Conteporary

HOOK!

The contemporary period started after World War II with people reflecting on their own country. It is a period marked by problems in society such as racism, corruption, and self-doubt. Which in turn lead to the rise of Americanization, the Civil Right movements, and self-discovery. Through the usage of multiple interpretations, intimate language, and cultural diversity by the authors of The Catcher in the Rye, The Outsiders, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Joy Luck Club were able to demonstrate these themes.

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is one of the earliest books of the contemporary period. This book describes the misadventure of “a young rebel flunking out of schools, smoking, cursing and swearing” (Zoričić 1). It is a novel designed for adults, however, it became popular among the younger audiences, “who sympathized and identified themselves with the seventeen year old Caulfield” (Zoričić 1).

The author, Jerome David Salinger, was born in New York, the same setting as the story. Also like the main character, Salinger attended multiple colleges without receiving any degrees. In his youth, he “enrolled in the McBurney School of Manhattan, New York with aspirations of becoming an actor.” Two years later, however, he “transferred to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania,” marking the beginning of his literary endeavors. He began writing fiction and “agreed to edit the school yearbook, Crossed Sabers, in which he published his own poetic tribute to the academy.” After graduation, Salinger “wrote the column “Skipped Diploma” for the student newspaper” in Ursinus College, in Collegeville. In 1940, after Salinger took Whit Burnett’s class on short-story writing at Columbia,” he published his first sho...

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...d see more clearly. The girl staring back at me was angry, powerful” (144). Jing-mei had new willful thoughts of won'ts. She was determined to not let her mother change her. She promised myself, “I won't be what I'm not” (144). This is a moment of identity crisis, when Jing-mei sees what she accepts as her essential self. Her disastrous performance at the talent show is the turning point in Jing-mei's life. She refused to continue to practice, and “felt stronger, as if [her] true self had finally emerged. ‘So this was what had been inside me all along’" (p. 152). Jing-mei defied and defeated her mother; however, "In the years that followed, [Jing-mei] failed her so many times, each time asserting [her] own will, [her] right to fall short of expectations… For unlike [her] mother, [she] did not believe [she] could be anything [she] wanted to be. [she] could only be [he