Claudia Osorio
Professor Carolan
Introduction to Literature
September 26, 2011 The 1950s stand as an example of modernism, peace, and a complete picture of all-is-right-with-the-world. As a country, the United States looks back on this decade as “the good-old days” before the Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War destroyed the delicate innocence that had survived for so long. Much like the prosperous era of the 1920s that preceded the large economic crash of the 1930s, the 1950s were the perfect example of an “ignorance is bliss” culture. Though many problems were clear and present, such as the beginnings of the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement, the second Red Scare and the general ambivalence that many countries felt towards the creation of the United Nations after World War II, the modernist views of architecture and fashion (especially America's and Europe's love of it) were a shield against the political unrest running rampant throughout the rest of the world. The novel Nine Stories, written by realist author, J.D. Salinger, provides an encrypted but meaningful view of these insecurities and but also of the way the United States, as a culture, pushed the pressing matters aside in favor of a care-free lifestyle. Many of Salinger's heroes throughout the novel have experienced a trauma that many of their loved ones, namely their spouses, do not understand or are not prepared to understand, especially considering the limited knowledge of different kinds of stress disorders during the 1950s. Among these stands Seymour Glass, the eldest sibling of the Glass family, who came back from the horrors of the Second World War to his profligate wife and her concerned parents. As readers, we are faced with a contrast so blinding between Muriel Glass and her husband that it is easy to undermine the multifaceted story into just a criticism of the wasteful and