SEMINAR PROFILE

H15 -
Problem Children: J.D. Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye and Carson McCullers' A Member of the Wedding

Adolescent rebellion is a ripe subject for literature, in part because it is so ambiguous. As much wisdom as folly, as much purity as conniving, as much noble as ridiculous and as much liberating as it is destructive, the uprising of adolescence against authority is always a battle for and against tolerance. It is this last ambiguity that generates the most confusion in critical responses to these two stories about "problem children" by J.D. Salinger and Carson McCullers. One way out of the confusion is to see how the works don't merely call for tolerance, but question that stance's value, and in some ways oppose it, radically.

Scholar:

Theo Theoharis

Location:

Harvard Hillel

Dates:

3/11/2010, 3/18/2010

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H15 -	Problem Children: J.D. Salinger's A Catcher in the Rye and Carson McCullers' A Member of the Wedding

	Adolescent rebellion is a ripe subject for literature, in part because it is so ambiguous. As much wisdom as folly, as much purity as conniving, as much noble as ridiculous and as much liberating as it is destructive, the uprising of adolescence against authority is always a battle for and against tolerance. It is this last ambiguity that generates the most confusion in critical responses to these two stories about "problem children" by J.D. Salinger and Carson McCullers. One way out of the confusion is to see how the works don't merely call for tolerance, but question that stance's value, and in some ways oppose it, radically.

		Scholar:	Theo Theoharis
		Location:	Harvard Hillel
		Dates:	3/11/2010, 3/18/2010