homas Morton’s The New English Canaan is considered the first book to be banned in the United States (to be accurate, what would become the U.S.). Though Morton arrived in Massachusetts with the Puritans, he wasn’t on board with the strict, insular society they set out to build.

So Morton set up a dissenting colony, and seemingly went out of his way to be a perpetual thorn in the side of Plymouth’s governor, William Bradford, who declared him a “Lord of Misrule.”[1] Based on the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a Lord of Misrule is one who presided over raucous celebrations in England throughout the 16th century.[2]

And, Bradford wasn’t altogether wrong. The accusations he hurled toward Morton, like “inviting the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither,” (yes, that means exactly what you think it means) were apparently true.[3]

Morton’s dissenting colony was a “neo-pagan experiment,” which he dubbed Merrymount.[4] The name is a play on the Latin phrase for sea, the Mother of God, not to mention an emotion never associated with the Puritans… joy.[5] Things came to a head when Morton erected an enormous maypole:

.
a goodly pine tree of 80. foote longe was reared up, with a peare of [very pagan] buckshorns nayled one fomewhat neare unto the top of it.[6]

#banned books         #published 1600s

Endnotes:

[1] Mancall, Peter C. The Trials of Thomas Morton. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019) Pg 13.
[2] McMahon, Mary. “What Was the Lord of Misrule?” HistoricalIndex.org          https://www.historicalindex.org/what-was-the-lord-of-misrule.htm
[3] Bradford, William. Bradford’s History of “Plimoth Plantation.” (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1898), pg 285.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24950/24950-h/24950-h.htm 
[4] Simon, Ed. “Lord of Misrule: Thomas Morton’s American Submersions.” November 24, 2020. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/lord-of-misrule-thomas-mortons-american-subversions#p-1-4.
[5] Simon, Ed. “Lord of Misrule: Thomas Morton’s American Submersions.” November 24, 2020. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/lord-of-misrule-thomas-mortons-american-subversions#p-1-4.
[6] Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan. (Boston: Publications of the Prince Society, 1858 edition). Pg 277.
[7] Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan. (Boston: Publications of the Prince Society, 1858 edition). Pg 285.
[8] Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The May-pole of Merry Mount.” Twice Told Tales. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1884), Pg 69.

laughterhouse-Five revolves around Billy Pilgrim, who like Vonnegut, was a POW in Dresden when it was decimated by Allied firebombing during World War Two.[1] Billy has “come unstuck in time.”[2] And to complicate matters further, he is abducted by aliens, two-foot-tall creatures, who are shaped like toilet plungers, from the planet Tralfamadore.[3]

Why was Slaughterhouse-Five banned? Kurt Vonnegut’s searingly sarcastic, darkly funny, science fiction-infused war story is considered one of the greatest anti-war novels of all time. Needless to say, it includes a good dose of rough language, the kind soldiers have been known to use. Bearing both of these things in mind, it’s no surprise that Vonnegut’s novel has been challenged at least eighteen times, with “obscene language,” and “anti-American” sentiment or “lack of patriotism,” consistently among the objections.[4] But as always, some challenges were more successful than others.

A petition to remove Slaughterhouse-Five (among other books) from the junior high and high school libraries of Island Trees Union Free Public School District, made it to the US Supreme Court. Fortunately, citing the First Amendment, the court found that these books could not be removed from the school district’s libraries.[5]

On the other hand, there’s Drake, North Dakota, a banning that got Vonnegut’s personal attention. In 1973, school officials voted to withdraw Slaughterhouse-Five from the curriculum. Most students, however, didn’t want to give up their copy of the novel. So, lockers were searched, books confiscated, and all 32 copies were ultimately burned in the school’s furnace.[6]

The event made national headlines. And Vonnegut sent a biting letter to the chairman of the Drake School Board, who apparently couldn’t fathom what all the fuss was about. In his typical no-holds-barred style, Vonnegut stated what to many of us is obvious:

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that.[7]

Vonnegut concluded his letter by summing up the stand against censorship book burning like only he can:

Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them… it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books—books you haven’t even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and survive.[8]

To Vonnegut’s point, this book is definitely more than just a stockpile of salty language. But, why is Slaughterhouse-Five important? Like all literature, it’s a snapshot of the culture that produced it. As noted in an earlier post, authors and their works present, analyze, and shed light on the social maladies of their day. When readers look beyond Slaughterhouse Five’s rough language, it’s obvious that this book addresses the devastating aftereffects of war. And the novel’s time-traveling, non-linear structure mimics a debilitating psychological condition, one our soldiers struggle with all too often as a result of their war experience.
_____

No parts for
Frank Sinatra or John Wayne.

Science-fiction tropes may carry Slaughterhouse-Five’s narrative, but Vonnegut’s novel tells the very real tale of a verifiable historical event. In the book’s opening chapter, however, Vonnegut makes it clear that he wrote about the firebombing of Dresden because of its historical significance, rather than simply because it made for an exciting personal war story.[9]

But, Vonnegut doesn’t write from the romanticized, gung-ho perspective prevalent in post-World War Two culture. As he tells us in the novel’s autobiographical first chapter, after an uncomfortable conversation with his war-buddy’s wife (Mary O’Hare, to whom Slaughterhouse-Five is dedicated), he realized that the book he was about to write would add to the cultural mythology that perpetuates war and glamorizes young men’s participation in them.[10] So, Vonnegut made her a promise, vowing that if he ever finished his book and it was made into a movie, there would be no parts for actors like Frank Sinatra or John Wayne. There would be no roles for “glamorous, war loving, dirty old men,” who “make war look just wonderful, so we’ll have a lot more of them.”[11]

Consequently, Vonnegut’s novel doesn’t praise the British bombers who carried out the raid, justify American involvement, or support World War Two generally for that matter. Instead, he wrote about hungry and sick prisoners of war. He tells us about a good man who survives the bombing but is executed for picking a teapot out of the rubble.[12] And as Vonnegut points out in the novel, “there are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations.”[13] He wrote it this way because “one of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters,” by which he means being seen as human beings.[14]
_____

Why is Slaughterhouse-Five’s
1969 publication date significant?

As also mentioned in a previous post, the period a book was written in can tell us a lot. And Slaughterhouse-Five’s 1969 publication date, nearly twenty-five years after Vonnegut’s release from a repatriation camp in France, is definitely noteworthy.[15] It’s significant for a couple of reasons. First, because dissent toward the Vietnam war finally freed writers to report on World War Two events that “made war look so ugly.”[16] The time frame is also pertinent because it is during this period that Mental Health professionals began defining the symptoms of PTSD, and advocating for an official diagnosis for this debilitating effect of war.[17] This tidbit of medical history is relevant because Billy Pilgrim, Slaughterhouse-Five’s haunted protagonist, appears to be “a text-book sufferer of PTSD.”[18]

Some significant insight into PTSD is that it’s caused by more than the trauma itself. The “psychosocial atmosphere” of the society soldiers are returning to can, and often does, hinder the process of coping with traumatizing events.[19] And this situation can be observed in Slaughterhouse-Five. When Billy comes home after the war, the environment in America isn’t conducive to working through the trauma he experienced as a soldier.

Shortly after he returns from the war, Billy resumes optometry school. By the middle of his final year, he has himself committed to a veterans’ hospital for non-violent mental patients. And though the doctors agree that Billy was indeed “going crazy” (as Vonnegut describes it), “they didn’t think it had anything to do with the war.”[20] Billy’s doctors were certain his issues could only have stemmed from childhood experiences.

This scene reflects the medical history noted above. PTSD wasn’t even on the medical community’s radar until the the Vietnam war. And it wasn’t recognized as a diagnosable psychological disorder until 1980.[21]

As Vonnegut’s remarks about Hollywood films suggest, prior to the emergence of the social movement that opposed the Vietnam war, American culture considered battle experience to have a positive, maturing effect on young men.[22] Billy’s son, Robert, embodies this notion. He was a sixteen-year-old alcoholic who flunked out of high school. But after a couple tours in Vietnam, “he was all straightened out now.”[23] It’s no coincidence that Robert is a Green Beret in the Marine Corps. A very famous film titled The Green Berets had been released just the year before Slaughterhouse-Five was published.  And it starred the selfsame John Wayne that Mary O’Hare called out as bearing responsibility for glamorizing war.

