‘Franny and Zooey’: The way of the fat lady

I remember mornings when I would stare at the ceiling, a film of sweat collecting on my forehead as a million thoughts collided in my mind. To a young man in the throes of adolescence, nothing was as prominent in my life as the feeling of alienation on school mornings such as those. At 15, being the youngest member in a brood of eight children was an experience of fragmented territory which bore itself in my appreciation for books. Unknowingly, the emblem of this manifestation would come from a brother four years my senior – one that I rivaled and held not more than an iota of respect for. By placing his books in one of the numerous bookshelves of the family library, the undeniable spurt of curiosity that grips a younger brother impelled me to grab the simplest yet most obscure book in the bunch: The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger’s once-controversial representation of alienated youth.

With Holden Caulfield, the novel’s protagonist, embodying the aimlessness I felt at the age of 15, I decided to purchase Salinger’s succeeding novel Franny and Zooey, if only to sustain the thirst of understanding that Catcher had stimulated. Similar to Salinger’s debut novel, Franny and Zooey is set in the Upper East Side of New York City during the 1950s. Its title stems from the two main characters – Franny and Zooey Glass – two of seven children who had each become panelists on the famous radio show "It’s a Wise Child," leading to different waves of precociousness in each of them. The first of two parts in the novel introduces its readers to Franny, a 20-year-old Ivy League student whose aimless pursuit of meaning and spiritual satisfaction led her to a book known as The Way of the Pilgrim. The book, which follows a pilgrim who learns the correct manner of praying incessantly by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, influences Franny to mouth its words: "Lord, please have mercy on me" without end. After developing a fanatical desire to mimic the pilgrim and separate herself from her world of pretense and hypocrisy, Franny becomes anxiety-ridden and consequently suffers a nervous breakdown. The novel’s second part, narrated by the siblings’ reclusive brother Buddy Glass, finds Franny back at her family’s apartment in Manhattan where her outspoken brother Zooey tries desperately to coax her out of her existential rut. Zooey decides to take matters into his own hands, delving into a revelation of family idiosyncrasies in religion, life and a poignant discussion of the suicide of their eldest brother.

Premises that I had been introduced to in Catcher in the Rye were similarly prominent in Franny and Zooey: Disappointment, aimlessness, and the search for meaning in a world of hypocrisy. Five years have passed since I left the simple white book among my own shelf of books, one that my older brother occasionally steals from. At the age of 20, with the transition from young man to adult beckoning in a month’s time, I took the novel and began to read it once more, discovering ideas I had left out and elements that mean more to me now than to my angst-infused self five years ago.

There is a certain camaraderie a reader develops with characters in Salinger’s novels – an almost exclusive view of the world that the author discriminatingly strings together through his highly-descriptive writing style. With Franny and Zooey, I felt a greater sense of exclusivity because of the family issues that abound in the novel. If Catcher introduced displacement, Franny and Zooey answered this dilemma with the concept of identity. Having been schooled by Buddy and Seymour on Eastern spirituality during their childhood, Franny and Zooey developed an aversion to the shallow corruption of the people around them. Both reveal a Holden-like disgust of the world as what they see in the people that surround them are displays of hypocrisy and social pretense, while being somewhat conscious of the fact that their feelings of superiority are at par with the egotism they are against. As Zooey acknowledges this egotism stemming from the transcendental education they received as children, he begins to point out the misinterpretation Franny has committed on her Jesus prayer as well as her concept of Christ and religion exemplified by her expectations of salvation by inaudibly mumbling a few words.

Apart from religious identity, the identity that one receives from family becomes an important factor in the novel. Being the youngest of the seven Glass children, both Franny and Zooey have become spectators of every idiosyncrasy and tragedy that their family has endured through the years. What becomes apparent throughout the siblings’ dispute in beliefs is that both have not fully accepted the death of their brother and have dealt with it in ineffective ways. The disparity between both siblings is that Zooey has developed a blatant indifference and sort of bitterness towards the mistakes he deems his family makes, while Franny is impressionable as her dependence on The Way of the Pilgrim shows.

Coming from a large family myself, so much emotion is at stake when you deal with eight diverse lives co-existing under one roof. You are intertwined with these people through each display of harm and affection and as you grow older and each one slowly drifts away into marriage, migration or odd occupations, you find yourself coming back to them – whether by memory or by a physical visit – as they are a part of you.

Ultimately, passed knowledge among siblings becomes an important factor exhibited through the characters in Franny and Zooey. The novel’s characters, both present and mentioned, make you yearn to know more about them as they hold gems of stories that follow their own paths in light of each other, all held together by Salinger’s biting, honest writing.

You realize that your own life is where it begins – that your family has its own idiosyncrasies, passions and significant stories. By understanding who you are and that the world is not a 24-hour broadcast of your own life, you become aware of your own passions and identity – one that holds both the constructive expectations and encouragement your family offers you.

As my past feelings of superiority coincided with my feelings of ambiguity in the world, confusion in my life set in. Church seemed like such a finite construct to me and I did not know what to do with the concepts of God and religion. Like Franny, I misinterpreted who God was by associating His salvation with puppy-dog affection and a childhood notion of Christmas morning. By not being able to find one speck of personal idealism in the world, I had become embittered just as Zooey had. When I blindly searched yet couldn’t alleviate the feeling of meaninglessness through the safety blanket offered by family, I felt empty and almost superior in my emptiness because everyone I knew seemed to be on a well-defined track of spontaneous living and shallow contentment.

Once we come to terms with our identities and the beliefs that have influenced us, we are able to transcend a suspicious world of fakery and shallow existence. In the novel, both siblings realize that the way they have been dealing with their world is just as wrong as what they see around them.

In the end, Zooey recalls something Seymour had always told him during times when he did not want to conform to people: To do it for the fat lady – to do it for the Christ that exists in every person.

Being a transitory college student awaiting his passage into adulthood, I admit to days where I sit in the void of a gigantic classroom, the faces of 40 students blurring into a blackboard of meaningless pedagogy. At these times, I can hear the voice of a fat lady singing an aria louder and louder. The 40 faces become distinct yet I can almost feel myself blend into them, taking part in the world with humble consciousness.