The motives of running away and war in the early work of J. D. Salinger
The article is devoted to the study of the motives of running away and war in the early stories by J. D. Salinger and his novel “The Catcher in the Rye”. The introduction defines the concept of running away, identifies the objects of research and puts forward the hypothesis that the motives of running away and war in the work of Salinger echo and interact, and the prototype of the hero escaping from falsehood in search of kindness and decency, known to the reader mainly from his most famous works, “The Catcher in the Rye” and the series about the Glass family, appears in the writer’s war stories. In the main part, the analysis of J. D. Salinger’s stories such as “Last Day of the Last Furlough”, “This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise”, “Soft Boiled Sergeant”, “The Hang of It”, “Personal Notes of an Infantryman”, “A Boy in France”, “For Esme - with Love and Squalor”, “Just Before the War with the Eskimos” and the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” is conducted. Its task is to identify the peculiarities of the motives of the war and running away in the works. The relationship between the motive of war, one of the main motives of Salinger’s early stories (before 1950), and the motive of running away, the main motive of his later works, is shown. The author traces the war motif transformation in Salinger’s early work, and also gives a description of the escape depicted by Salinger, defines its type and forms (on the example of The Catcher in the Rye). In conclusion, it is noted that the motive of war in Salinger’s early work creates prerequisites for the dominance of the escape motive in the author’s subsequent works, but the values of the main characters - faith in humanity, sincerity, and honesty - remain unchanged. Only the situation changes, and the battleground in the novel “The Catcher in the Rye” becomes American society, but its hero now prefers escape to heroic struggle.