), makes no efforts to hide his real-life similarities with Buddy. Salinger, like Buddy, began writing fiction when he was 15; he, too, sequestered himself in a rustic house, though he never taught at college; Salinger is a likewise devoted student of Zen Buddhism; and Salinger's natural prose style, as evidenced in other work, is much like that of Buddy. By virtually placing himself in his own novel through this alter ego, Salinger makes a supreme irony out of his critique of ego. The introduction bludgeons the reader with ego - Buddy's literal ego (his first-person narrative), and Salinger's own. But ego in "Zooey" is a muddled affair. Buddy announces he will leave himself in the "third person" for the rest of the story, though he still recounts it in the first person. He also maintains that the story is culled from discussions with all three characters. In this sense, their collective ego transplants his, or is at least fused with his, and no single ego dominates. While Buddy may call the story a "prose home movie," movies generally do favor stand-out stars, as Buddy's repeated references to Franny as a "leading lady" and Zooey as a "leading man" suggest and as Franny's previous complaints about acting as an egotistical endeavor state bluntly. But the combination of different viewpoints, which prose fiction, even in a first-person narrative, can pull off more gracefully than film, places it in a more democratic and ego-less territory. Thus, the story has five authors who share credit: Franny, Bessie, Zooey, Buddy, and Salinger himself. Still, there is plenty of ego in the "Zooey" section, thanks largely to Buddy's insistent and erudite prose style. Buddy says Boo Boo once called a short story of his "'too clever,'" and the same attack could be levied against Franny and Zooey which, like "It's a Wise Child," also splits its readers into the two camps of those who love and loathe the Glass children. Clearly, Salinger has nothing but affection for them; John Updike once remarked that Salinger loved his characters more than God does. Cleverness is not the true "permanent affliction" of the Glasses, however. What they have a more complicated relationship with is their abundance of knowledge; cleverness is the merely the byproduct of self-aware wit matched and their encyclopedic minds. It is no small irony, then, that several of the Glasses, namely Seymour and Buddy, have studied Zen. As Buddy explains, Zen leads its student on a quest for "no-knowledge." Buddy's introduction of this "no-knowledge" quest (the description of which is undoubtedly for the benefit of the novel's reader more than for Zooey) foreshadows its eventual significance to Franny. Previously, she had bemoaned the "section men" who only contributed to the destruction of beauty. Zen Buddhism, Salinger implies, cannot possibly do this, as it works from a clean slate - "no-knowledge." From this empty state, it can only create and add beauty to the world. It should appeal to Franny for another reason beyond solving the problem of destruction. Satori's state of "pure consciousness" and communion with God also sounds much like the incessant praying Franny so admires, in which the supplicant achieves a detached state of consciousness and, as Franny has explained, sees God. The concept of "no-knowledge" adds another symbolic layer to the Glass surname - that of glass's transparency, its invisible presence. The glass (meaning receptacle for liquid) which is made of glass, then, holds nothing - but, for Zen, this nothingness is also everything. Yet glass also reflects, and now that we know the Glass children were and are celebrities (especially Zooey), "glass" can also stand for the way the Glasses reflect the feelings of those who observed them. Some could not stand them; some adored them; and some studied them. Each group, however, somehow tried to see itself better through the Glasses, a function celebrities often fulfill (consider how celebrities are powerful role models especially for younger children who have not yet created their own identities). Now we understand why Franny was previously so enraged over the practice of name-dropping; her name has doubtless been name-dropped throughout the years, and often in sniveling tones (as Buddy mentions Zooey's name was in his college class, in regards to Zooey's meditational habits). Finally, Buddy continues the novel's humorous critique of the flawed and surface techniques of psychoanalysis. In his recounting of Zooey's psychological testing as a child, it sounds like he toyed with the testers at his will. This set-up recalls Salinger's short story "Teddy," in which the eponymous prodigy operates at a higher mental and spiritual level than his parents and the researchers who test him.
