The Catcher in the Rye

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Template:Cleanup-date Image:Rye catcher.jpg The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J. D. Salinger. First published in serial form in the United States in 1945-46 and in book form in the U.S. and Britain in 1951, the novel remains controversial to this day. It was the 13th most frequently challenged book of the 1990s, according to the American Library Association [1]. It has become one of the most famous literary works of the 20th century.

Its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage angst. The book, written in the first person, relates Holden's experiences in the days following expulsion from his University-preparatory school.

Contents

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Synopsis

Image:Catcher-in-the-rye-red-cover.jpg

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Holden Caulfield has been expelled from Pencey Prep, a boarding school, just before Christmas vacation. Rather than returning home, he explores the New York City area on his own. He narrates the book from a mental hospital in California near Hollywood, where he is explaining to the reader what had happened after he left Pencey. Since Holden is widely considered to be an unreliable narrator, the details and events of his story are apt to be distorted by his point of view.

He starts the story with his last day at Pencey Prep. Stradlater, his roommate, is good-looking and fairly experienced with women. Holden however sees him very differently, describing him as a "phony" and the sort of person who shaves and grooms himself for women, but doesn't bother to clean the dirty, rusty razor he uses to do so. When Stradlater returns home late from a date with Jane Gallagher, one of Holden's childhood friends on whom he has had a long-standing crush, and implies that he has had sex with her, Holden snaps and tries to hit his unsuspecting roomate. Stradlater quickly wins the fight, Holden not being particularly strong.

His other dorm mate, Robert Ackley, is also introduced. Ackley is a pimple-ridden loser whose relationship with Holden is fairly complex: On the one hand, Holden criticizes him by calling him a "phony", and expresses disgust at his hygiene, acne, and personality. But Holden spends time with him of his own free will; He is drawn to Ackley because there is nobody else.

Holden loiters around New York City, drinking heavily and meeting various people. He visits Club Ernies, but he is disappointed by the people who visit the club, whom he also sees as phonies. He becomes increasingly depressed as he spends more time there, observing those around him and judging their hypocrisy. Holden encounters a pimp at his hotel. He hires the pimp's prostitute, but when she comes to his room, Holden cannot bring himself to have sex with her. He pays anyway and she leaves – but returns with the pimp, who extorts another $5 from him. Later, he has a date with one of his previous girlfriends, Sally Hayes. They head to the theater and go ice skating. The experience leaves him more depressed, as he realizes that they do not have much in common.

Through his depression, Holden finally decides to go home and sneak into his house to see his kid sister Phoebe. During a short conversation with her Holden reveals the meaning of the novel's title: he has a fantasy in which children play a game in a field of rye near a cliff and it is his role to protect the children by catching anyone who comes too near to the edge, a job he says would make him truly happy. This idea is based on a misreading of a line the song "Comin' Thro' the Rye," by Robert Burns: substituting "When body catch body, comin' thro' the rye" for "When body meet body, comin' thro' the rye" Phoebe lends him some money she has saved for Christmas. Holden is forced to flee when his parents come home.

Holden goes to a former teacher's house, Mr. Antolini, where his teacher gives him a speech about life and how, in order to live happily, Holden has to be prepared. After Mr. Antolini becomes drunk, Holden and Antolini part to go to bed. Holden awakes to find Mr. Antolini patting and rubbing his head. Holden interprets this as a sexual advance, although the question of whether Antolini is gay, drunk, or just a really caring man was never answered by the author. Holden leaves confused and even more depressed after Antolini says he was just admiring him.

Holden sleeps in the train station. In the morning, he decides to hitchhike West and build a cabin for himself away from the people he knows. He plans to pretend he is a deaf-mute, and get an ordinary job. However, he can't leave without saying goodbye to Phoebe and returning her Christmas money to her. He tells her to meet him at lunchtime at the art museum.

