"My brother D.B. was in the Army for four goddam years. He was in the war, too—he landed on D-Day and all"- Holden Caulfield
Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger is a collection of nine short stories that includes death and war in many of them. In "A Perfect Day For Bananafish", Seymour Glass, one of J.D. Salinger's main characters, has just returned home from WWII and just hasn't been the same since. While at war, Seymour changed and now suffers severe PTSD with much trouble in social interaction. After talking and telling a story to a little girl, he went into his room and committed suicide.In "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut", J.D. Salinger utilizes the theme of death because Jimmy is run over by a car in the middle of the woman's drunken state. Right before she hears the news, Eloise was mourning about her late lover, Walt, who died in a freak accident while serving for the Navy in the Pacific. Both "For Esme- with Love and Squalor" and "De Daumier- Smith's Blue Period" both incorporate the theme of death in the same way. Both narrators of the stories lost their parents and narrator the stories in different tones because of their late parents. In "For Esme- with Love and Squalor" both of the narrator's parents were killed in war and he also served as a officer of intelligence services at the Europe front.
In "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction", the narrator of the short stories is Buddy Glass, who is on army leave from WWII. Buddy writes the second short story directly for his late brother, Seymour, who committed suicide years before.
“However contradictory the coroner's report — whether he pronounces Consumption or Loneliness or Suicide to be the cause of death — isn't it plain how the true artist-seer actually dies? I say that the true artist-seer, the heavenly fool who can and does produce beauty, is mainly dazzled to death by his own scruples, the blinding shapes and colors of his own sacred human conscience.” -Buddy Glass
Franny in "Franny and Zooey" is have a mid-life crisis. She looks for someone who can understand what she is going through and she finds this in her brother Zooey, who suggests to her to read the diary of her late brother, Seymour who gives her guidance to religion.
Salinger incorporates this theme into everyone of his books and collections. I believe that this theme is best incorporated in Nine stories because many of the stories in the collection are heavily based off of death and/or war. I believe that in "The Catcher in the Rye" Salinger incorporated the theme the worst because it was a very little part in the story and had no importance in the plot, conflict, or resolution of the story.