Power and Social Control in Salinger's Selected Stories

The present research is an analysis of two short stories by J. D. Salinger, A Perfect Day for Bananafish and De Daumier Smith’s Blue Period through Michel Foucault’s critical thinking and theories. Salinger is a writer whose works have attracted readers worldwide and his works are known around the world and brought him fame. The focus of this essay is the analysis of these works from the perspective of Foucault’s critical theories to show how power controls and shapes the characters and their relations. The concept of disciplinary institutions, as one of Foucault’s main notions, is a major concept in these stories. The other notions which are used in this study are discourse, biopolitics and power. Foucault believes that social institutions take hold of the bodies and minds of people and shape and control them. In A Perfect Day for Bananafish hospital as a social institution, the discourse of medicine and distinguishing people as normal or abnormal, which is a tool for power to use it to control its subjects are discussed. The notion of biopolitics in the story is studied as well. In De Daumier Smith’s Blue period the control of power over people’s behavior and relationship is analyzed. Power relations and the way power teaches people how to behave and control each other are also discussed.