Summary and Analysis of Zooey Part 2
"Zooey" Part 2 Summary: Zooey carefully returns Buddy's letter to its envelope. He picks up a manuscript from the bathmat and reads, while still in the bathtub, a lover's spat scene between "Rick" and "Tina"; Rick's part is underlined. Before Zooey can get too far, his mother, Bessie, interrupts and comes in. Irritated, Zooey closes the shower curtain. Bessie, a "medium-stout woman in a hairnet" whose age is "indeterminate," and who always wears a multiple-pocketed Japanese kimono at home, nags Zooey for staying in the bath so long. We are told that the apartment is an old, fairly nice apartment on New York's fashionable Upper East Side. Bessie looks through the well-stocked medicine cabinet, much to Zooey's exasperation. She puts in a new bottle of toothpaste, which she says will protect Zooey's "lovely teeth." Bessie asks Zooey if he's talked with his sister yet. He says he hasn't today, as he spoke to her for two hours last night, and tells her to leave. Bessie complains for a while about Buddy's not having a phone, and Zooey keeps insulting her and refuting her arguments. She spots the manuscript and says its title, "The Heart Is an Autumn Wanderer," is "unusual." Zooey derides her for this. She says Zooey never thinks anything is beautiful, an accusation to which Zooey takes mock-umbrage, saying he finds everything, even "'Peter Pan,'" beautiful. Bessie says she's frustrated and doesn't know what to do with Franny, and that their father never likes to admit anything is wrong. She thinks he still expects to hear the children on the radio. She says that last night, while Franny was crying and "mumbling heaven knows what to herself," Les wondered if she would like a tangerine. She bemoans having no one in the family to help her. She complains about Franny's not eating anything nourishing. Zooey mocks her diagnosis, equating Franny's improper diet with Christ's. Zooey tells her again to leave, and Bessie says the painters have finished in Franny's room and will want to go into the living room soon, where Franny is sleeping. Bessie's aristocratic slender fingers and attractive dancer's legs and feet are described. She leaves, saying she'll be back soon. A few minutes later, Zooey, wearing pants, shaves at the bathroom mirror. Bessie returns. She brings up the idea of having Waker (the living twin) talk to Franny, though Franny has refused to talk to anyone. Zooey shoots down this idea, as Waker is a Catholic priest and Franny's problem is "non-sectarian." He insults Bessie again, and she defends her intelligence and says she knows more than they think - for instance, that Franny's green book is the root of her problem. She says Lane has called several times, worried about Franny. Zooey says Lane is fake. Bessie criticizes Zooey for making people he doesn't like - or "love, really" - nervous. She says Lane thinks the book, which she got out of her school library, is religiously fanatical. Zooey corrects her - the book, called "'The Pilgrim Continues His Way,'" and is the sequel to the "'The Way of the Pilgrim,'" and Franny has taken both books out of Seymour and Buddy's old room. Bessie says she doesn't like to go into Seymour's room. She says Zooey is mean, and starts comparing him to Buddy. Zooey gets furious, saying he's sick of hearing Buddy's and Seymour's names, and accuses Buddy of trying to copy Seymour. He calls himself and Franny "freaks," and blames his oldest brothers for making them that way. He says that he cannot eat a meal without first saying the "Four Great Vows" under his breath, and bets that Franny is the same. He explains that the vows are a Buddhist prayer that Buddy and Seymour drilled into them. After Bessie nags him about getting married and getting a haircut, Zooey warns her against getting a psychoanalyst for Franny by reminding her of what psychoanalysis did to Seymour. Then he recants, admitting he thought there might be a psychoanalyst who could do her some good, though it would have to be one who had the "grace of God" in him. He explains to Bessie what the "Pilgrim" books are about, describing the sequel as a dialogue on the reasons behind the Jesus Prayer. He connects the effects of the Jesus Prayer with what Eastern religions term the mystical opening of the "'third eye.'" He insults Bessie's religious ignorance. She watches Zooey shave and compliments his "broad and lovely" back, as she was afraid his weight-lifting would ruin it. He snaps and tells her not to admire his back. He tells her to leave, as he has to get ready to meet LeSage, his employer in television. She wonders what good it does her children, who were once so joyful, to be so smart if they're not happy. "Zooey" Part 