Salinger was born in New York City in 1919, a few months after the end of World War I and 20 years before World War II. His mother was Scotch Irish, and his father was Jewish. Salinger attended the McBurney School in Manhattan for high school, where he failed out and later attended Valley Forge Military Academy. He took an interest in writing and later attended a writing course at Columbia University after dropping out of New York University. He submitted his first stories to Story magazine and The New Yorker, but his writing career was interrupted by the World War II draft. Salinger fought on D-Day during the invasion of Normandy, and later witnessed a concentration camp during the de-Nazification of Germany (“JD Salinger ~ Timeline of Major Events.” PBS, 2022).

Salinger’s experience with war, especially his post-traumatic stress disorder and subsequent stay at a mental health facility, heavily influenced his writing: In “Teddy,” his experiences manifest as Teddy’s father, Mr. McArdle, who wants him to wear his dog tags. Salinger’s work is often characterized as unsentimental in order to tackle darker themes such as death and loss of innocence. To overcome the disenfranchisement of post-World War II America, he turned to religion—specifically, Buddhism and Hinduism, as reflected in Teddy’s preoccupation with Vedantic Reincarnation.