There’s also the gung-ho, political American mindset that kept information about Dresden quiet for so many years. Vonnegut put this attitude in the mouth of Professor Rumfoord, Billy’s hospital roommate following the airplane crash that killed everyone but Billy. When asked why Dresden would be kept a secret for so many years, Rumfoord answered, “For fear that a lot of bleeding hearts… might not think it was such a wonderful thing to do.”[24]

The culture that emerges from these commonly held perspectives prevented the negative effects of wartime experience and resultant PTSD from being taken seriously.[25] But as Rumfoord was finally forced to acknowledge that Billy had indeed been in Dresden during the Allied firebombing, PTSD was finally recognized as a trauma-related condition.
_____

Billy Pilgrim, “unstuck in time”,
a text-book case of PTSD.

Vonnegut himself describes Slaughterhouse-Five as being “jumbled and jangled.”[26] And his non-linear structure resembles the most common symptom of PTSD, “re-experiencing… when a person involuntarily and vividly relives the traumatic event.” [27] This can occur through nightmares, repetitive images and sensations, or it can take the form of flashbacks.[28]

One form of re-experiencing is reflected in Vonnegut’s repetition of particular phrases. These phrases function as both a psychological and narrative linking device, repeatedly returning both Billy and the reader to the war. One example is the oft-repeated image of “blue and ivory feet,” which Billy first saw on corpses while being marched to a POW camp.[29] There’s also the frequently referenced “smell of roses and mustard gas,” whose first chronological encounter occurred in the corpse mines of Dresden.[30]

And then, there’s Vonnegut’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, who he describes as having “come unstuck in time.”[31] Billy time travels, spontaneously and frequently. And the fact that Billy has no control over what part of his life he’ll find himself in, echoes the flashbacks experienced by many who suffer from PTSD.

Flashbacks occur in cases of PTSD because the process of memory consolidation is short-circuited. Familiar, non-stressful events are automatically assimilated and the information in our brain’s “active memory storage” is rapidly eliminated. But that’s not the case with traumatic events.[32] As amazing as our brains are, they have a limited capacity for processing. And information associated with extraordinary, stressful events can’t be processed rapidly, so it remains in active memory storage and continues to run in the background, if you will. When a traumatic memory is triggered, it inserts itself into active consciousness, like pop-ups on websites if you don’t have an ad-blocker.[33]

Specific triggers, things that remind Billy of the war, prompt his time travel/flashbacks. For example, the siren announcing high noon on the firehouse across the street “scared the hell out of him,” and catapults him back in time: “Billy closed his eyes. When he opened them, he was back in World War Two again.”[34] Another triggering instance occurs when Billy was in the mental ward, and his room-mate is reading a book:

Billy fell asleep under his blanket. When he woke up again, he was tied to the bed in the hospital back in prison. He opened one eye, saw poor old Edgar Derby reading The Red Badge of Courage by candlelight.[35]

Like the repeated phrases mentioned above, Billy’s time travel/flashbacks also function as a linking device, repeatedly returning both Billy and the reader to the war.

A great big secret somewhere inside.

The barbershop quartet at Billy’s anniversary party also triggers a war-related memory. But this time, his response is very different. Rather than having a flashback/time traveling:

His mouth filled with the taste of lemonade, and his face became grotesque, as though he really were being stretched on the torture engine called the rack. He looked so peculiar that several people commented on it solicitously when the song was done. They thought he might have been having a heart attack… [36]

While coming unstuck in time is the result of a memory that has been partially processed, the barbershop quartet triggers Billy’s response to a memory that had been suppressed. So, even Billy himself didn’t understand why the song evoked such anguish. He finally realizes that the barbershop quartet reminded him of the expressions on the faces of four gobsmacked German guards as they take in the sight of the freshly devastated Dresden.[37] When everyone, guards and prisoners alike, emerged from the meat locker they were sheltering in:

… the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.[38]

The bombing of Dresden is the epicenter of Billy’s trauma. As such, it was not just too frightening to relive, but too painful to even remember. So he suppressed the memory altogether, that is until it was triggered by the barbershop quartet.[39]
_____

What’s with the Tralfamadorians?

Billy’s roommate in the mental hospital, Eliot Rosewater, introduced Billy to the science fiction books of Kilgore Trout. Rosewater had been an infantry captain in the war, and he and Billy were both feeling the “sense of dislocation and absurdity” frequently experienced by survivors of atrocity, a sensibility that destroys their previous assumption of a rational universe.[40]  So, as Vonnegut specifically tells us, Billy and Rosewater use science fiction to “re-invent themselves and their universe.”[41]

One of the books Billy read while he was in the mental hospital was titled Maniacs in the Fourth Dimension. It helped Billy understand why his doctors couldn’t fix what was wrong with him. According to Trout’s book, “mental diseases couldn’t be treated because the causes of the diseases were all in the fourth dimension.”[42] So, Billy’s three-dimensional Earthling doctors weren’t actually incompetent. They couldn’t identify the cause of his problems, because they were unable to see them. Rather like the way the psychosocial atmosphere in America hindered Mental Health professionals from identifying PTSD prior to the Vietnam era.

The Tralfamadorian concept of time offers Billy an explanation for his flashbacks. According to the Tralfamadorians, the notion that moments occur one after another, and are gone forever once they have past, is merely an illusion we have here on Earth. Tralfamadorians can:

…look at all the different moments just the way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them.[43]

This is an apt description what happens in a flashback. All moments are active. As mentioned earlier, the brain hasn’t finished processing traumatic memories and removed them from active memory storage. And when a particular moment is triggered, indicating interest in that moment, the subject (re-)experiences it.

As a result of their understanding of time, when Tralfamadorians see a corpse they merely think the dead person is in a bad state at that precise moment. That same person is in fine shape in plenty of other moments. A passage within Slaughterhouse-Five that overlaps the moment when Billy’s entire company was killed with a moment of camaraderie during boot camp, indicates the psychological benefits of seeing time in this way.

Billy’s fellow soldiers were merely “theoretically dead.”[44]  And these “theoretical corpses” were still able to laugh and eat “a hearty noontime meal.”[45] Recalling the incident some years later, “Billy was struck by what a Tralfamadorian adventure with death that had been, to be dead and to eat at the same time.”[46] In short, understanding time as the Tralfamadorians do provides Billy with the tools to get a handle on his condition. These tools also allow him to cope with the vast amount of death he witnessed in the war, which caused his condition in the first place.
_____

Why are aliens
intertwined with Billy’s PTSD?

Once again, Vonnegut’s use of aliens reflects what was going in American culture when he was writing his novel. At the time Slaughterhouse-Five was published, the Roswell incident had been in American culture for about twenty years. And reports of alien encounters were beginning to crop up. These alien abduction stories indicate that, during this period, science fiction has gone beyond merely being a genre of fiction to become a way of looking at the world.[47]

It’s interesting to note that the first widely publicized account came from someone who, like Billy Pilgrim, was a World War Two veteran. The fact that this abductee said the alien in charge reminded him of “an evil-faced German Nazi” officer is intriguing indeed.[48] This shared characteristic with Billy Pilgrim is especially compelling, given that he also noted a similarity between the “precision of movement” the alien crew exhibited when they moved as a group, and German soldiers.[49]

Studies of alien abduction accounts indicate that, along with other phobias and aversions, subjects commonly experience a confused temporality and gaps in time. These symptoms are frequently related to trauma, which as we have seen, often disrupts memory assimilation. In order for the subject to protect themselves from remembering the event that created their psychic wound, these gaps in time demand to be filled.[50] After the Roswell incident “proved” the existence of extraterrestrials, an alien abduction story is the perfect way to account for this missing time.
_____

In Conclusion.

Slaughterhouse-Five is clearly more than a jumbled bag of sarcastic anti-American rhetoric, sprinkled with a good dose of rough language. Like all literature, Vonnegut’s novel reflects what was going on in the culture that produced it. Even if, like PTSD prior to the Vietnam era, it doesn’t have a name yet. This book does more than just talk about the devastating after-effects of war, however. It gives engaged readers a very small taste of what it’s like to try and make sense of the world when suffering from this debilitating psychological condition.

The moral of Slaughterhouse-Five is simple, War is Hell. By showing us how damaging trauma is, especially on the scale endured as a result of World War Two, Vonnegut does indeed make the case for why people need to be kinder and more responsible than they often are.

That’s my take on Slaughterhouse Five – what’s yours?
Check out this discussion guide to get you started.

