샐린저의『호밀밭의 파수꾼』에 나타난 인간소외 연구

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Jerome David Salinger was a famous American author, best known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye. The work was published at the end of World War Ⅱ. At that time, the United States had lots of changes occurring due to industrialization. Although it improved the quality of people’s life, industrialization also produced human alienation and materialism. Salinger revealed many of these social industrialization problems within his novel. His work critically depicts human suffering from the breakdown of morality and a mechanized society.
In Catcher in the Rye, Salinger criticizes the material richness and mental deficiencies America underwent after World War Ⅱ through the mouth and eyes of the main character Holden. Salinger intended for his readers to recognize human purity and the value of true love that at that time people were losing by observing society’s corrupt and negative problems through Holden's moral growth. Thus, the purpose of thesis is to find out Salinger’s viewpoint about the ways to regain human purity and the value of true love through the process of self-discovery. Ultimately, the intention of Salinger in Catcher in the Rye is to overcome alienation and inner conflicts.
Holden, as the main character in Catcher in the Rye, is alienated from society due to mental anxiety, depression and inability to adapt to school and New York which regard everything as having material value. He constantly attempts conversation, meeting various kinds of people in society in order to escape from alienation and depression. However, despite his effort, he fails to successfully communicate. He cannot find purity in society covered in fiction and hypocrisy; he refuses to assimilate with that and thus experiences alienation. It is a problem that all of us are faced with today.
Thus, it is also possible to find his solipsistic disposition in the phenomenon of human alienation that Holden faces. He is displeased with people who alienated him rather than thinking that he has a problem. He tries to hide his anxiety pretending not to be alienated and telling lies. This reflex by Holden shows his psychological status: depression, loneliness, and anxiety caused by inner conflict.
Holden’s eager for purity hopes to be a lookout in the rye field to help children not fall under the cliff which symbolizes the older generation, but the world of sincerity and purity exists nowhere, and he realizes he should simply accept the world as it is. Above all, meeting his younger sister Phoebe, Holden has a self-awakening and considers his problem more seriously. Thanks to Phoebe’s loving and innocent embrace with without any condition, Holden’s outlook on the world changes, too. He admits the limit of reality as looking at the world positively which he saw only negatively before. That is, he comes to have a warm and sincere heart that can embrace people chasing falsehoods rather than looking at them negatively. As a result, Holden undergoes mental maturity and inner change.
The outlook Salinger wants to show in this work is human’s original value and purity through Holden’s moral maturity. Salinger’s affirmative aesthetics is a way to overcome human alienation in modern society, which can be explained by the concept of “I and Thou”, defined by Martin Buber. He argues that people are depersonalized because they treat other people based on the definition “I and It” to meet their own desire in a modern industrialized society. People can form a genuine personality if they are based on the definition “I and Thou”.
Salinger believes the only way modern people can overcome alienation depends on true love for humans, and even if modern society is full of irrationalities, he is seeking a string of hope for overcoming reality through Holden’s behavioral pattern. It is the feature of Salinger’s aesthetics that this behavioral pattern is possible only in the human relationship between “I and Thou” defined by Buber.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 서론 1
• Ⅱ. 본론
• 1. 시대적 배경 8
• 2. 인간소외의 구체적 양상 18
• 3. 갈등 극복의 과정 48
• Ⅲ. 결론 61
• 참고문헌 64
• ABSTRACT 68