Franny and Zooey is composed of two short novellas, Franny and Zooey. The two novellas originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1955 and 1957 respectively and were published together as a whole book in 1961. The book describes the lives of Franny and Zooey, the two youngest children in the Glass family, which was a frequent focus of Salinger's writings. Franny tells the story of Franny Glass, Zooey’s sister, an undergraduate student at a small liberal arts college. The story takes place in an unnamed college town during Franny’s weekend visit to her boyfriend Lane. Disgusted by the selfishness and phoniness she has perceived all around her, she is eager to escape from it through spiritual means. Zooey is set shortly after Franny, in the Glass family apartment. While actor Zooey’s younger sister Franny suffers a spiritual and existential breakdown in their parents’ Manhattan living room, leaving their mother Bessie deeply concerned, Zooey comes to Franny’s aid, offering what he thinks is brotherly love, understanding, and words of sage advice.

1.1 Research Purpose

Novels of initiation have a long history and profound influence on generations. The word “initiation” derives from the Latin word “initio”. It means to denote the admittance of young men into adult world from an adolescent to an adult with social responsibility. It also means a process from the children’s innocence to adults’ maturity. Such novels have usually been focusing on the growth of male protagonists, though. Salinger himself is also famous for the male growth in his The Catcher in the Rye, which describes a boy Holden’s growth process. Thus, it will be meaningful to study a female growth in a less prominent novel of Salinger’s. Although there have been a wide range of definitions about the idea of growth in initiation novels, most agree it should include unenjoyable experiences of the protagonists which change their previous mentality and help them reach spiritual advancement. So, I would like to apply this definition to the novel Franny and Zooey in this paper.

1.2 Literature Review

So far, only a very limited number of researches have been done on Franny and Zooey at home and abroad. Most of them are focused on feminism. For example, Tang Xu analyzes Fanny’s growth and wakening from the perspective of feminism. Besides of feminism, love is another frequently studied topic. Mori T. focuses on the theme of love and recovery in the novella. And Sun Mengtian discusses the idea of love in the novel both between lovers and between family members.

As for the researches into novels of initiation, there are quite a lot to mention even confined to J.D. Salinger. Tian Yingchu from Lanzhou University applies the theory of Freud to the novel of The Catcher in the Rye and finds out the strategic methods the protagonist uses in the process of growth. Ning Yunzhong from Hunan Normal University also studies J.D. Salinger’s most famous novel The Catcher in the Rye and he focuses on the epiphany and soul transcendence of the protagonist Holden. In addition, some researchers have even explored the theme of growth in Franny and Zooey. According to Jia Hailun, the overall growth process of Franny is from rather naïve to be quite experienced. The conclusion of Morizumi M. is that Franny undergoes the spiritual agony and experiences her salvation. Moreover, a few of studies analyze the frequently occurred motifs in the novella. Inoue K. conducts his research on the interpretations of the prayer, and he regards the prayer in the novella as the spiritual resort.

2. A Time of Realization: Encountering the Phony World

Franny Glass is the youngest of the seven extraordinary Glass children and the very focus of the Franny section of the book. She is a bright twenty-one-year-old college student and talented actress who is in painful conflict with herself and the world. She is uneasy with the superficiality and phoniness of her surroundings. Her profound wish is for a spiritual dimension that would give her life a substance beyond all the posturing, grasping, and self-absorption that threatens to overwhelm her.