    #book burning      #post-war social commentary     #banned books    #PTSD    #published 1960s

Endnotes:

[1] Powers, Kevin. “Forward.” Slaughterhouse-Five. (New York: Modern Library, 2019), xi.
[2] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five. (New York: Modern Library, 2019), 25.
[3] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 28.
[4] Morais, Betsy. “The Neverending Campaign to Ban “Slaughterhouse-Five.’” The Atlantic, August 12, 2011; Henriksen, Megan. “Kurt Vonnegut, ‘Slaughterhouse-Five.’” The Banned Books Project @Carnegie Mellon University. September 12, 2019.
[5] Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 et al., Petitioners, v. Steven A. PICO, by his next friend Frances Pico et al. https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/457/853.
[6] Johnson, Hannah. “40 years later, the resentment still smolders.” The Bismarck Tribune. Nov. 10, 2013; Stevens, William K. “Dakota Town Dumfounded at Criticism of Book Burning by Order of the school Board.” The New York Times, Nov. 16, 1973.
[7] Vonnegut, Kurt. Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage. (New York: Dial Press Trade Paperbacks, 2011), 4-5.
[8] Vonnegut, Palm Sunday, 6.
[9] Laufert, Wayne. “From the Slaughter.” The Humanist.com (Feb. 19, 2019).
[10] Kunze, Peter C. “For the Boys: Masculinity, Gray Comedy, and the Vietnam War in ‘Slaughterhouse-Five.’” Studies in American Humor. New Series 3, No. 26, Special Issue: Kurt Vonnegut and Humor (2012), 45.
[11] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 17, 16.
[12] Laufert, “From the Slaughter.”
[13] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 168.
[14] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 168.
[15] Solly, Mellan. “Kurt Vonnegut’s Unpublished World War II Scrapbook Reveals Origins of ‘Slaughterhouse-Five.’” Smithsonianmag.com (Dec. 14, 2018).
[16] “‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ at 50.” 2003 Interview with Renee Montagne. NPR radio. (June 6, 2019).
[17] Scott, Wilbur J. “PTSD in DSM-III: A Case in the Politics of Diagnosis and Disease.” Social Problems, Vol 37, No. 3 (Aug., 1990).
[18] Kavanagh, Ciaran. “Diagnosing Kurt Vonnegut: A Response to Susanne Vees-Gulani on the Subject of Slaughterhouse-Five.” IJAS (Irish Journal of American Studies.) Online, No. 5 (2016), 14.
[19]  Kleber, Rolf J., Charles R. Figley, and Bertold P. R. Gersons. Beyond Trauma: Cultural and Societal Dynamics. The Plenum Series on Stress and Coping. (New York: Plenum, 1995), 2.
[20] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 103.
[21] Friedman, Matthew J. A Brief History of the PTSD Diagnosis. PTSD: National Center or PTSD.
[22] Bracken, Patrick J. “Post-modernity and post-traumatic stress disorder.” Social science & Medicine. Vol 53 (2001), 734.
[23] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 194.
[24] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 195.
[25] Bracken, Post-modernity and post-traumatic stress disorder, 735.
[26] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 21.
[27] Symptoms: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder-ptsd/symptoms/
[28] Symptoms: Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
[29] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 68.
[30] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 219; Kavanagh, Ciaran. “Diagnosing Kurt Vonnegut: A Response to Susanne Vees-Gulani on the Subject of Slaughterhouse-Five.” IJAS (Irish Journal of American Studies.) Online, No. 5 (2016), 14.
[31] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 25.
[32] Horowitz, Mardi J. Stress Response Syndromes: PTSD, Grief, Adjustment, and Dissociative Disorders. (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 2011), 84.
[33] Horowitz, 84-85.
[34] Kavanaugh, 14; Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 60.
[35] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 108.
[36] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 177.
[37] Kavanaugh, 14-15.
[38] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 182.
[39] Kavanaugh, 14-15.
[40] Lifton, Robert J. “Beyond Atrocity.” Saturday Review. (March 27, 1971), 23.
[41] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 104.
[42] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 107.
[43] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 29.
[44] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 33.
[45] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 33.
[46] Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five, 34.
[47] Luckhurst, Roger. “The Science-Fictionalization of Trauma: Remarks on Narratives of Alien Abduction.” Science Fiction Studies. Vol. 21, No. 1 (March, 1998), 29.
[48] Friedman, Stanton T. and Kathleen Marden. Captured!: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2007), 136.
[49] Friedman, 108.
[50] Luckhurst, 37.

Images:

Cover – 1st edition. Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five.  (New York: Delacorte Press, 1969). Jacket design by Paul Bacon” is found on the left jacket flap. (For jurisdictions that define copyright term on the date of the author’s death: according to this article, Bacon died in 2015.) – AbeBooks (direct link to jpg)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80843456

No Parts for John Wayne or Frank Sinatra. “The Longest Day.” trailer screenshot (20th Century Fox), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Billy Pilgrim, a Text-book Case of PTSD. Photo by Ahmad Ossayli on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/laJW5pp-6Yw?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

A Great Big Secret Somewhere Inside. Photo by Edge2Edge Media on Unsplash  https://unsplash.com/photos/x21KgBfOd_4?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

Why are Aliens Intertwined with Billy’s PTSD? Photo by Stephen Leonardi on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/sMPRCsoUM4A?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink

FYI:

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Who’s afraid of comic books? Book bans across Missouri and the U.S. often target graphic novels and comic books, especially those that depict issues of race, gender, and sexuality. New Missouri laws will punish school librarians and educators who provide restricted materials to students not only with fines but jail time. This event takes a look at banned comic books from the perspectives of the artists who create them as well as the advocates who defend them. Panel lineup includes:

• Jerry Craft, New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the graphic novels Class Act and  New Kid. New Kid is the only book to ever win the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature (2020), the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature (2019), as well as the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the most outstanding work by an African American writer (2020).
• Molly Carney, ACLU MO. Carney joined the ACLU of Missouri in 2020 as a Staff Attorney. As a member of the legal team, she engages in all aspects of strategic litigation efforts to protect civil rights and liberties. This includes her current work on litigation and advocacy against book bans across Missouri.
• Phoebe Gloeckner, graphic novelist. Gloeckner’s book The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002) has been praised as “one of the most brutally honest, tender, shocking, beautiful portrayals of growing up female in America.”

The discussion is moderated by Rebecca Wanzo, professor and chair of the Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Washington University. Wanzo is the author of The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, which was a winner of the 2021 Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work, and the 2021 Charles Hatfield Book Prize from the Comics Studies Society.

This event was organized by Left Bank Books, St. Louis Public Library, and the Center for the Humanities and Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.

_{Arrangements for the appearance of Jerry Craft made through HarperCollins Speakers Bureau, NY, NY.}

#on censorship 

nlike a lot of other books, there’s no short answer as to why The Scarlet Letter was banned. Whenever Hawthorne’s work has been challenged, the objections have come from all directions. That’s because Nathaniel Hawthorne had a complicated relationship with his subject matter. Needless to say, Hawthorne is inextricably linked with Puritanism. He wrote The Scarlet Letter, after all.

When we read a book, it’s important to consider the author and their historical context.  And, when we read Hawthorne, it’s important to understand that his relationship with Puritanism falls squarely in the love/hate category. That’s especially apparent in The Scarlet Letter.

It’s no secret that Hawthorne was haunted by his Puritan lineage. He was so bothered, he added the letter W to his name to separate himself from his Puritan forefathers.[1] It’s easy to see why. His great, great, great grandfather, Major William Hathorne, was infamous as a “bitter persecutor” of Quakers, having them “scourged out of town.”[2] Hathorne is mostly remembered for ordering “Anne Coleman and four of her friends” to be whipped, while tied to a cart and forced to walk the 60 miles from Salem to Boston.[3]  And William’s son, John, “made himself conspicuous” as a “witch judge” and chief interrogator during the Salem Witch Trials.[4]

Hawthorne talks about the ancestral guilt he carries as a result of their actions in The Custom House, the opening chapter of The Scarlet Letter. He ends the passage by praying that any family curse caused by their actions “may be now and henceforth removed.”[5] These feelings are undoubtedly the source of what Herman Melville described as the “mystical blackness” that pervades Hawthorne’s work.[6]

On the other hand, Hawthorne still wasn’t inclined to embrace the religious shift that had occurred in New England during the nineteenth century, toward individual experience and an optimistic faith in the perfectibility of human beings.[7] His Puritan ancestry gave Hawthorne a sense of rootedness, “a home-feeling with the past.”[8] And he may not have been a “churchly man,” but his heritage gave him an appreciation for the culture and moral foundation that emerged from Puritan doctrine.[9] His very nature, it’s been said, was imbued with “the temperamental earnestness of the Puritan.”[10]

It’s no surprise, then, that multiple and often paradoxical perspectives are common in Hawthorne’s works. In fact, Hawthorne’s technique has been referred to as “the device of multiple choice.”[11] Hawthorne himself described The Scarlet Letter as “turning different sides” of the same idea “to the reader’s eye.”[12] So, it should be even less surprising that The Scarlet Letter has been banned and challenged for contradictory reasons as well.

