J. D. Salinger_ A Life - Kenneth Slawenski [143]
At first glance “Franny” appears to be a stationary piece of literature. It consists almost entirely of dialogue and contains only two speaking characters and little change of venue. However, Salinger’s manipulation of shifting narrative perspective is especially well done in “Franny.” When the story begins, readers are eased into its situation through the guidance of its third-person narration, which reveals the motives and inner thoughts of the characters. But once the reader becomes comfortable, the narration pulls away. When Franny begins to conflict with her boyfriend, Lane, the narration stops revealing her inner thoughts, forcing the reader to concentrate on the dialogue in order to understand her motives. By the story’s end, the narration is cold and merely relays events, delivering the full responsibility of interpretation solely to the reader.
Salinger drenched each line of “Franny” in a symbolism that displays Franny as being in the world but no longer part of it. She becomes a pilgrim wandering through the American wilderness of ego-filled phoniness in search of an uncertain truth. Salinger recalled past images in order to foreshadow Franny’s spiritual dilemma. He reached back to “Just Before the War with the Eskimos” and resurrected the image of the chicken sandwich as symbolic of Holy Communion—this time completing it with a lowly glass of milk. He also reused the comparison in “Teddy” between ego-filled intellect and the spiritual fall from grace to explain Franny’s condition. From the moment Franny and Lane are seated in an upscale French restaurant, Salinger begins to parallel Franny’s character with the seeker of Way of a Pilgrim.
The most symbolic image of “Franny” occurs at the center of the story and marks a shift in narrative perspective. It is perhaps the portion that most resembles the later “Zooey” in its construction from pieces of figurative setting, description, and gesture.
Lane begins to brag ad nauseam about a term paper he has written on Gustave Flaubert. He delivers a monologue on literature and academia that is condescending and self-satisfied. Franny interrupts his opinionated harangue and compares his ego to that of a “section man,” an assistant who fills in for a literature professor and whose nearsighted ego tears down each author he presents. Lane is stunned, and Franny begins to feel overwhelmed. She retreats to the ladies’ room, where she tearfully confines herself in the most remote stall. Cringing in embryo position, deep inside herself, Franny screams. Here readers are given the image of Franny as a spiritual seeker whose quest for enlightenment is restrained by the human tendencies that confine her, the four walls of the stall: ego, intellectualism, phoniness, and conformity, all of which conspire to keep her from her spiritual pursuit. She attempts to block out these pressures by isolating herself and obscuring her vision but is overwhelmed nonetheless. She then sobs in despair—not because she is in spiritual uncertainty but because she knows the true direction but feels cowed by the world around her. Only the little green book, pressed to her heart, gives Franny the strength to collect herself and continue on. It is a scene similar to the first ego-shattering epiphany of Jean de Daumier–Smith and paves the way for the final experience of Satori.
Franny believes she is going insane. But in fact she is not losing her mind. Her sense of reality is shifting. She is shedding the conventions that have previously blinded her, fading from the material world and shifting into a different