2 Analysis: Zooey's conflict with Bessie is both telling and humorous. Her extended stay in the bathroom gives Zooey's razor-sharp wit many opportunities to insult her, and exposes the most obvious difference between the two, their respective levels of intelligence. Bessie is decidedly ordinary, unlike her extraordinary children. However, she clearly has aspirations to be something more and, like her children, she also used to be an entertainer - a vaudeville dancer. Perhaps this is why she wears the diva-like kimono, as a costume to cover her "medium-stout" figure but leave her dancer's legs and aristocratic fingers exposed. But she ruins the effect, as her paraphernalia-laden kimono (the pockets are filled with tools) makes her into a virtual "handyman." The kimono, of course, also comes from Japan, which shows another gap between herself and her children; she is interested in Japan for its kimonos, while they appreciate it for its Buddhism. Perhaps, too, Bessie's former profession as a vaudeville dancer is what makes Zooey so hostile toward her. Vaudeville is considered a low-art form, and Zooey, too, is mired in a low-art medium, television. Bessie - and all her unschooled opinions, such as her appraisal of the manuscript's "beautiful" title - is a constant reminder for Zooey that he shares the same professional space. This is why he maintains, however ironically, that he can appreciate beauty in all forms. He wants to believe that he is above his status as a television actor. And while his gifted mind obviously can appreciate beauty in some ways, and is himself beautiful (though he tries to hide from the fact), in another ironic turn he is also clearly the most destructive character we have seen, even more than Lane or Franny's description of the "section men." He is ruthless in his attacks against Bessie, a woman who has lost two sons, has a somewhat incompetent husband, and should be viewed in a sympathetic light. Salinger foreshadows another conflict, in that just as Franny wants the world to be more creative and less destructive, her own brother lives destructively. As stated above, Zooey tries to hide from his own beauty, even attempting not to look at his face while he shaves. But, like Franny, he is a born performer, destined to be stared at, and he must also wrestle with ego. While the teleplay he reads is over-the-top melodrama, Salinger reveals it as an exercise in ego in more subtle ways. While Buddy's letter, and his narrative description of "Zooey," are self-conscious, full of disclaimers about its own "cleverness," the teleplay is clever in more insidious ways. Buddy's self-conscious disclaimers attempt, at least, to deflate his own ego, to show that he understands his style can be grating and pretentious. In the teleplay, the characters' self-consciousness only serves to heighten their egos and, more importantly, that of the teleplay's author. The character Tina says she feels like she's someone in a "terribly sophisticated play"; as Salinger so clearly shows, the melodramatic teleplay is anything but sophisticated. Moreover, Rick calls her on quoting a line from Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms." Unlike Buddy, who willingly allowed the voices of various family members (Franny, Zooey, and Bessy) to collaborate on the writing of "Zooey," Tina - and the hack author of the teleplay - tries to appropriate Hemingway's voice for her own gains. Unable to come up with a real line for her sadness, she steals one from another author. Zooey clearly tries to distance himself from the teleplay's abundance of ego. He lavishes extreme care with Buddy's letter, even though he toys with it, balancing it on the tub and putting it in danger of falling in. His true feelings emerge when it nearly does fall in and he quickly puts it away. He treats the teleplay carelessly, however, sloshing water over the tub when picking it up, reading it on his wet knees, leaving it on the bathmat and radiator. Salinger foreshadows the spiritual conflict between Franny and Zooey when we discover Franny has been using the incessant Jesus Prayer - Bessie says Franny has been "mumbling heaven knows what to herself." Zooey makes a mock-association between Franny and Christ, on the grounds of their diets, but it is clear that Christ will play an important role later when Zooey eventually talks to her. It makes sense, then, that he rereads Buddy's letter, one which touches upon many religious issues - it is as if, with the letter, he is studying for the exam of helping out Franny. The elder Glasses have a habit of teaching their younger siblings the ways of spirituality, almost as if they were monks at a monastery. They disdain the traditional bourgeois