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an attempt to emphasize the joys of home and the dangers of war, she calls Vincent’s attention to his little sister, Phoebe, playing outside in her new blue coat. Vincent is pierced with love, but he forces himself to turn away. When Vincent averts his eyes from his sister, Mary reminds her son of the death of his younger brother, Kenneth. Vincent feels guilty about Kenneth’s death, and Mary comes across as manipulative and determined: “She looked slightly afraid to approach the subject; but she came equipped, as always, to get there,” Vincent tells us.9 In the last paragraph, Vincent, now suffering a confusion of emotions, accuses his mother of a number of unwitting hypocrisies, of asking a blind man for the time or a lame man to catch a child crawling off a cliff. Retreating to his room, perhaps recognizing his mother’s unwillingness to sacrifice another son so soon after Kenneth’s death, Vincent dubs her “the last and best of the Peter Pans,” seeking not longevity for herself but life for her children. Still Vincent refuses to address his conflicting emotions, though it is clear by the end that he will go off to war. In future stories, Vincent Caulfield will become a symbol of emotional reticence, entrapped by his pain.

• • •

Private Jerome David Salinger, Army Service Number 32325200, reported for active duty at Fort Dix, New Jersey, on April 27, 1942.10 From Fort Dix, he was immediately assigned to A Company of the 1st Signal Corps Battalion, located at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. The Signal Corps was responsible for communications duties ranging from the development of radar to the deployment of carrier pigeons, and it valued technical ability above all else, skills sorely lacking in their new conscript. Fort Monmouth’s location, near Sandy Hook and the Jersey shore, was ideal for Salinger. It allowed him easy access to home while on leave and was a short drive from the town of Point Pleasant, where Oona O’Neill had a house with her mother.

Fort Monmouth is surrounded by marshy inlets, creeks, and patches of woods. Although uninviting, its geography provides a selection of training environments that make it especially practical for the military. When Salinger arrived there, it was undergoing wartime expansion, with construction at every turn. The atmosphere was one of organized tumult as the camp pulsated with the ebb and flow of departing units and new recruits. While additional wooden barracks were being built to accommodate new troops, Salinger spent his nights in one of dozens of the large identical tents that faced the central parade ground. There he was cramped together with other soldiers from across the nation. Complaining that the men in his tent were “always eating oranges or listening to quiz programs,” he found it impossible to write.11

The present-day concept of J. D. Salinger makes it difficult to imagine him happy in the army. Salinger is synonymous with a kind of rebellion that, along with his indulged Park Avenue sophistication, would seem to make him out of place in military barracks. The philosophy of army life, too, appears opposed to that of the author, whose solitude and individuality have come to define him. Yet Salinger had a tendency to orderliness, a trait that drove him in search of meaning behind ostensibly arbitrary events. Moreover, despite his youthful reputation for apathy, he had developed a discipline and tenacity as a writer that translated well into a soldier’s life of duty and drive.

The army would eventually have a profound effect upon Salinger’s work. Cast adrift in a cauldron of social realities, among soldiers from the Deep South and ex–tenement dwellers from impoverished inner cities, he was forced to adjust his attitude to people. His view of humanity shifted with every new individual he encountered, which had a substantial effect upon his literary sensitivities. Due to his Valley Forge education, he was more comfortable with military routine than most and began to develop friendships with people he would not have engaged with in civilian life.

Salinger’s initial comfort