Tone in De Daumier- Smith's Blue Period

Reading the Nine Stories, it is apparent that Salinger related well and understands youth and young adults. I do not see him as mocking Jean at all in this story, rather he cleverly uses the narrator to look back and have perspective on teenagers and young adults. This perspective provides an insight to how difficult it is to be young and dealing the heartache of loss and loneliness. Jean lost his mother, had to leave Paris, a place that he loved to go to New York, a place where he felt foreign and live with his step father who is seen to have already moved on, which adds to his loneliness. Salinger portrays Jean as someone who is seeking loneliness he says on page 201 ”I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone – a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channel and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness,” but shows us throughout the story that his loneliness is a reaction to the loss of his mother. While it seemed humorous that Jean was deceitful, made up a relationship with Picasso and was grandiose in his behavior, he was using this an armor to protect him from his true feeling of being alone and having no connection. Jean tried hard to connect with people, to break through of the loneliness, but he was doing it in a ridiculous way by writing long letters, to Sister Irma and professing a high level of familiarity with her. Overall I think Salinger is relating and identify with Jean because he understands that youth and young adults can behave oddly due to forces out of their control.