Sample of my academic writing:
The novel The Catcher in the Rye by Gerome David Salinger is the bright example of these differences and the way some young people try to find their place under the sun in case of such dissatisfaction. Being first published in 1951, it was soon universally recognized as the encyclopaedia of the youth (Pinsker, 1993; Guinn, 2001). But it wouldn’t be my favourite American novel if there weren’t for such a complicated and doubtful history of it. As it is well known, the author himself didn’t expect that the novel would cause such a commotion. In 1981 The Catcher in the Rye is considered to be the most censored book in the States, being at the same time “the second-most frequently taught novel in American public schools” (Andrychuk, 2004). The controversial point appears in the plot of the novel itself. First, there is the main character - Holden Caulfield; second, the American post-war society. In the first case the 16-year old Caulfield, the son of wealthy parents, is depicted as an American “anti-hero”. He has his own opinion whatever is the question. He doesn’t want to pretend, to be friendly. All the time he is thinking - thinking of his younger sister Phoebe, who adores her brother; of his older brother Allie, whose death showed the borderline between the young people and the grown-ups; of another brother, JD, who Holden percepts as the talented writer, but who had been bought by film-makers and who was close to loosing his divine gift at that time; of the life itself, its long and inevitable flood with several emotional high-ups. All this may be caused by the personality of J. D. Salinger as he had the entrance to several worlds on his own:
… this was reflective of Salinger's experience; growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the son of a Scotch-Irish mother and a wealthy Jewish father, he had a foot in several worlds. It offered Salinger a wide lens through which to look at the intersection of mystical and secular culture, at the satisfactions of the spirit and of the flesh. (Ulin, 2010)
The permanent chain of Holden’s thoughts is represented through the so-called stream of consciousness technique popular in the middle of the 20th century. The applying of this very technique by the author helps him to give the broad all-embracing picture of the United States’ society of 1940-50-ies. Frankly speaking, this society seems to be rotten; at least the main hero’s conclusions (that were accepted furiously by some patriotically-minded readers) seem to be like this. The film-like manner of describing the main character and people surrounding him helps one understand that the United States was once the prosperous country, the country of talents, the country of brains where each person from all over the world could come to and try to find his or her place under the sun and in the majority of cases be a success. The same country but after the World War II through the mind and eyes of a teen-ager is actually represented through the image of New York, the city where Holden was born and from which he wants to escape.