Absurd Discovery in the work of J.D. Salinger
Salinger’s character suffer from what Camus define as absurd discovery.
The characters of Salinger’s novel — whether Holden Caulfield from The Catcher in the Rye or the American sergeant from For Esmé – with Love and Squalor — are divorced from the life surrounding them. And if we believe Camus’s (Camus p.9) undertaking in defining the ‘absurd’, I argue that the novels through their characters describe one’s discomfort to his world — and we will take the liberty to call it ‘absurd discovery’ (Campus p.118). The word here should be taken literally — it is merely the discovery of the absurd. However, the characters do not simply stop there — it should not be said that this divorce leads to their divorce from the world, suicide or even character becoming a suicide – such as those of Hesse’s. But Salinger takes a different approach — it is acceptance of the absurdity through realization of it. Perhaps, in this regard too, it is not in contradiction to Camus since “Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.” (Campus p.118).
In For Esmé, this absurd discovery is closely akin to the squalor of this world -– it is realized and dealt with ‘Love’ (Bryan p.282). Before going so far, it will save us some time to define the specifics of the absurd used here, which mainly stems from Camus’s work. A single quote is required to sum up my argument —
Men, too, secrete the inhuman. At certain moments of lucidity, the mechanical aspect of their gestures, their meaningless pantomime make silly everything that surrounds them. A man is talking on the telephone behind a glass partition; you cannot hear him but you see his incomprehensible dumb-show: you wonder why he is alive. The discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity, this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this ‘nausea’, as a writer of today calls it, is also the absurd. (Camus p.13)
In For Esmé, Sergeant X suffers from the same ‘nausea’. And the evidence is scattered around the writing. But they reflect to readers mostly in the conversations with Clay during the second episode of the story. When Clay enters X’s room, he makes dumb remarks,
Jesus [...] you ought see your goddam hands. Boy, have you got the shakes. Ya know that? (Salinger)
Clay like X has gone through the same experience of War and has seen squalor of it. But we find in him, ‘meaningless pantomime’ (Camus 13). And his dumb show continues throughout the scene — he reads his Mistress’s intimate letters aloud. It would not be wrong to say that for Clay, it’s almost a field trip. ‘I’m goin’ downstairs anyway. They got the radio on in Walker’s room.’ (Salinger p.90) He says to X. However, he was concerned, concerned that he shot a cat. And we find in X, the same ‘discomfort in the face of man’s own inhumanity’ (Camus p.13). ‘That’s fine. I don’t want to hear about it, Clay’ (Salinger p.90) says X when Clay brings the subject of murder of a cat by his hand. And when Clay continued to go on, ‘X felt suddenly sick, and he swung around in his chair and grabbed the wastebasket — just in time.’ (Salinger p.90)
And when Holden says
The part that got me was, there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You'd have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn't. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn't take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they're mean bastards at heart. (Salinger p.144)
We find in him the same frustration against the inhumane that X felt.
To a certain degree, this frustration in characters is inbuilt into characters by Salinger. We know that, in the first episode, X admits to Esmé that he ‘had been feeling lonely’ (Salinger p.78). Furthermore, from Loretta’s remark that, ‘nobody gets a nervous breakdown just from the war and all. [..] you probably were unstable like, your whole goddam life.’ (Salinger p.89) means that X is out of mainstream society to begin with. For X, the war becomes a realization of the absurd, its catalyst for the absurd discovery — not so much of creation.
At the end of the novel, Salinger’s heroes are liberated from their frustration
You take a really sleepy man, Esmé, and he always stands a chance of again becoming a man with all his fac— with all his f-a-c-u-l-t-i-e-s intact. (Salinger p.93)
Says X, at the end of story. I will refer to the realization of this frustration, in other words the absurd, as absurd discovery. As noted by James Bryan, Salinger’s characters come to accept this squalor. They come to ‘love’ the squalor of this world (Bryan p.282). However, it should not be neglected that Salinger’s heroes are revived by others — For X, it is Esmé, For Caulfield, it is Phoebe. In this respect, they do not go so far to call them suicides — that aspires toward a truth of the world or creation of God or some greater meaning.
Salinger’s characters do not escape the absurdity of the world— they confront it. Through Holden’s disillusionment and X’s breakdown, Salinger crafts protagonists who experience a profound discomfort in the face of inhumanity. Yet, rather than despair or nihilism, these characters gradually come to terms with the absurd through moments of genuine connection—with Esmé, with Phoebe— and emerge not as idealists, but as survivors of their own private crises. In this, Sallinger’s vision diverges from that of Camus’s metaphysical rebel or Hesse’s tragic suicides; instead, he offers us something quieter, but no less radical: the possibility of redemption through empathy, of healing not by resolving the absurd, but by living with it— tenderly, imperfectly, and fully aware.