For example, one literary critic reviewing The Scarlet Letter the year it was published thought Hawthorne’s depiction of Puritanism was too severe.  He didn’t say Hawthorne was wrong. He just wondered why, “of all features of the period,” Hawthorne chose practices that “reflect most discredit” on the Puritans.[13]

Another early critic, however, thought Hester’s punishment wasn’t painful and obvious enough. Merely being condemned to wear the scarlet letter didn’t make Hester contrite. It didn’t make her repent. And Hawthorne didn’t “excite the horror of his readers” enough to keep them from following in Hester and Dimmesdale’s footsteps.[14]

So, it isn’t just the passage of time that causes contemporary readers to see oppressive patriarchy (like the Seattle teacher who tweeted he’d “rather die” than teach The Scarlet Letter), when some nineteenth-century critics found what we would call feminism.[15] It isn’t caused by cultural shift. And it’s more than Hester’s “light punishment” that lead to objections about how the book advocates women’s rights. Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe specifically expressed concern that Hawthorne’s book encouraged a message way too close to views expressed at the first National Woman’s Rights Convention, held in Worcester, Massachusetts the same year The Scarlet Letter was published.[16]

Granted, we’re more on the lookout for feminist themes these days. But, they were clearly in the text all along. And, they’re right beside passages that seem to say Hester should accept her fate, and fall in line with patriarchal Puritan society.

It is true, however, that the most consistent objection to The Scarlet Letter has been the topic of adultery. The notion that adultery is quite simply not a “fit subject for popular literature” didn’t begin with the 1961 challenge in Michigan, or the Arizona challenge in 1967.[17] That mindset has been around since 1850. And there’ll probably always be someone who takes offense at Hawthorne’s use of adultery as a vehicle for examining his multiple perspectives and paradoxical themes. Unfortunately, this mindset squashes any real understanding of what The Scarlet Letter has to say. And this superficial (mis)reading begins with the title.

After all, if the focus of Hawthorne’s book was the scandalous behavior of an adulterous woman, he would’ve titled it Hester Prynne, or A Fallen Woman.[18] That would have been more consistent with the novels of adultery that were popular in nineteenth-century literature, like Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, or Madame Bovary by Flaubert.[19] While these novels revolve around the theme of “love against the world,” Hawthorne calling his work The Scarlet Letter tells the reader that the letter’s function as symbol is actually the central subject of the book.[20]

This reading is reinforced by the fact that Hester and Dimmesdale’s adulterous act isn’t depicted (even in nineteenth-century terms), and the word adultery never appears in the text. Yes, requiring that a capital A be stitched to your clothes a historically accurate penalty for adultery in Puritan Massachusetts. But, the law is precise about its size and placement. Hester embellishing the letter with gold threat would not have been tolerated.  And other aspects of the punishment Hawthorne depicts don’t line up with the statute’s requirements.[21] Hawthorne is clearly using the scarlet letter as a symbol, a word that does appear in his book some twenty-four times, specifically in reference to the A on Hester’s bosom.[22]  The question at the heart of Hawthorne’s work, then, is “What does the scarlet A actually mean?”
___

The Custom House.

 The opening chapter of the book provides a cryptic key, so to speak, to unlocking Hawthorne’s symbolism, enabling readers to see that The Scarlet Letter is about more than a misbehaving minister. By locating the red cloth letter that inspired his work in Salem’s Custom House, wrapped in a package from before the Revolutionary War, Hawthorne establishes a connection between seventeenth-century Puritan New England and nineteenth-century American culture.

In this context, the A becomes a cultural artifact, one that simultaneously expresses Hawthorne’s culture as well as the one that produced it.[23] Hawthorne reaches back through the A to America’s myth of national origins and does what we continue to do, return to the Puritans to reclaim a sense of purpose, while also demonstrating progress. The A embodies the shift from Puritanism to the Revolution, as well as America’s continued development from that time forward.[24]

The American Revolution prompted social changes just as significant as the political changes it brought about. The spirit that triggered the Revolution, with its declaration of inalienable rights, self-evident truths, and the equal creation of all, undoubtedly played a role in the decline of Puritanism and its foundational Calvinist doctrine, a theology that emphasizes the depravity of humankind.[25]  Hawthorne considers this transition from the religious perspective, a psychological outlook, as well as a historical viewpoint, all of which are reflected in the book.
___

Dimmesdale looks back,
and Hester is forward looking.

Founders of new ethics are invariably deemed sinful/heretical, because they challenge the authority of an existing/old ethic, a collective whose aim is to maintain equilibrium. And that’s the case in The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne, who is forced to literally wear a label identifying her as sinful, represents a new ethic. And Arthur Dimmesdale is a concrete expression of the American Puritanism that Hester challenges. Not only is Dimmesdale a Puritan minister, he embodies the psychological consequences associated with trying to adhere to such an authoritarian ethic. [26]

Guilt stemming from sinful acts is frequently identified as a major theme in The Scarlet Letter, but it’s more complicated than that. Two basic psychological mechanisms are at work within an authoritarian ethic like Puritanism (with its harshly implemented moral Laws and publicly enforced taboos), suppression, and repression. Suppression is the process of consciously pushing tendencies that don’t align with the ethical system out of our awareness. And the best-known forms of this technique are discipline and asceticism.[27]

Hawthorne is known as a master of psychological insight, and he tells us it’s “essential” to Dimmesdale “to feel the pressure of a faith about him.”[28] And we see Dimmesdale use both discipline and asceticism to keep himself in check. He exhibits discipline when he tells Pearl that he won’t appear publicly with her and Hester in the town square the next day:

“Nay; not so, my little Pearl,” answered the minister; for, with the new energy of the moment, all the dread of public exposure, that had so long been the anguish of his life, had returned upon him; and he was already trembling at the conjunction in which—with a strange joy, nevertheless—he now found himself.[29]

As much as Dimmesdale might wish he could claim his place alongside Hester and Pearl, he doesn’t dare fly in the face of Puritanism’s moral Law. And suppressing that impulse becomes a pleasant experience in itself. It’s also revealed that Dimmesdale’s conflicted soul not only leads him to whip himself with a “bloody scourge,” but fast to the point of collapse as “act[s] of penance.”[30]

While suppression operates on the conscious level, repression functions on the unconscious level. Inclinations that are at odds with the dominant ethic are rejected from the conscious mind. These tendencies may become unconscious, but according to depth psychology, they “lead an active underground life of their own.”[31] Needless to say, nothing good can come from this situation.

What does happen is that two psychic systems develop within the personality, one an outgrowth of suppression, and the other a byproduct of repression. Suppression leads to a “façade personality,” a mask that signals we’re conforming to the dominant ethic of the age, and hides our true nature.[32]  Though it’s easy to interpret Dimmesdale’s actions as mere hypocrisy, this is what occurs when he hides his guilt. [33]  The scene at the scaffold when Hester is first released from prison, demonstrates a façade personality at work:

“Hester Prynne,” said he, leaning over the balcony and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, “thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which I labor. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be made more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him.[34]

Dimmesdale makes his true feelings known. But he does so through a mask that signals to everyone but Hester that he’s conforming to the strict Puritan ethic.

