This short story is a mystery both in terms of its construction and in terms of content and meaning. Salinger's novel does not fit well into the framework of modernism - it has no neo-mythological highlight, its style is simple, and the plot, on the one hand, is trivial, and on the other, absurd. The last word - absurd - partially immediately leads to the solution: the novel, like all of Salinger’s work, is imbued with the spirit of Zen thinking.