SOURCE: Kaufman, Anthony. “‘Along This Road Goes No One’: Salinger's ‘Teddy’ and the Failure of Love.” Studies in Short Fiction 35, no. 2 (spring 1998): 129-40.

In the following essay, Kaufman offers a psychological interpretation of Salinger's short story “Teddy”, asserting that Salinger advocates a “doctrine of redemptive love” through the voice of the story's narrator.

The reputation of J. D. Salinger rests largely on two relatively short works: The Catcher in the Rye and Nine Stories. The Nine Stories collection is brilliant, but it is seemingly marred by the final story, “Teddy.” Salinger himself seems to dismiss the story. In what can be read as his own commentary, Salinger, through his arch, uncertain disguise as Buddy Glass, in “Seymour—An Introduction,” calls “Teddy” “an exceptionally Haunting, Memorable, unpleasantly controversial, and thoroughly unsuccessful short story” (205). Critics have generally agreed, objecting particularly to the seemingly contrived character of Teddy who...