Franny and Zooey

“A section man’s a person that takes over a class when the professor isn’t there […] He’s usually a graduate student or something. Anyway, if it’s a course in Russian Literature, say, he comes in, in his little button-down-collar shirt and striped tie, and starts knocking Turgenev for about a half hour. Then, when he’s finished, when he’s absolutely ruined Turgenev for you, he starts talking about Stendhal or somebody he wrote his thesis for his M.A. on. Where I go, the English Department has about ten little section men running around ruining things for people, and they’re all so brilliant they can hardly open their mouths.”

This quote exemplifies Franny’s frustration with phoniness, especially in academic circles. Franny hates that colleges create hierarchies where section men constantly attempt to outperform their peers and professors. From Franny’s perspective, these types of people ruin learning because she can tell when they are doing it for social prestige rather than for the joy of learning.

“That’s partly what’s so awful. I mean they’re not real poets. They’re just people that write poems that get published and anthologized all over the place, but they’re not poets.”

Franny’s distinction between real poets and people who publish poetry shows that she knows the difference between people who do something because they are passionate and people who do it only to advance themselves. Franny believes that what makes a person a true poet is the desire to create beauty in the world.

“If you’re a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you’re supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you’re talking about don’t leave a single, solitary beautiful thing. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave something there, but just because they do, just because they know how to leave something, it doesn’t have to be a poem, for heaven’s sake.”

Franny believes that poetry is the ability to leave something beautiful in the world, rather than simply something someone thinks about. This distinction ties into Franny’s desire to be fascinated by the world and to not have everything explained away by facts and evidence.

“Her face tear-streaked but quite expressionless, almost vacuous, she picked up her handbag from the floor, opened it, and took out the small pea-green clothbound book. She put it on her lap—on her knees, rather—and looked down at it, gazed down at it, as if that were the best of all places for a small pea-green clothbound book to be. After a moment, she picked up the book, raised it chest-high, and pressed it to her—firmly, and quite briefly.”

J. D. Salinger uses repetition by describing Franny looking at her book and holding it to her chest to emphasize how much it means to her. Since the book belonged to Seymour, Franny’s act of holding the book to her chest represents Franny’s holding Seymour close to her.

“Everything everybody does is so—I don’t know—not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and—sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you’re conforming just as much as everybody else, only in a different way.”

Franny explains the paradoxical combination of The Quest for Spiritual and Existential Meaning and The Critique of Societal Inauthenticity. Franny knows she cannot escape societal pressure, whether she conforms or not. This realization causes Franny to fall into a state of depression, because she feels that life is meaningless.

“It seemed like such poor taste, sort of, to want to act in the first place. I mean all the ego. And I used to hate myself so, when I was in a play, to be backstage after the play was over. All those egos running around feeling terribly charitable and warm.”

Franny conflates the egotism of actors with the societal superficiality around her. She feels guilty becoming an actor, because she does not know what good that would do for the world, other than inflate her ego and those of other people around her.

“‘All I know is I’m losing my mind,’ Franny said, ‘I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be someday interesting. It’s disgusting—it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says.’”

Franny starts to fear that her disenchantment is a sign of mental illness. Although Franny expresses distaste for other people’s egotism, Franny’s own ego causes her frustration because it prevents her from being the type of person she wants to be.

“I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete—that’s what scares me. That’s why I quit the Theater Department. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of a splash.”

Franny’s self-reflection causes her to hate her own need for validation and attention. Franny’s early experiences with celebrity and lifetime of ambition have led her to a moment of intense disillusionment. She has become disgusted with the competitive drive that has defined her life, and this precipitates an existential crisis.

“‘I hope to God we get time over the weekend so that you can take a quick look at this goddam paper I told you about,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. I may not do a damn thing with it—I mean try to publish it or what have you—but I’d like you to sort of glance through it while you’re here.’ ‘I’d love to,’ Franny said. She watched him butter another piece of bread. ‘You might like this book,’ she said suddenly. ‘It’s so simple, I mean.’ ‘Sounds interesting. You don’t want your butter, do you?’”

