The Absurd in J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in The Rye and Albert Camus's The Fall

Abstract

This research paper is generally associated with the thinker Albert Camus; a thinker who stretched his reflection in such a way that, while he was not always correct, he was less wrong than others. Along this dissertation, we deal with the question of the meaninglessness of life by using the theories of the Absurd and Psychoanalysis to examine the two main characters in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in The Rye (1951) and Albert Camus’ The Fall (1957). The Catcher in The Rye is a story of an adolescent Holden Caulfield expelled from his school Pensey who has no purpose in this life, he does not care about the future, he considers all people as “phony” except his sister Phoebe; he narrates about some days in his life after the death of his young brother Allie. The story of The Fall is a monologue story told by Jean Baptiste Clamence, a lawyer in Paris who ran away to Amsterdam to become a judge-penitent because he did not save a woman from falling from the bridge. His story represents a confession about his guilt. Throughout this study, we explain how the protagonists faced the absurd and figure out how the two novels are similar by making a comparative study.