method of seeking out a psychoanalyst. However, Zooey makes the point that a psychoanalyst with some religious inspiration might be able to help. Since Seymour, the wisest and most spiritual, is dead - and his name sounds like "see more," as if he were a seer, a prophet - Buddy is the Glasses' remaining spiritual leader. His name, too, resounds: he is their Buddha. But now it is Zooey's turn to help Franny and, maybe, help himself. Bessie's invasion of Zooey's privacy symbolizes the name Glass in yet another way. While their lives are transparently glass-like in some ways, with no boundaries between them, they also covet their privacy. Buddy has gone so far as to not install a phone in his secluded house, and the children keep much from each other, and especially from the ignorant Bessie. The lack of privacy in the Glass apartment makes for some odd scenes, notably Bessie's sitting in the bathroom while Zooey bathes. Some critics see the scene as a perversion of the mother-child relationship; Bessie is virtually giving her 25-year-old son a bath, and even gives him new toothpaste. While some may view Bessie's appreciation of Zooey's back as a symptom of her reverse-Oedipal complex (in the Greek tragedy, Oedipus murdered his father and married his mother), there may be another reason to showcase Zooey's back. His frame is described as slight, but his back has been broadened through weight-lifting. In much of Salinger's fiction, his favored characters have narrow shoulder blades that are frequently described as "wings," and the association is of angels. In addition, Salinger is heavily influenced by the German poet Rilke - who, remember, was referenced at the start of "Franny" - who wrote frequently about angels. Zooey, then, is a sort of fallen angel; as he works out and broadens his back, ostensibly for his superficial acting career, he loses his "wings."
Summary and Analysis of Zooey Part 3
"Zooey" Part 3 Summary: Franny sleeps on the couch in the well-worn living room, which is far too cluttered for the painters to begin their work. Les, their father and, alongside Bessie, a former vaudevillian, has decorated the walls with mementos of the family's entertainment past. Zooey sits on the coffee table opposite the couch as he smokes a cigar and rouses Franny. She tells him about a nightmare in which people kept making her dive for a can of coffee. One of her professors, an egotist whom she dislikes, was there, she says. Bloomberg, the family cat, crawls out of the blanket and up to Franny, who kisses him. Zooey looks at an old photo of his parents, in costume, on the cover of sheet music for a song. Franny asks if his script came last night, as LeSage said it would. Zooey says it did, and that later at night his writer friend Dick Hess called him asking to meet up for a drink. At the bar, Hess lectured him about how his whole family was crazy, and finally handed him a new television script. Franny asks him about the script from LeSage, and Zooey ridicules it for its psychoanalytic jargon. He also insults Hess's script for being sentimental and pat. Zooey catches Franny silently reciting the Jesus Prayer. He tells her he may be going to France in the summer to make a movie based on a novel Zooey likes. He says he has no business acting in Europe, though, and goes on a tirade about how he undermines people's morale. Franny says she did the same thing to Lane the other day by criticizing him constantly. Zooey tells her she should focus her attacks on herself, not on other people and things - he has the same problem, he says, such as when he denounces television. He says all the Glass children have never left "It's a Wise Child" and cannot have normal conversations - he references his conversation with Hess, in which Zooey insulted him and his work. Zooey says he's disappointed in Hess, whose first script for LeSage was good. He feels bad, though, about spreading gloom wherever he goes. Franny describes her own recent battle with gloom-spreading. She says she diverted herself for a while with other activities, but one morning she "started up again," and scrawled writings from Epictetus (a Greek philosopher) on a blackboard one morning (she erased it before it was discovered) and picked on everybody all day. She says she was horrified by the idea that knowledge is just another material treasure to acquire, and one which doesn't always lead to wisdom. Zooey suggests she is using the Jesus Prayer acquisitively, as a material treasure. Franny angrily says she's already thought of that, and feels even worse knowing it is true and that she is as "egotistical and self-serving as everybody else." Zooey asks if she would like him to try and get Buddy on the phone for