The Catcher in the Rye: Suggested Database Articles

Includes Topic and Work Overviews, Literary Criticisms, And Multimedia.

What was happening when Salinger wrote this novel?

J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye popularized the rebellious but sensitive young protagonist, providing a different kind of role model for the disillusioned youth of the 1950's.

Best known for his controversial novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951), Salinger has been one of the most popular and influential authors of American fiction to emerge after World War II.

With the publication of The Catcher in the Rye in 1951, J. D. Salinger not only defined a generation, but also gave young adults a character in whom they could see themselves--Holden Caulfield, "the innocent child in the evil and hostile universe, the child who can never grow up," wrote Maxwell Geismar in his American Moderns: From Rebellion to Conformity. Both a classic and an object of debate, the book made Salinger a literary phenomenon while selling more than ten million copies.

Background information on why the United States joined World War II.

Describes how the United States handled the war.

From and encyclopedia of U.S. History

Describes the popular culture of the 1940s.