The Catcher in the Rye: Holden Caulfield's Phony Phobia

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The Modern era is classified as the period that started as the World War I ended. There where huge changes in technology. International corporations began to rise in power. They began to “westernize” with values, such as the appeal to industrialization, personal political rights, democracy, a background of knowledge in mass and education, private ownership of the means of production, the scientific method, public institutions, a questioning in God, and the independence of woman. Then by the year 1939 the Second World War took place and as it ended a new literary period began to form. A new period that dates from around the year 1945 to the present day is called Postmodernism. Postmodernism is difficult to define since there are not so many agreement on certain characteristics, and importance of the postmodern literature. This period consists on a development or departure from the modernism. Postmodern literature is much well characterized by the fragmented collection of high and lows in culture that represents the absence of tradition in the world of consumerism. Postmodernism is a time in which authors reject Western values as just only being a small part of the human experience in life. Postmodernism celebrates incoherence, fragmentation and provisional, in contrast of Modernism. The vigor of contemporary literature lies in its cultural diversity, in its enthusiasm for mixing fiction with nonfiction, and in their extraordinary sense of plays. Postmodern literature comments upon itself and uses images from the past fearlessly. Fiction writers of this period allow for multiple meanings and multiple worlds in their works. This can be seen in The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger.

Jerome David Salinger was the son of...

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