her. She says she wants to talk to Seymour. Zooey goes over to the window and watches a young girl reunite with her dog. He says there are "nice things" in the world, and finds it stupid that humans don't notice them but instead always think of their own "lousy little egos." He tells Franny something Buddy once told him, then relates the humorous and short religious philosophies of Walt and Boo Boo, both of which delight Franny. Zooey asks if he can make a speech to her and, after much delaying, finally does. He says he is not interested in taking the Jesus Prayer from her, and that what she is doing is terrible for their parents. He disapproves of her tirade against her college professors, even if they deserve it in some respects. He also thinks she does not understand Jesus, and is confusing him with other religions. He recalls a time when she was 10 and told Zooey she didn't like Jesus anymore because he threw around tables and idols in a synagogue, and because he believed humans were more valuable than chickens. He calls her current thinking, praying, and breakdown "tenth-rate." She starts crying. He accuses her of only wanting certain people, such as her professors, to eliminate their egos. He says he doesn't understand how she can pray to Jesus, whom she doesn't even understand. He praises Jesus' supreme intelligence, especially for knowing that there is no separation between man and God. He concludes by stating that the Jesus Prayer is intended to "endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness." Slick with sweat, and with Franny crying, he apologizes to her, then leaves the living room. "Zooey" Part 3 Analysis: The beginning of the scene is an extended parody of psychoanalysis. Franny-the-patient lies on couch, Zooey-the-Freudian smokes a cigar, and she immediately tells him about a nightmare. We probably could read into the dream somewhat - Franny is drowning, she feels everyone is against her, and even, one might argue, the Medaglia D'Oro (Golden Medal) coffee can is a topsy-turvy reference to the golden ring on the carousel at the end of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye - or, more likely, not. Any interpretation of her dream has to fall under psychoanalytic clichés, ones which generalize the nature of dreams at the expense of individuality. In this sense, psychoanalysis is another product of an age of conformity as it tries to "normalize" everyone. It follows that Bessie, who longs for her children to be normal, is such a believer in psychoanalysis, while Zooey, who calls himself and Franny "freaks," knows that psychoanalysis will be a waste of time for her. Another way of stating Salinger's case against psychoanalysis is that it is a methodology only of knowledge - of accumulating scientific insights into humanity - rather than a spiritually wise practice. Indeed, Franny unleashes her full critique against knowledge as a material treasure in this section. Zooey, too, is well aware of the divide between material knowledge and spiritual wisdom. He works in the entertainment industry, where spiritual wisdom is in short supply but material knowledge is abundant. LeSage, for instance, may know what television scripts work, but he is far from spiritually wise, just as Dick Hess knows how to write an absorbing melodrama but has no true wisdom to offer. In fact, LeSage's name is a great irony; it includes the word "sage," or "wise." But Franny's greater problem is that she has been using the Jesus Prayer for her own spiritual gain - in her rage against egotism and selfishness, she, too, is full of ego. But Zooey's discussion of the Jesus Prayer makes an important point. In fusing oneself with Christ through the Jesus Prayer, the person who prays no longer has any ego. Instead, he has endowed himself with "Christ-Consciousness," and shares his ego with Christ and, presumably, all of humanity. Zooey argues that Franny wants only to be comforted by Christ, taken in his arms. Before this, Franny says she wants to speak to the dead Seymour. It becomes more clear that he was not only their most wise sibling, but was a Christ-figure for them. Now that he is dead (not by crucifixion, but suicide), he has left the rest of the children unanchored and full of questions. Zooey may offer some sound advice, but he is far too unkind and even egotistical to reach out to Franny meaningfully. Finally, we now better understand why Franny was so reluctant to eat her chicken sandwich on her date with Lane. She wants to believe, unlike Jesus did, that chickens are just as valuable as humans are. The fact that Bessie has been force-feeding Franny chicken broth to nourish her back to health shows how destined for failure the mission was.
