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Catcher In The Rye

Individuality in society is what makes our culture exist.   Each person seems to be opposite of the next in their choices and their preferences.   What makes one person happy, make not even bring a smile to the next.   The one thing that each individual does have in common is the fact that to gain happiness, one much search for it.   This quest may involve many different characteristics.   Some battle the quest for happiness with the company of others, and some battle the quest for happiness alone.   Whether this quest leads to a material happiness or a spiritual happiness depends on the individual who is brave enough to tackle the search.   In The Catcher in the Rye, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" and "For Esme—With Love and Squalor," Salinger argues that the quest for happiness is not material, but spiritual; he does this by creating characters who cannot cope with the world around them and search for a spiritual happiness through loneliness, by detailing this spiritual quest through religious symbols that form a foundation, which his characters build their lives upon, and by displaying symbols that seem to predict a better life by signifying a turning point which leads to an eventual happiness.
Salinger's characters are generally misfits of society, protagonists that undergo a spiritual happiness by being unable to conform to a material happiness, forcing them to isolate themselves from this society.   In The Catcher in the Rye, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish", and "For Esme—With Love and Squalor", loneliness is used to isolate characters from evil.   Salinger portrays all of society to be horrific, and for many character's isolation from this repulsion is the only way to achieve happiness (Grunwald 103).   In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield's entire plot deals with him trying to isolate himself from the rest of the world.   Holden realizes that society has become corrupt, and wants no part in this terrible life that he is obligated to live (French 192).   In this...