The other psychic system that develops is a shadow figure, which is a byproduct of repression. Taboo impulses are rejected so emphatically they become psychologically severed as “not me,” and as mentioned above, take on a life of their own. Chillingworth embodies this shadow figure.[35]  As such, he’s fully aware of what Dimmesdale is repressing. And his mission is to keep the torture of living under such an authoritarian ethic “always at red heat,” which literally drains the life out of Dimmesdale like the blood-sucking leech Hawthorne describes Chillingworth as.[36]

While Dimmesdale is an expression of American Puritanism, Hester looks toward a new ethic, and the social shifts that result from it. Like we said earlier, founders of new ethics are consistently deemed heretical. And Hawthorne associates Hester Prynne with Anne Hutchinson, who was expelled from Massachusetts Bay Colony during the seventeenth century. Hutchinson was banished for her role in the “Antinomian controversy,” a theological conflict that was essentially between power and freedom of conscience.[37]

By associating Hester with Hutchinson, Hawthorne indicates that Hester’s real crime is indeed heresy rather than simply breaching Puritanism’s rigid moral code (though she did that as well). A passage stating that Hester “assumed a freedom of speculation” our Puritan forefathers would have considered “a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter” confirms this interpretation.[38] In associating Hester with Hutchinson, Hawthorne also characterizes her heresy as being antinomian in nature.[39]

At its root, antinomianism means “against or opposed to the law.”[40] In a Christian context, antinomianism embraces the existence of an “inner light” within every individual, which presumes a spirituality based on inner experience with the Holy Spirit rather than conformity to religious laws.[41] Hester’s antinomian tendencies are evident in her declaration to Dimmesdale, where she’s clearly judging the validity of their relationship through her conscience and inner spiritual experience rather than the Puritan power structure and religious Law:

What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other! Hast though forgotten it?[42]

Antinomianism’s “inner light” has been described as an “ancestor” to the philosophy of self-reliance held by nineteenth-century antinomians like Ralph Waldo Emerson and his circle of Transcendentalists. [43] Critics of unthinking conformity (religious or otherwise), the Transcendentalists urged each person to find, as Emerson put it, “an original relation to the universe.”[44] It’s a complex word, Transcendentalism, especially for such a simple idea – that men and women (in equal measure) have knowledge about the world around them that goes beyond what they can see, touch, hear, taste, or feel (transcends it, in other words). And, that people can trust their own intuition to know what is right.[45]  Antinomianism’s “inner light” has clearly been influenced by the post-Revolutionary spirit mentioned earlier (with its secular notion of self-evident truths, declaration of inalienable rights, and the equal creation of all), resulting in these Transcendentalist principles.

Hawthorne became acquainted with the Transcendentalist circle during the years he and his family spent in free-thinking and reform-minded Concord, which brings us to Margaret Fuller and her influence on The Scarlet Letter.[46]  Fuller is best known for her feminist work Woman in the Nineteenth Century, and she inspired Hawthorne’s “dark heroines,” the first of which was Hester Prynne.[47] In the chapter titled Another View of Hester, Hawthorne follows Fuller’s description of three stages in the advancement of women toward self-realization and social equality. The first stage is legal and institutional. Second is revised concepts about gender. And the third phase is female character itself, to primarily live in and for her own development.[48] According to Hester:

As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence, wherein she has her truest lie, will be found to have evaporated.[49]

Those who knew Margaret Fuller best, described her as “The Friend:”

This was her vocation. She bore at her girdle a golden key to unlock all caskets of confidence. Into whatever home she entered she brought a benediction of truth, justice, tolerance, and honor.[50]

Consistent with her forward-looking role, by the end of The Scarlet Letter, this characterization also applies to Hester Prynne, marking the acceptance of the nineteenth century’s reform-minded ethic of individual experience and self-reliance.

[Women] came to Hester’s cottage, demanding why they were so wretched, and what the remedy! Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.[51]
___

Pearl: Transition Personified.

Symbolically speaking, children typically represent the future. Though Pearl is often associated with evil, it is the process of transition that she personifies. She embodies the chaotic liminal stage between one stable mode of being and another, when we are no longer in one mode, but not yet in another. We are “betwixt and between,” in this an old ethic and a new one. [52] Hester’s concerns about her daughter reflect the anxiety often experienced by those on the cusp of a new ethic, dreading the worst possible consequences while holding onto glimpses of the best possible outcome.[53]

[Hester] remembered—betwixt a smile and a shudder—the talk of the neighboring towns-people; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child’s paternity, and observing some of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon offspring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the agency of their mother’s sin, and to promote some foul and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed.[54]

The new ethic alluded to by mentioning Luther is, of course, nothing less than the establishment of Protestantism itself. Pearl, however, specifically represents the transition between seventeenth-century Puritanism, and the new, nineteenth-century ethic. She is, after all, the daughter of Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne:

Her nature appeared to possess depth, too, as well as variety; but—or else Hester’s fears deceived her—it lacked reference and adaptation to the world into which she was born. The child could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder. [55]

As Hawthorne shows us, Pearl possesses Dimmesdale’s depth of character, but also has Hester’s antinomian nature. As a child, however, she’s developing and evolving, like the young country of America itself.
___

The love plot parallels the shift in American culture.

The arc of Hawthorne’s love story reflects the shift in American culture that occurred between the conflicting ethics that Dimmesdale and Hester embody. The tale begins in Boston, the very colony established by John Winthrop, and the Puritan forefathers credited with founding America, those we still envision in black cloaks and steeple-crowned hats.  And Hawthorne explicitly states that at this point in America’s history, Boston is a theocracy, a form of government where religion and law are “thoroughly interfused.”[56]

We’re introduced to Hester as she is released from prison, and crosses the threshold of its heavy oaken door, a significant symbol indicating change. Hawthorne makes it clear that her thinking (and therefore the ethic she embodies) conflicts with the strict, authoritarian Puritan doctrine. After all, Hester is being released from prison, where (not coincidently) she gave birth to baby Pearl (and all that she embodies). In this scene, we also learn that Dimmesdale is an integral part of the theocratic machinery. And Hawthorne drops enough hints that we know he’s the father of Hester’s baby.

Hawthorne spends the next segment of the narrative examining the differing ethics at work, and their psychological repercussions. The love story peaks with the scene in the forest between Hester and Dimmesdale, when she proposes that they put the past seven years behind them, leave Boston, and start a new life somewhere else:

Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done![57]

Hester’s plan involves more than a future with Dimmesdale. Symbolically, her proposal amounts to a re-founding of America on the basis of nineteenth-century principles – development of the self, individual experience and self-reliance, as well as the new morality and corresponding social forms they give rise to.[58]

If real progress is to take place, however, Pearl must come to terms with Dimmesdale, which she finally does:

Pearl kissed [Dimmesdale’s] lips. A spell was broken. The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.[59]

With Pearl’s kiss, seventeenth-century Puritanism and the nineteenth-century’s antinomian ethic of self-reliance are symbolically married, if you will.[60] And with that, Dimmesdale passes away, just like the era defined by Puritanism ultimately did. Signifying Puritanism’s continued influence on America, Chillingworth bequeaths “a great deal of property, both here and in England” (the birthplace of Puritanism) to Pearl.[61] And it’s no coincidence that the top two figures of the Puritan hierarchy were executors of the estate.

In Hester’s return to Boston after many years away, she is doing what Americans continue to do (especially given that she crosses the threshold back into her old cottage wearing the scarlet letter on her bosom). She’s reaching back through the A to America’s myth of national origins, and returning to the Puritans to reclaim a sense of purpose, while also demonstrating progress.

Finally, the tombstone Hester ultimately shares with Dimmesdale is engraved with an escutcheon, the shield that forms the foundation for coats of arms. And Hawthorne tells us that the motto etched into it serves as a “brief description of our now concluded legend:” [62]

On a field, sable, the letter A. gules [63]

…

Sable and gules are terms used in heraldry for the colors black and red. As coats of arms are intended to do, this phrase crystalizes the cultural history of its owner.[64] The sable/black stands for the Puritanism America is grounded in, the doctrine that produced what Hawthorne describes as “black-browed” followers, and future generations continue to associate with black cloaks and steeple-crowned hats.[65] And the A once again functions as a cultural artifact, only this time not as a token of shame, but as a crest representing progress toward the nineteenth-century ethic of individual experience and self-reliance.
___

In Conclusion.

So, what does Hawthorne’s A actually stand for? Is it the adultery so many parents have found objectionable in their challenges? Or is the feminist message, with its implied antinomianism that nineteenth-century critics took issue with? Or does the A stand for America itself?

Like all well-constructed symbols, there’s a lot packed into Hawthorne’s scarlet A. So, consistent with his multiple-choice style, the answer is a paradoxical yes. Hawthorne’s A is for – Adultery, Antinomianism, and America itself.

That’s my take on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter– what’s yours?
Check out this discussion guide to get you started.

