The Return
Franny’s journey comes to an end at the moment that she understands that Christ is everywhere. Zooey manages to show her that by murmuring a prayer that has no content or meaning to her, there will never be an effect. By saying the Jesus Prayer, all Franny really hoped to do was alienate herself from the world and from all the ego and phoniness that goes with it, as well as escape true Christian duty. To be a true Christian, she needed to take meaningful religious action that applied to her world now, not to the peasant’s world in the 1800's or Jesus Christ’s world 2,004 years ago. At the beginning of the book, Franny said she was sick of liking people, and wanted to meet someone she could “respect.” Now thanks to her conclusion about the Fat Lady, she can do that. She sees that there’s Christ in everyone, and in herself, and she needed to unite the Christ-consciousness in her with that in everyone else to ‘become at peace with herself in relation to the rest of the world.’ When Zooey hangs up the phone, Franny listens to the dial tone for a while, which like the incessant Jesus Prayer, is an incessant sound, but this time, Franny knows when to stop listening and hang up. She then goes to sleep, smiling at the ceiling,–perhaps at heaven.
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