A Rebel in the Trenches: Narratology and Intertextuality in Life Narratives about J. D. Salinger in World War II

This essay offers a narratological and intertextual analysis of the experiences lived through by J. D. Salinger in World War II as portrayed in Danny Strong’s 2017 biographical film adaptation Rebel in the Rye, based on Kenneth Slawenski’s biography J.D. Salinger. A Life (2010). Author of The Catcher in the Rye (1951), a classic in American literature, J. D. Salinger was not only famous for his writing but also for his private nature and discreet life. Strong recreates Slawenski’s work which claims that it was Salinger’s experience in World War II that planted the seed that produced his lifelong choices and personality. Using Seymour Chatman’s narratological approach (1978; 1990) to analyze the differences and similitudes between both these non-fiction sources, and then Robert Stam’s intertextual dialogism theory (2000) to identify the contextual filters that affect Strong’s biopic, I identify a case of multilayered adaptation where the two texts are in dialogue with one another and which offers a more extended understanding of the fluidity of the limits between fiction and reality regarding life narratives. This essay attempts to contribute to the legitimization of adaptation studies, away from the moralistic view perpetrated by fidelity criticism in order to understand how adaptation can in fact work in widely open and less constricted scenarios.