#Hawthorne      #symbol    #witch trials   #betwixt & between   #banned   #liminal     #Puritan

Endnotes:

[1] James, Henry. “Hawthorne.” In English Men of Letters. Edited by John Morley. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1879), 6.
[2] Brooks, Rebecca Beatrice. “The Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne.” History of Massachusetts Blog. Sept 15, 2011; “The Paternal Ancestors of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Introduction.” Hawthorne In Salem. hawthorneinsalem.org; Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 11.
[3] Moore, Margaret. The Salem World of Nathaniel Hawthorne. (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2001), 31; In 1662 “Robert Pike Halts a Quaker Persecution in Massachusetts.” New England Historical Society. https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/1662-robert-pike-halts-quaker-persecution-massachusetts/
[4] Hawthorne-The Scarlet Letter, 11; “The Paternal Ancestors of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Introduction.”
[5] Hawthorne-The Scarlet Letter, 11.
[6] Melville, Herman. “Hawthorne and his Mosses.” Herman Melville. Edited by Harrison Hayford. (New York: The Library of America, 1984), 1159.
[7] Howells, W. D. “The Personality of Hawthorne.” The North American Review. Vol. 177, No. 565. (Dec. 1903), 882.
[8] Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), 10.
[9] Milder, Robert. “‘The Scarlet Letter’ and Its Discontents.” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring 1996), 21.
[10] Wendell, Barrett. A Literary History of America. (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1900), 433.
[11] Matthieson, F. O. American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941), 276.
[12] Fields, James T. Yesterdays with Authors. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1893), 51
[13] Coxe, Arthur Cleveland. “The Writings of Hawthorne.” The Church Review. January, 1851. Vol. 3, No. 4., 506.
[14] Sova, Dawn B. Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds. (New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2006), 254; Brownson, Orestes. “The Scarlet Letter.” Brownson Quarterly Review. October, 1850.
[15] Gurdon, Meghan Cox. “Even Homer Gets Mobbed; A Massachusetts school has banned ‘The Odyssey.’” Wall Street Journal (Online). Dec. 27, 2020;
[16] Coxe, 510.
[17] Brownson, Orestes. “The Scarlet Letter.” Brownson Quarterly Review. October, 1850; Sova, 254.
[18] Milder, Robert. “Nathaniel Hawthorne.” The Cambridge Companion to American Novelists. Edited by Timothy Parrish. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 14.
[19] Perotta, Tom. “Foreward.” The Scarlet Letter. (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), ix.
[20] Bercovitch, Sacvan. “The A-Politics of Ambiguity in ‘The Scarlet Letter.’” New Literary History. Vol. 19, No. 3. (Spring, 1988), 631, 632; Milder- “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” 14.
[21] “Scarlet Letter.” Massachusetts Law Updates. Nov. 30, 2013.
[22] Carrez, Stephanie. “Symbol and Interpretation in Hawthorne’s ‘Scarlet Letter’.” Hawthorne In Salem. http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/page/12218/
[23] Bercovitch- “The A-Politics of Ambiguity in ‘The Scarlet Letter,’” 630.
[24] Bercovitch- “The A-Politics of Ambiguity in ‘The Scarlet Letter,’” 630; Bercovitch – “The Scarlet Letter: A Twice-Told Tale,” 4; Bercovitch- “Hawthorne’s A-Morality of Compromise.” Representations. No. 24, Special Issue: America Reconstructed, 1840-1940 (Autumn, 1988), 12.
[25] Noll, Mark. A History of Christianity in The United States and Canada. (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1992), 148.
[26] Sarracino, Carmine. “‘The Scarlet Letter’ and a New Ethic.” College Literature. Vol. 10, No. 1 (Winter, 1983).
[27] Neumann, Erich. Depth Psychology and a New Ethic. Translated by Eugene Rolfe. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973), 33.
[28] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 114.
[29] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 141.
[30] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 134.
[31] Neumann, 35.
[32] Neumann, 41.
[33] Sarracino, 52.
[34] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 63.
[35] Sarracino, 52.
[36] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 239.
[37] Hall, David D. ed. The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990).
[38] Hawathorne- The Scarlet Letter, 152.
[39] Khomina, Anna. “The Banishment of Anne Hutchinson.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. (Nov. 17, 2016).
[40] Hall, 3.
[41] Pokol, Agnes. “The Sociological Dimensions of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne as a Social Critic on Democracy and the Woman question.”
[42] Hawthorne-The Scarlet Letter, 181.
[43] Pokol.
[44] Pokol; Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “Nature.” Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Critical Edition of the Major Works. Edited by Richard Poirier. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 2.
[45] “Transcendentalism, An American Philosophy.” U.S. History: Pre-Columbian to the New Millennium. www.ushistory.org.
[46] Milder, “Introduction.” The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. (New York: Penguin Books, 2016), xiii.
[47] Milder- “‘The Scarlet Letter’ and Its Discontents,” 11.
[48] Milder- “Introduction,” xxiv; Milder- “‘The Scarlet Letter’ and Its Discontents,” 12.
[49] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 153.
[50] Fuller, Margaret; Channing, W. H.; Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Clarke, James Freeman. The Autobiography of Margaret Fuller Ossoli. Vol. 1&2. (Madison & Adams Press, Kindle Edition), 326.
[51] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 245.[52] Turner, Victor. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage.” Betwixt & Between: Patterns of Masculine and Feminine Initiation. Edited by Lois Carus Mahdi, Steven Foster, Meredith Little. (La Salle, Illinois: Open Court, 1987), 7.
[53] Sarracino, 57.
[54] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 92.
[55] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 84.
[56] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 47.
[57] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 184.
[58] Milder- “Nathaniel Hawthorne,” 14-15.
[59] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 238.
[60] Sarracino, 58.
[61] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 243.
[62] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 246.
[63] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 246.
[64] International Heraldry & Heralds.
[65] Hawthorne- The Scarlet Letter, 11, 217.

Images:

Cover. Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1895).

Nathaniel Hawthorne portrait.  Nathaniel Hawthorne. , ca. 1860. [to 1865] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017892968/.

Anne Hutchinson Statue. Curbed Boston. https://boston.curbed.com/maps/boston-statues-of-women

Margaret Fuller portrait. Josiah Johnson Hawes, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Margaret_Fuller.tif

Illustrated images are taken from: Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1878).

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hat’s up with the brouhaha that perpetually revolves around this book? Why was The Catcher in the Rye banned? In short, Salinger’s work challenged the status quo. And it did so in an era defined by conformity. So, the outcome is pretty predictable. As a New York Times columnist once put it, The Catcher in the Rye has been “yanked out of American schools more than almost any other title.”[1] And the challenges come fast and furious.

The earliest attempt to remove The Catcher in the Rye from high school reading materials occurred in 1954, and took place in Marin County, California. Shortly after that, a similar effort was made to restrict students’ reading of the book in Los Angeles County. The following year, it was censored in Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, and Port Huron as well. In 1956, a group known as The National Organization for Decent Literature labeled The Catcher in the Rye  objectionable.[2] At this point, Catcher had also been banned in Fairmont, McMechen, St. Louis, and Wheeling, West Virginia. Efforts to ban Salinger’s work continued to expand.[3]
.

And the hits just keep on coming.

Between 1961 and 1965, there were eighteen separate attempts to ban The Catcher in the Rye from high school campuses, creating enough controversy to draw the attention of national newspapers.[4] But challenges haven’t been limited to the decades immediately following the novel’s publication – the hits just keep on coming! According to the office of Intellectual Freedom, the novel is “a perennial No. 1 on the censorship hit list,” and has remained on the American Library Association’s annual Banned Book report well into the 21^st century.[5]
_________

What’s the rub, anyway?

Why is The Catcher in the Rye so controversial? Attacks on Catcher revolve around a number of concerns. Grievances usually have to do with language challengers consider offensive – one parent cited 785 “profanities.”[6] Objections frequently involve blasphemy. Or a general “family values” kind of complaint, like the undermining of parental authority. To top things off, Holden Caulfield’s criticism of “home life, [the] teaching profession, religion, and so forth” was summed up as an assault on patriotism, with Catcher labeled downright un-American.[7] Holden Caulfield, challengers charge, is quite simply not a good role model for teen-age readers.[8]

But, is Salinger’s protagonist intended to be a role model? If these concerned citizens realized that literature is a powerful platform for examining societal ills, they would have understood that depicting such behavior doesn’t necessarily mean the author is endorsing it. In fact, quite the opposite. When read merely for plot, The Catcher in the Rye appears to be nothing more than the story of a teenage boy having trouble transitioning to adulthood. However, the inappropriate behavior Holden Caulfield engages in, and the way he expresses himself have a rhetorical purpose. And when read accordingly, they reflect the shifting societal landscape Salinger sees in postwar America. Holden is grappling with the same kinds of questions the challengers’ own children are facing. Holden Caulfield is not, in fact, intended to be a role model. Because Salinger’s work is about much more than the antics of a rebellious teenager.

Given the kinds of complaints behind the banning of Salinger’s novel, it is no surprise that one of its challenges was led by a woman who had not read, and declared she would never read, The Catcher in the Rye.[9]  What is surprising is that someone who hasn’t even read a particular book has the capacity to restrict others’ access to it.