Salinger uses dialogue to show the disconnect between Franny and Lane. Even though Franny spends time describing her newfound love for spirituality, Lane hardly acknowledges it, then returns to the topic of his paper. Salinger shows Lane’s selfishness a second time through Franny’s attempt to steer the conversation back toward the book, which Lane hardly recognizes, before asking for the butter.

“Something happens after a while. I don’t know what, but something happens, and the words get synchronized with the person’s heartbeats, and then you’re actually praying without ceasing. Which has a really tremendous, mystical effect on your whole outlook. I mean that’s the whole point of it, more or less. I mean you do it to purify your whole outlook and get an absolutely new conception of what everything’s about.”

This quote reveals Franny’s love for The Quest for Spiritual and Existential Meaning. Since Franny’s life has been inundated with facts and knowledge over anything else, she loves the idea of aspects of the world that human beings cannot understand. This fascination manifests in Franny’s own spiritual journey as she decides to try the Jesus Prayer, hoping to see God.

“You get to see God. Something happens in some absolutely nonphysical part of the heart—where the Hindus say that Atman resides, if you ever took any Religion—and you see God, that’s all.”

Salinger uses the phrase “absolutely nonphysical” to emphasize how Franny does not want Lane to overanalyze in factual terms what she describes. Franny loves that other religions have a term for the phenomenon she describes, because it gives her a sense of unity with people she has not met.

“Alone, Franny lay quite still, looking at the ceiling. Her lips began to move, forming soundless words, and they continued to move.”

The final lines of Franny reflect the way that Franny descends into a state of spirituality to remove herself from the world. In this instance, Franny looks for peace in the Jesus Prayer because of the way she feels. This description mirrors the final lines of Zooey to reveal the way that Franny finds peace in her familial relationships, rather than in her spirituality.

“Enough. Act, Zachary Martin Glass, when and where you want to, since you feel you must, but do it with all your might. If you do anything at all beautiful on a stage, anything nameless and joy-making, anything above and beyond the call of theatrical ingenuity, S. and I will both rent tuxedos and rhinestone hats and solemnly come around to the stage door with bouquets of snapdragons.”

Buddy’s encouragement to Zooey moves the narrative forward, because Zooey understands what he needs to tell Franny. This quote also reflects the reason why Zooey keeps it with him because Buddy writes about Seymour as if he is still alive. The knowledge that—no matter what Zooey and Franny do in their lives—Seymour and Buddy will support them gives Zooey hope for the future.

“You’ve given this whole goddam issue a fresh, new Biblical slant. I wrote four pages in college on the Crucifixion—five, really—and every one of them worried me half crazy because I thought something was missing. […] In your simple, straightforward, bigoted way, Bessie, you’ve sounded the missing keynote of the whole New Testament. Improper diet.”

Zooey mocks Bessie for reducing Franny’s spiritual journey to the food that she refuses to eat. Although Zooey hurts Bessie’s feelings, this quote mirrors Zooey’s true feelings about Bessie later in the narrative when he tells Franny that Bessie’s cooking is a spiritual act.

“‘No, she didn’t, Bessie,’ Zooey said, shaving. ‘That little book is called “The Pilgrim Continues His Way,” and it’s a sequel to another little book, called “The Way of a Pilgrim,” which she’s also dragging around with her, and she got both books out of Seymour and Buddy’s old room, where they’ve been sitting on Seymour’s desk for as long as I can remember.’”

Salinger reveals that Franny’s grief fuels her spiritual journey because the books she reads are the books that she found on Seymour’s old desk. Zooey understands the connection between Franny’s grief and her spirituality, even if Bessie does not want to make the connection because it would be too painful for her.

“This whole goddam house stinks of ghosts. I don’t mind so much being haunted by a dead ghost, but I resent like hell being haunted by a half-dead one. I wish to God Buddy’d make up his mind. He does everything else Seymour ever did—or tries to. Why the hell doesn’t he kill himself and be done with it?”

Zooey’s rash words wound Bessie because he equates Buddy’s lifestyle with Seymour’s lifestyle, which in his opinion must end in suicide. Salinger uses the imagery of ghosts to signify the Glass family’s palpable grief. Zooey hates that Seymour already haunts the house because of his suicide, and he hates that Bessie wanders around in pre-mourning over what could happen to Buddy, almost as if she is mentally preparing for his death.