Summary and Analysis of Zooey Part 4
"Zooey" Part 4 Summary: Zooey steps across the newspaper strewn across the hallway (for the painters) and runs into Bessie. She asks him why he's sweating, and why Franny is crying. Zooey goes into his room and gets a handkerchief, then continues, for the first time in seven years, into Seymour and Buddy's old bedroom. He looks at a large white board on the wall which has been filled with literary and religious quotations, and reads a few. The rest of the room is filled with books. Zooey opens one of the desk drawers and takes out a stack of shirt cardboards. Seymour had written a diary entry on his 21st-birthday on one of them, recounting the various song-and-dance performances his family had entertained him with to celebrate the event. After he waits for a while, Zooey dials a "very local number" on the phone and places his handkerchief over the mouthpiece. Franny and Bessie, meanwhile, are having another fight about her not eating. The phone rings, and five minutes later Bessie comes out and says Buddy, who sounds like he has a cold, is on the phone and wants to speak to Franny. Franny uses the phone in her parents' bedroom. "Buddy" (really Zooey, but he shall be referred to as "Buddy") asks her how she is, and says he didn't listen to most of what Bessie told him, though he knows the basic facts. Franny says she's ready to murder Zooey, as he's "completely destructive." She says he's bitter about everything, and brings up his definition of himself and Franny as "freaks." She also recalls his story from last night about having once had a glass of ginger ale in their kitchen with Jesus. "Buddy" says something with a grace that only Zooey would be able to pull off, and Franny realizes it's Zooey. She tells him if he has anything to say, he should say it, but she's tired. Zooey says he wanted to tell her to continue with the Jesus Prayer, if that's what she wants. He apologizes for acting like a "seer." He tells her that he and Buddy drove to see her perform in "Playboy of the Western World" last summer, without her knowledge. He says she was amazing, but that she unrealistically expected everyone else, including the ushers, to be geniuses. He tells her the only important thing in religious life is "detachment." He tells her she should act, as she has been given the gift to do so, and that this is the only religious thing she can do. He tells her she can concern herself only with her own art, not with how others around her affect or appreciate it. Zooey recalls one time before an "It's a Wise Child" performance, when Seymour told him to shine his shoes before he went out. Zooey had said everyone there was a moron and he wasn't going to shine his shoes for them. Seymour told him to shine them for the "Fat Lady." Zooey didn't know what it meant, but he shined his shoes every time he went on after that for the Fat Lady, whom he pictured sitting on her front porch in the heat with the radio on all the time. Franny said Seymour told her to be funny for the Fat Lady once; her imagined Fat Lady was fairly similar to Zooey's version. Zooey says that everybody is Seymour's Fat Lady, even her loathsome professors. He lets her in on a secret: the Fat Lady is "Christ Himself." This fills Franny with joy. Zooey says he can't speak anymore, and hangs up. Franny listens to the dial tone for a bit, then hangs up. She crawls into bed and smiles at the ceiling. "Zooey" Part 4 Analysis: The climax of "Zooey" brings the separate themes of spirituality, ego, and criticism of bourgeois values together. Zooey's basic prescription is this: one must detach one's petty, selfish ego and instead love and respect all humanity - the "Fat Lady" - despite their flaws, simply because they are human and deserve respect. This is why Buddy, in his introduction, called the story a "love" story rather than a mystical story. The concept of universal love is a simple one, yet almost impossible to pull off, but it seems as if Franny, and maybe Zooey, are ready to embrace it. Zooey not only teaches Franny these ideas, but one gets the sense that he is re-learning them himself to lose his own ego, inspired by his older, wiser brothers. Zooey lets go of his own ego in his phone call. At first, when he pretends he is Buddy, he actually increases his ego - he asks many questions about Zooey, and ends up merely imitating Buddy's voice and mannerisms, not his wisdom. But when Zooey lets down the facade, he uses Buddy's advice from his letter to Zooey. He urges Franny to act, as that is her God-given gift, much as Buddy urged him to do. He