What these censors fail to realize is that there’s more to The Catcher in the Rye than “Holden Caulfield is a bad boy with a potty mouth.” Having said that, why is Catcher important? And what’s Holden is so cranked up about in the first place? Come to find out, Holden Caulfield is a twentieth-century Jeremiah._________

Holden Caulfield:
Twentieth-century Jeremiah.

During the post-World War II period when popular culture was trumpeting American ideals, Salinger was writing about the realities of the social experience in America, those obscured by a society consumed with image and material goals. Though The Catcher in the Rye has resonated with teenage readers as an expression of adolescent alienation for generations, it isn’t just about raging against the establishment. As Salinger’s biographers note, he was “not just another nihilist; and Holden [is] not just another lost boy.”[10] When read for more than plot, both the book and the boy exhibit a spiritual nature. Holden isn’t just running away from adulthood. He seeks to transcend a materially obsessed culture.

Salinger didn’t set out to write an anti-American diatribe, as The Catcher in the Rye has been labeled by those attempting to ban it. He was actually writing within the most American of literary forms, the jeremiad, to convey a message of reform. The jeremiad is a rhetorical method that was named for the prophet Jeremiah and used by the Puritans, one designed to keep American society in line with its ideals by calling attention to its flaws.[11]

An essential fact about The Catcher in the Rye, is that Holden does not reject historically American values. What he does is criticize the flawed way they’re enacted in modern society, and berate the replacement of morality with conformity.[12]  As his sister Phoebe points out to him, Holden has the Robert Burns line of poetry wrong, an incorrect recollection that gives us the novel’s title: it’s “if a body meet a body,” rather than “if a body catch a body.” What Holden’s misremembering tells us is that he’s not “looking for love in all the wrong places,” but as with all “Jeremiahs” (and maybe a few bullfrogs), he wants to save society from a corrupt and deteriorating culture.[13]
_______

It’s about more than teen-age angst.

On its face, The Catcher in the Rye is about an immature teenage boy unable to come to terms with his impending adulthood. And more often than not, it is this perspective that’s taught in schools. Sure, high school students can relate to that narrative. But “life is hard, and Holden needs to get himself together,” is a cursory reading of the novel at best.

The book has also been described as “a story about a boy whose little brother has died,” with Holden’s negative perspective on the world seen as a manifestation of his grief.[14] This interpretation does indeed delve beneath the surface narrative. And it is enlightening. But there’s still more to Catcher than the psychology behind Holden’s actions.

Others have read Salinger’s work through the lens of his World War II-induced Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But, what’s the point of writing that book? For therapeutic purposes, perhaps? Holden’s exchange with Mr. Antolini suggests such a possibility, that he may be able to help himself by helping others with his novel. It is true that we are all “broken” in one way or another, and Catcher is most certainly relatable on that level. But, the self-imposed exile Salinger is so famous for suggests a purpose other than reaching out to other “irreparably damaged” people with a healing message.[15]

I would argue that The Catcher in the Rye is a re-fashioned jeremiad. Not only because this interpretation considers the author and his historical context, but because, as Lionel Trilling points out, “literary situations [are] cultural situations.”[16] Understanding Salinger’s work as a jeremiad takes “the animus of the author” into account.[17] That is, what he wants to see happen as a result of people reading his book.
_________

What the heck is a Jeremiad?

Considered America’s first distinct literary genre, the jeremiad is a political sermon that, as mentioned above, takes its tone from the biblical prophet Jeremiah. It’s a mode of public exhortation used by the New England Puritans through the close of the eighteenth century for the purpose of social revitalization. In other words, the American jeremiad is a call for America to self-correct.[18]

These days, in industrialized societies like ours, it’s genres such as film, popular music, and literature that serve to expose injustices, inefficiencies, and immoralities in social structures. These modes influence culture by getting us to think about the shortcomings in our society. This leads to new insights, which in turn take root and reshape cultural expectations.[19]
_________

There’s a long history of literature as jeremiad.

Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye belongs to a lineage of American writers who have inherited and re-fashioned the jeremiad genre, authors who produced literature thick with spiritual protest.[20] Harriett Beecher Stowe’s abolitionist novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for example, lambastes the country’s great sin of slavery, (and resulted in active resistance to the Fugitive Slave Act).[21] Henry David Thoreau’s essay Life Without Principle decries America’s narrow focus on making money, as well as the superficial nature of media, that “blunt[s]” a person’s sense of what is right.[22] Then there’s John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, which laments the widespread foreclosures and subsequent homelessness caused by the “double whammy” of the Depression and the Dust Bowl. This work takes aim at “American greed, waste, and spongy morality.[23] And the lineage continues right up through Salinger and beyond.

Given Holden Caulfield’s constant judgement of the world as he sees it, The Catcher in the Rye is nothing if not the “catalogue of iniquities” inherent to the jeremiad form.[24] Interestingly, the fact that Catcher’s critique of mainstream American goals has led to it being labeled “un-American” parallels the history of the American jeremiad itself.[25]

The Puritans failed to realize how their self-denunciations would sound to non-New England ears. And they were nothing short of shocked when others took their jeremiads at face value, which prompted leaders from competing charters to proclaim New England “a sink of iniquity.”[26] Bearing this in mind, it became necessary to explain that the jeremiad was a rhetorical exercise, intended as motivation to live up to American ideals.

A similar reproach is echoed in Sinclair Lewis’ declaration, “I love America… I love it, but I don’t like it,” a sentiment that also runs through the following passage from The Catcher in the Rye[27]:

But you’re wrong about that hating business. I mean about hating football players and all. You really are. I don’t hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them once in a while – I admit it – but it doesn’t last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn’t see them, if they didn’t come in the room, or if I didn’t see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. I mean I sort of missed them.[28]

Though Holden does indeed lambaste his classmates, as this passage shows he doesn’t carry any ongoing animosity toward them, or football players generally. Rather, his indictments call out particular behaviors commonplace in the larger society.
_________

What makes Holden Caulfield a “Jeremiah”?

Holden expresses a fear that he’s disappearing as he crosses from one side of the road or street to the other, an image that bookends the narrative. This symbolizes his sense of diminishing authenticity within American society. As Perry Miller argues in his work on the American jeremiad, since the days of Jonathan Edwards (a fiery eighteenth-century minister referred to as the last Puritan), western civilization has put reflections about the larger meaning of existence aside.[29] We have distracted ourselves with materialism and concerns for image, pursuits that do nothing to address the ills of society. And it is this demise of American ideals that Allie Caulfield’s death signifies, an interpretation underscored by Holden’s prophetic appeal, “Allie, don’t let me disappear,” when crossing the street toward the end of the novel.[30]

And, Holden Caulfield’s iconic red hunting hat is the most important symbol in The Catcher in the Rye. It alludes to the “hunters” mentioned in the book of Jeremiah, invading nations invoked as divine retribution for Israel’s failure to heed the prophet’s warnings.[31] The hat’s color is significant because red is the traditional color of forewarning, or signaling alarm. Fire trucks and ambulance lights both flash red, as do those at railroad crossings. In keeping with what the hat symbolizes, Holden’s reference to it as a “people hunting hat” indicates that he is “taking aim” as it were, to expose their hypocrisy and “phoniness.” To read it as a call for actual violence is a failure to engage the novel’s symbolic language. Needless to say, no one escapes Holden’s critical eye.
_________

What are Holden’s Puritanical ideals?