When Phoebe arrives, she is carrying a suitcase full of clothes and asks Holden to take her with him. He refuses angrily, feeling that he is becoming a bad influence on her, making her want to go with him instead of staying in school. She cries and refuses to speak to him. Knowing that she will follow him, Holden walks to the zoo, letting her anger lift. After walking through the zoo, with a short distance between them, they visit a park across the street. Phoebe starts talking to Holden again, and Holden promises to go back home. He buys her a ticket for the carousel in the park and watches her ride an old horse on it. As Holden watches her ride the carousel, his own mood lifts. Soon he is nearly moved to tears with happiness.

The story ends with Holden talking with the psychiatrist from the start of the story. He explains that he will be going to another school in the fall again but doesn't know for sure if he will start applying himself. He then finishes talking with the words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

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Characters

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Protagonist

  • Holden Caulfield. The protagonist and narrator of the story. Holden is a sixteen-year-old junior who has just been expelled (for academic failure) from a school called Pencey Prep. Although he is intelligent and sensitive, Holden narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy and ugliness of the world around him almost unbearable, and through his cynicism he tries to protect himself from the pain and disappointment of the adult world. However, the criticisms that Holden aims at people around him are also aimed at himself. He is uncomfortable with his own weaknesses, and at times displays as much phoniness, meanness, and superficiality as anyone else in the book. As the novel opens, Holden stands poised, metaphorically, on the cliff separating childhood and adulthood. His inability to successfully negotiate the chasm leaves him on the verge of emotional collapse.
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Holden's Siblings

  • Phoebe Caulfield. Phoebe is Holden's younger sister, whom Holden adores. She is in the 4th grade at the time Holden leaves Pencey Prep. Holden holds her as a paragon of innocence, and gets furious at the sight of bits of "fuck you" graffiti in her school, for fear that she'd try and find out what it meant. In some ways, she can be even more mature than he, even criticizing him for childishness.
  • Allie Caulfield. Allie is Holden's brother, two years Holden's junior, who died of leukemia when Holden was thirteen. Allie was mild, considerate, and intelligent. Allie and Holden were very close, and Holden smashed all the windows in the garage of the family's summer home with his fist the night he died, permanently damaging his hand. His death is presumably a major cause of Holden's turbulent maturation process.
  • D.B. Caulfield. D.B. is Holden's older brother, an author who has become a successful screenwriter in Hollywood. Although Holden enjoys his brother's books and stories, he thinks D.B.'s Hollywood career is phony because he hates movies. During Caulfield's narration of the events following his expulsion of Pencey, Holden and D.B. never meet, but D.B. is mentioned frequently. D.B. is only seen in person at the very end of the novel, in the present day, after Holden has finished his story.
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Major supporting characters

  • Robert Ackley. Ackley occupies the room adjacent to Holden's at Pencey Prep. Ackley is a "pimply" social outcast with poor personal hygiene and an annoying personality. Though Holden finds him irritating, he does feel pangs of sympathy for Ackley on occasion.
  • Ward Stradlater. Stradlater is Holden's popular roommate, and one of the few sexually active boys at Pencey Prep. Holden is infuriated by his date with Jane Gallagher and provokes a violent encounter with him.
  • Jane Gallagher. Jane does not appear in the novel, but Holden thinks of her frequently as one of the few girls he had felt truly intimate with, albeit not physically. Several times, he plans on calling her, but he always backs out at the last minute, saying he wasn't in the mood or he didn't feel right.
  • Mr. Spencer. Mr. Spencer was Holden's History teacher at Pencey. He feels guilty for failing Holden, and he unsuccessfully attempts to make Holden understand the "game of life".
  • Mr. Antolini. Antolini was Holden's English teacher at Elkton Hills, another school he attended before, who Holden seeks for guidance and a place to stay for the night. Like Mr. Spencer, he too tries to make Holden understand maturity and perhaps even succeeds; but, later, Holden catches him patting him on the head while he's sleeping. He fears that Mr. Antolini may be making homosexual advances, and flees his apartment.
  • Carl Luce. Carl is a student at Columbia University that Holden knows from Whooton, a school he once attended. Holden meets up with him at a bar and is anxious to discuss sex, but his childish and irritating behavior causes Carl to leave.
  • Sally Hayes. Sally is a girl that Holden has known for years. He asks her out on a date, and even asks her to run away with him, but he eventually drives her away by calling her a "pain in the ass" in frustration. He later phoned her house while intoxicated.
  • Maurice. Maurice is the elevator operator at the Edmont Hotel. He asks Holden if he wants a little "tail" tonight, and Holden agrees. Later on, he barges into Holden's hotel room, forcing Holden to pay more than was agreed upon.
  • Sunny. Sunny is the young prostitute Holden hires through Maurice, but he loses his nerve. He pays Sunny, even though they didn't do anything, but Sunny disputes the price. Holden refuses to pay her anymore, and she later returns with Maurice.
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Themes