also takes some wisdom from the board in Seymour and Buddy's room, specifically from the first quote of the "Bhagavad Gita" (a sacred Hindu instructional text), which states that "Work done with anxiety about results is far inferior to work done without such anxiety." Zooey tells Franny that the artist can aim for perfection only "on his own terms," and that she must not worry about her reception or the other actors around her. It seems Zooey is most moved by Seymour's diary entry he reads. The birthday performances his family gives him that Seymour describes are performances totally without ego, only with the desire to please their beloved brother/son. Zooey recognizes that this is the only reason one may worry about one's performance - in service of a loving, ultimately selfless act. Since Zooey's phone conversation takes place in Seymour and Buddy's old room, their presence affects him in more ways than the diary entry or board of quotes. The last word of dialogue in the novel is "buddy," a tag Zooey throws around liberally, usually in an aggressive or comically hostile tone. But here it is affectionate and loving, and reminds us that he has finally channeled the kindness of his brother "Buddy" and their missing buddy, Seymour. Zooey says the Fat Lady is "Christ Himself," which implies that she deserves as much as respect as Christ does, even if she seems like everything Zooey and Franny distance themselves from - uneducated, unattractive, a fan of lowbrow entertainment. But there is a Fat Lady nearer to them that Zooey doesn't mention. Though Franny pictures the Fat Lady as having ugly legs, Bessie, owner of slim legs, is the true Fat Lady. Zooey even calls her "Fatty" in this section, and other times refers to her as "fat." Bessie is the ordinary person that the extraordinary Franny and Zooey have trouble respecting. But if they can learn to respect and love her, they will have attained what Zooey called "Christ-Consciousness," because Christ is present in everyone. In other words, when they love and respect Bessie, who has Christ within her, they will unite the Christ within them with the Christ within her. And this united Christ-Consciousness is what Franny has been searching for all along. Unlike the pilgrim, who had to travel the world to spread the word about the Jesus Prayer, Franny now knows a way to attain detachment and achieve Christ-Consciousness. She can do this simply by loving, even from her bed at home. She can defeat her personal ego and embrace the universal ego. She claimed at the beginning of "Franny" that she was sick of liking people, and wanted to meet someone she could "respect." To quote her precisely, "I wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect" (italics added). Only by taking this desire literally - praying to the Son of God - can she achieve it. We are reminded of the Jesus Prayer once more when Franny listens briefly to the dial tone after Zooey hangs up. The dial tone, like the Jesus Prayer, is an incessant sound. But she does not rely on it to give her salvation - she takes its "wisdom" and knows "when to stop listening to it." She does not need to hoard spiritual wisdom like a material treasure, as she previously felt she was doing, but uses it only as much as she needs to. No wonder, then, that the novel ends as she smiles at the ceiling - at heaven. As a final piece of symbolism, Zooey's associations with water increase in this final section. We have seen him in the bath and shaving, and now he sweats profusely. He even steps on the newspaper picture of baseball player Stan Musial holding up a fresh-caught fish, and we know he has affection for his fish, which he feels the others have let die. This image is not incidental. Salinger was influenced by T.S. Eliot's 1922 poem, "The Wasteland," in which the poet sees the modern cultural landscape as dry and barren. Eliot, borrowing from mythology, awaits the arrival of the "Fisher King," who will save humanity from this dry death. Zooey's wetness may show that he is the Fisher King for Franny (note: she could only dream of water - remember her nightmare about diving in the swimming pool - and after she fainted with Lane, he only went so far as to have someone else get her a glass of water). He is also the Fisher King for the Fat Lady, who sits on her porch in the extreme heat, batting away flies and listening to the radio. Perhaps this, then, is the final meaning for the "Glass" family - they hold water for the drought victims of the world.
ClassicNote on Franny and Zooey
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