Though the fervor of Holden’s accusations is typically attributed to him being a “disaffected teen,” his targets align with themes common in the colonial pulpit, specifically, being tempted by profits and pleasures, false dealing with God, and the corruption of children.[32]

Regarding profits, Holden makes it very clear that he considers his older brother to have sold-out. D. B. used to write short stories, including Holden’s favorite about a boy so proud of buying a goldfish with his own money, that he wouldn’t let anyone else see it. But now, D. B.’s a Hollywood screenwriter who buys extravagant cars for all to see. These days, it’s more about greed and image than writing good stories.[33]

The Christmas pageant at Radio City also takes a hit. The holiday has been reduced to nothing more than a means of chasing profit. Angels emerge from gift-wrapped boxes, and “guys carrying crucifies and stuff all over the place,” all while singing Oh, Come All Ye Faithful. In typical irreverent fashion, Holden calls out the crass commercialization of a subject that should be approached with reverence and respect, proclaiming “Jesus probably would’ve puked if He could see it—all those fancy costumes and all.”[34]

Holden specifically addresses false dealing with God in a story revolving around Ossenburger, a Pencey donor speaking at a school event. Ossenburger is an alumnus who “made a pot of dough in the undertaking business” with a nation-wide franchise of cut-rate funeral parlors, sufficient wealth to bankroll the dormitories commemorated with his name. During school chapel, Ossenburger urges students to talk to Jesus all the time, which he himself does (or so he says), even while driving his Cadillac. Holden’s remark about Ossenburger “shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs,” targets hypocritical relationships with God, those based on show rather than piety and service.[35]

And where pleasures are concerned, unlike his “unscrupulous” classmate Stadlater who doesn’t even remember his dates’ names correctly, Holden aspires to spend time with girls he can relate to on an emotional or intellectual level. [36] Preferring a well-rounded relationship, Holden states, “If you really don’t like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all.”[37]

The corruption of children is a particular hotspot for Holden Caulfield. Discovering obscene graffiti on the wall of his sister’s grade school drives him “damn near crazy.” He is irate thinking about how “some dirty kid” would tell Phoebe and her classmates what the offensive phrase means. And how, given their young age, the act portrayed would be confusing and nothing less than disturbing.[38]

The very name of Salinger’s book refers to Holden’s need to protect “little kids.” But how so, what does the title of The Catcher in the Rye mean? In the context of the titular metaphor, he envisions himself patrolling a field of rye, and catching the children who are playing there should they start to go over the “crazy cliff,” typically understood as adulthood.[39] From Holden’s prophetic view, adulthood would require the corruption of these children to be in line with a degraded society, consumed with image and material goals rather than traditional American ideals.
_________

The Jeremiad: Not just an
“Undying Monotonous Wail.”[40]

Despite its catalogue of iniquities, the American jeremiad’s distinctiveness doesn’t lie in the intensity of its complaint, but precisely the opposite. At the heart of this genre is an unwavering optimism in the American ideal. Which, as scholar Sacvan Bercovitch maintains, grows more emphatic “from one generation to the next.”[41]

Which is why Phoebe Caulfield enters the picture when she does. She embodies the “next” generation Bercovitch is referring to. The fact that Phoebe is the only character throughout the novel who actually listens to what Holden has to say is significant, in that she’s the one who “hears” his prophetic message.[42] And Holden allows her to wear his hunting hat, which establishes Phoebe as successor to Holden’s mission. Finally, Holden literally sets Phoebe in motion with a ticket for the carousel, where she optimistically sets her sights on the golden ring, an obvious symbol for the American ideal. The proverbial torch has been passed, with Phoebe carrying Holden’s mission forward.
_________

In Conclusion.

Reading The Catcher in the Rye as a re-fashioned jeremiad, we understand that Salinger’s intent was not to malign America. Very far from it. Like the Puritan jeremiads whose message was also misunderstood, Catcher urges America to remember the ideals on which it was founded, principles we appear to have forgotten, and to self-correct. What Salinger hoped to accomplish is that the readers of his novel would make that happen. But like the question of whether or not Holden will apply himself in school next year, it’s up to us to engage the endeavor.

That’s my take on J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye – what’s yours?
Check out this Discussion Guide to get you started.

#post-war social commentary         #banned        #Puritan          #published 1950s

Endnotes:

[1] Quindlen, Anna. “Public & Private; Dirty Pictures.” The New York Times. April 22, 1990.­­
[2] Whitfield, Stephen J. “Cherished and Cursed: Toward a Social History of the Catcher in the Rye.” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Dec., 1997), 575.
[3] Steinle, Pamela Hunt. In Cold Fear: The Catcher in the Rye Censorship Controversies and Postwar American Character. (Columbus: Ohio State University, 2002), 73, 52.
[4] Steinle, 61.
[5] Mydans, Seth. “In a Small Town, a Battle Over a Book.” The New York Times, (Sept. 3, 1989).
[6] Whitfield, 575.
[7] Laser, Marvin and Fruman, Norman. “Not Suitable for Temple City.” in Studies in J. D. Salinger: Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of The Catcher in the Rye, and other Fiction. Edited by Marvin Laser and Norman Fruman. (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963), 127.
[8] Mydans.
[9] Mydans.
[10] Shields, David and Salerno, Shane. Salinger. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013), 265.
[11] Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), xli; Miller, Perry. Errand Into the Wilderness. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 10.
[12] Steinle, Pamela. “If a Body Catch a Body: The Catcher in the Rye Censorship Debate as Expression of Nuclear Culture.” Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America. Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 138, 2001.
[13] Mallette, Wanda; Morrison, Bob; Ryan, Patti. “Lookin’ for Love.” Urban Cowboy Soundtrack. (Hollywood: Full Moon, 1980); Shields and Salerno, 265.
[14] Menard, Louis. “Holden at Fifty: The Catcher in the Rye and what it spawned.” The New Yorker. (September 24, 2001).
[15] Shields and Salerno, 243.
[16] Trilling, Lionel. “On the Teaching of Modern Literature.” First published as “On the Modern Element in Modern Literature.” Partisan Review, January-February 1961.
[17] Trilling.
[18] Bercovitch, Sacvan. The American Jeremiad. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), xli; Miller, Perry. Errand Into the Wilderness. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 10.
[19] Turner, Victor.  From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982), 40-45; Turner, Victor. “Liminal to Liminoid, in Play, Flow, and Ritual: An Essay in Comparative Symbology.” Rice Institute Pamphlet – Rice University Studies, 60, no. 3 (1974), 71.
[20] Bercovitch, Sacvan. The Rites of Assent: Transformations in the symbolic Construction of America. (New York: Routledge, 1993), 18.
[21] Senior, Nassau William. American Slavery: A Reprint of an Article on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans & Roberts, 1856), 2.
[22] Thoreau, Henry David. Life Without Principle. (London: The Simple Life Press, 1905), 29.
[23] Shillinglaw, Susan. “John Steinbeck, American Writer.” The Steinbeck Institute.
[24] Tolchin, Karen R. Part Blood, Part Ketchup: Coming of Age in American Literature and Film. (New York: Lexington Books, 2007), 38; Bercovitch (2012), 6-7.
[25] Laser, Marvin and Fruman, Norman. “Not Suitable for Temple City.” in Studies in J. D. Salinger: Reviews, Essays, and Critiques of The Cather in the Rye, and other Fiction. Edited by Marvin Laser and Norman Fruman. (New York: The Odyssey Press, 1963), 127.
[26] Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. (London: The Belknap Press, 1981), 173-174.
[27] Miller, Perry. “The Incorruptible Sinclair Lewis.” The Responsibility of Mind in a civilization of machines. Edited by John Crowell and Stanford J. Searl, Jr. (Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1979), 121.
[28] Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. (New York: Little Brown and Co., 1991), 187.
[29] Rowe, Joyce. “Holden Caulfield and American Protest.” In New Essays on The Catcher in the Rye. Edited by Jack Salzman. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 88; Van Engen, Abram C. City on a Hill. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 248; Brand, David C. Profile of the Last Puritan: Jonathan Edwards, Self-love, and the Dawn of the Beatific. (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991).
[30] Salinger, 198.
[31] Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers. https://biblehub.com/commentaries/jeremiah/16-16.htm; The New Oxford Annotated Bible. Edited by Michael D. Coogen. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), Jeremiah 3:12-23, Jeremiah 27, Jeremiah 6:13.
[32] Tolchin, 41; Bercovitch (2012), 4.
[33] Salinger, 16.
[34] Salinger, 137.
[35] Salinger, 16.
[36] Salinger, 31.
[37] Salinger, 62.
[38] Salinger, 201.
[39] Salinger, 173.
[40] Bercovitch (2012), 5.
[41] Bercovitch (2012), 6.
[42] Moore, Robert P. “The World of Holden.” The English Journal. Vol. 54, No. 3 (March 1965), 160.

Images:
.
1 The Catcher in the Rye cover from the 1985 Bantam edition. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Catcher-in-the-rye-red-cover.jpg   Cropped by User.

2 Rembrandt van Rijn. Jeremiah Lamenting the Destruction of Jerusalem. 1630. Public Domain via Rijkjsmuseum.nl/nl  http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.5242

3 Cotton Mather. By Peter Pelham, artist – http://www.columbia.edu/itc/law/witt/images/lect3/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80525

4 Holden Caulfield’s red hunting hat. Clipartmax.com  https://www.clipartmax.com/png/middle/121-1213961_the-red-hunging-hat-2-discussion-posts-kate-said-red-hunting-hat.png  (The original image has been flopped.)

5 First-edition cover of The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Public Domain. Source, Nate D. Sanders auctions (direct link to jpg) via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Catcher_in_the_Rye_
(1951,_first_edition_cover).jpg
Original image retouched by uploader, and cropped by current user.