Salinger is often said to be a chronicler of the buried ambivalence of the 1950s. A Zen koan, like the epigraph, is an insoluble conundrum, a riddle that can be approached from all sides and over the course of many years. Write an essay about how Salinger uses paradoxes through character and setting and plot that reflect modern life but refuse to be a part of it. How does he illuminate characters whose actions are clear but whose reasoning is slightly beyond our grasp?