HEY GUYS! HOW R U?
IM JUST WRITING IN CAUSE I NEED SOME HELP WITH MY ENGLISH WORK....
IVE JUST WROTE AN ESSAY ON THE TWO NOVELS MENTIONED ABOVE ABOUT ADOLESCENCE PRESENTED IN THE TWO NOVELS, HOWEVER IM STRUGGLING A LITTLE WITH THE CONCLUSION. I NEED TO SEE WHY THESE NOVELISTS HAVE CHOSEN TO PRESENT ADOLESCENCE AND WHY THEIR PROTAGINIST IS AN ADOLESCENT? ANY IDEAS WOULD BE GRATEFUL AS THIS IS FOR MY FINAL GRADE! THANKS FOR TAKING TIME TO READ....
SUNFLOWER.XX

I really do not know if this will help you with what you've written thus far. Whether it does or not will depend largely on the dimension you've decided to work with. Both of these books deal largely with adolescent homosexuality. The following link will bring you to a review of of Adolescence and Homosexuality in the Catcher in the Rye and The Bell Jar. I hope this assists you.
~Lydia

Good answer, Lydia!

Both are 'coming-of-age' novels. In both cases, the main character, the young person from whose perspective the story is told, is particularly troubled.

(It's my personal view that to understand a work of fiction one should know a little about the author.)

Sylvia Plath, author of Jar, was mentally ill much of her adult life and died by suicide. She wrote 'the Bell Jar' while going through the suffering of her first mental breakdown. It was published a month before her death.

The book opens with a description of how she imagined the deaths of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who had been executed by electrocution for treason against the U.S.

Salinger's hero, Holden Caulfield, is depicted as having a nervous breakdown following an episode in which he runs away from school and goes to New York to discover sex. After his return, a former teacher (male) makes sexual advances, but it's doubtful that this incident puts the novel in the class of novels about homosexuality. Rather, the homosexual advance, in my opinion, following a bad experience in New York with a prostitute, merely served to increase his sense of alienation.

For that reason I suggest there are other ways to view the theme of each of these novels. They could be approached as studies of adolescents who don't fit in, and who become alienated because of it.

I'm posting this to present an alternative interpretation.

You will have to skim both novels again (not actually re-read, because you may not have time for a full re-reading) to see which theme you decide to use. Or you may come up with something entirely different!

As to the theme of adolescence, we all know that it is a crucially important stage of life. In adolescence we develop our first real 'sense of self', so it affects and determines the adult we will become.

These writers have described some autobiographical incidents. In describing them, they show the ways in which incidental experiences can shape one's world view, and one's view of oneself.

Good luck!