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Little Book/The Way of a Pilgrim
In Franny and Zooey, chicken soup represents the everyday familial love that people desperately need but often take for granted. After college student Franny Glass has a minor nervous breakdown and returns to her family’s small Manhattan apartment to recuperate, Franny’s mother, Mrs. Glass, complains to Franny’s brother Zooey that Franny won’t eat any of the chicken soup that Mrs. Glass has made for her. Subsequently in the narrative, Zooey mocks Mrs. Glass’s obsessive focus on getting Franny to adopt a healthy diet during a bout of existential despair, while Franny herself tells Mrs. Glass that even the mention of chicken soup makes her feel sick. Thus, it seems that the soup represents Mrs. Glass’s narrow-minded focus on material things in contrast with her children’s intellectual and spiritual interests. However, near the narrative’s end, when Zooey is critiquing the way Franny has pursued mystical enlightenment, he asks her how she could possibly recognize a legitimate spiritual teacher when she can’t even recognize and accept “a consecrated cup of chicken soup.” The word “consecrated” means “made sacred”; thus, Zooey is implying that Mrs. Glass’s motherly love for Franny has made the chicken soup that she offers Franny holy and sacred. This, in turn, suggests that Franny has been looking for spiritual enlightenment in the wrong places. Rather than searching for it in esoteric books, she should have realized that the enlightenment she needs can be found in the love the members of her family have for each other—a simple and nourishing kind of love symbolized by chicken soup.
Chicken Soup Quotes in Franny and Zooey
The Franny and Zooey quotes below all refer to the symbol of Chicken Soup. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Zooey
Quotes
“You can’t live in the world with such strong likes and dislikes[.]”
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“You don’t even have enough sense to drink when somebody brings you a cup of consecrated chicken soup—which is the only kind of chicken soup Bessie ever brings to anybody around this madhouse.”
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Chicken Soup Symbol Timeline in Franny and Zooey
The timeline below shows where the symbol Chicken Soup appears in Franny and Zooey. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Zooey
...wants one of them to find out what’s really wrong: Franny won’t even eat the chicken soup Mrs. Glass tried to give her earlier.
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When Zooey mocks Mrs. Glass’s fixation on Franny eating chicken soup , Mrs. Glass retorts that a poor diet could contribute to a breakdown: Franny has...
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...claims that if you say it for a moment, “saints and bodhisattvas” will bring you chicken soup . When Mrs. Glass tells him to stop, Zooey continues sarcastically, telling her that he...
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...intellectual look. Zooey tells her she looks terrible and asks why she won’t eat some chicken soup . Franny expresses her utter frustration with chicken soup.
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...is distracted by a fish tank; he claims the fish “look starved” and likely need chicken soup .
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In the living room, Franny is yet again refusing chicken soup from Mrs. Glass. When Mrs. Glass protests that she doesn’t know how Franny will get...
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...Moreover, Franny has overlooked the real religion in the house, such as Mrs. Glass’s “consecrated chicken soup ”—and if Franny can’t recognize the holiness of her mother’s chicken soup, how would she...
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