Franny and Zooey Lesson Plan

What do you make of the way in which Lane and the other college boys are described, "standing around...talking in voices that...sounded collegiately dogmatic, as though each young man, in his strident, conversational turn, was clearing up, once and for all, some highly controversial issue, one that the outside, non-matriculating world had been bungling, provocatively or not, for centuries"?

This quote comes from the very first lines of “Franny,” when the young men are all waiting for their dates on the train platform before the big game. Students may interpret this line in a wide variety of different ways, but encourage them to consider the connotations of particular...