“The symptoms are a little more delayed in Franny’s case than mine, but she’s a freak, too, and don’t forget it. I swear to you, I could murder them both without even batting an eyelash. The great teachers. The great emancipators. My God. I can’t even sit down to lunch with a man anymore and hold up my end of a decent conversation. I either get so bored or so goddam preachy that if the son of a bitch had any sense, he’d break his chair over my head.”

Zooey’s anger stems from his frustration with Buddy and Seymour over their teaching style. Since Seymour died by suicide, Zooey feels abandoned, as if Seymour left him with the weight of all that Seymour taught him without guidance on what to do about it. Zooey uses the phrase of “emancipators” to mock Seymour and Buddy’s actions, calling out their own phoniness in teaching their siblings as if they had all the answers.

“I don’t know what good it is to know so much and be smart as whips and all if it doesn’t make you happy.”

Bessie’s sentiment encompasses Salinger’s main point on the danger of intellectualism robbing people of happiness. According to Bessie, Seymour was the smartest of all her children, yet he experienced depression to the point of suicide. Although Bessie does not always know how to express it, she truly wants her children to find happiness.

“What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even culture, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping—and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge—when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake anyway—is the worst of all. The least excusable, certainly.”

Franny refers to a Biblical allegory advising people to store up spiritual treasure in the afterlife rather than material treasure on earth. She argues that supposedly higher values like culture and knowledge are only alternate forms of “treasure” distracting people from contemplation of the divine. Franny believes that knowledge is the worst treasure to hoard because gathering knowledge only inflates people’s egos.

“I can’t take it easy! You make me so mad! What do you think I’m doing here in this crazy room—losing weight like mad, worrying Bessie and Les absolutely silly, upsetting the house, and everything? Don’t you think I have sense enough to worry about my motives for saying the prayer? That’s exactly what’s bothering me so. Just because I’m choosy about what I want—in this case, enlightenment, or peace, instead of money or prestige or fame or any of those things—doesn’t mean I’m not as egotistical and self-seeking as everybody else.”

After Zooey attacks Franny for her own egotism, Franny responds angrily that she knows her feelings and actions are just as phony as everyone else. Franny uses rhetorical questions to point out Zooey’s lack of empathy, implying that he should know she has already accused herself of everything he accuses her of.

“Then, after an interval, she did reply to Zooey’s question, but not very audibly. ‘What?’ Zooey asked. Franny repeated her statement. ‘I want to talk to Seymour,’ she said.”

This quote reflects the climax of the narrative. As Franny finally admits that her spiritual journey is a direct reflection of her grief over Seymour, Zooey finally understands her actions. Salinger uses the literary technique of dialogue to emphasize the importance of this moment, because Franny must repeat herself for Zooey to hear her, revealing how important her words are to him.

“The Jesus prayer has one aim, and one aim only. To endow the person who says it with Christ-Consciousness. Not to set up some little cozy, holier-than-thou trysting place with some sticky, adorable divine personage who’ll take you in his arms and relieve you of all your duties and make all your nasty […] Professor Tuppers to go away and never come back.”

Although Zooey finally understands Franny’s reasoning for saying the Jesus Prayer, he cannot help falling into the trap of lecturing her. Despite his observation that Franny is being inauthentic, Zooey preaches at her about how she should be treating the Jesus Prayer. Zooey loses his empathy for Franny using the Jesus Prayer to feel close to Seymour, instead choosing to lecture her about what she should be doing. Even though Zooey hates the way that Buddy and Seymour believed themselves to be “emancipators,” Zooey falls into the same trap as his brothers.

“He’s completely destructive. I’ve never met anyone so completely destructive in my life! It’s just so unnecessary! One minute he launches this all-out attack on the Jesus Prayer—which I happen to be interested in—making you think you’re some kind of neurotic nitwit for even being interested in it. And about two minutes later he starts raving to you about how Jesus is the only person in the world he’s ever had any respect for—such a marvelous mind, and all that.”

When Franny believes that she is speaking to Buddy, she finally gets a moment to be authentic about her feelings. The moment is ironic, as Franny is complaining about Zooey to Zooey himself. Franny’s complaint finally gets Zooey to self-reflect and realize the way that he has been hypocritical in the same way that he hates to see hypocrisy in other people.