Given that J.D. Salinger has never commented on the work and its intended meanings, interpretations are fractured and vary from reader to reader. However, there are certainly a few themes which are discussed in the book - it is what Salinger was meaning to say that is under contention.

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"Phoniness"

A major theme is what Holden calls "phoniness." He feels surrounded by dishonesty and false pretenses, and throughout the book is frequently picking out the "phonies" he sees around him. It may be significant that many of the people that Holden sees as phony are outwardly happy or successful people. There is evidence that Holden exhibits much of the same "phoniness" he denounces in others. For example, at the start of the novel, the character Ackley barges in on Holden's privacy, and asks intrusive questions. Later, when Holden's roommate Stradlater is getting ready for a date, Holden follows him into the bathroom, asks Stradlater personal questions, and then tackles him while he is shaving. Holden also puts on pretenses, lies, and makes irrational and contradictory assumptions to mask his feelings and actions from others, which further alienates him from society. However, others say that this is a misinterpretation of Holden's use of "phoniness", and that while he lies and exhibits other flaws, he doesn't fall into his own category.

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Loss of Innocence

One more significant theme, which may also tie in with the theme about "phoniness" is that the loss of innocence is unavoidable. Holden's idea of a "catcher in the rye" illustrates how he wishes to wipe out corruption from the world and protect children like his sister from becoming like the many "phonies" he hated, i.e adults. This is clearly illustrated by Holden's attack on Stradlater after the date with Jane Gallagher. The fact that Jane always kept her kings in the back row during a game of checkers was significant to Holden because he wanted her to protect her virginity. However, Holden finds it impossible to maintain innocence. After seeing some vulgar graffiti on the walls in his sister Phoebe's elementary school and the museum, bastions of learning and culture, he realizes that he won't be able to erase it all and protect children from the world indefinitely.

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Adolescence

Running contrary to the desire to maintain innocence is Holden's, obviously strong desire to be an adult and live in the adult world, for which he is not prepared. He is immensely frustrated by his repeated attempts to fit into adult society, foiled by his saying something wrong, or simply being seen as an adolescent by the adults around him. Having been rejected, Holden's response is an even stronger rejection of the people he was trying to fit in with. This resentment, combined with his observations of "phoniness" in many of the people around him, cause him to be repelled by adult society and to sometimes view himself as a loner with outsider status — though this attitude does not prevent him from trying to fit into adult society again.

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Education

Another theme in the book is whether or not Holden's education is important. Holden has failed out of quite a few schools in his career, and exhibits no signs of remorse or promise of improvement. In the final chapters of the book, his former teacher, Mr. Antolini, tells Holden that it is imperative to his future that he apply himself at school, that he believes that education helps to organize the thoughts of brilliant and creative people - a group to which he presumably believes Holden belongs. Whether this speech is intended to be considered true is convoluted by the ambiguous actions of Mr. Antolini shortly after Holden goes to sleep. At the end of the book, Holden states that he thinks he will apply himself in the next school he's going to, but that he isn't sure and that he won't be until he gets there.

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Style

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Sarcasm

Though the tone of the novel is gloomy, Holden's sarcastic comments add humor. When Holden watches some men unloading a Christmas tree while swearing, he comments: "It certainly was a gorgeous way to talk about a Christmas tree."

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Stream of consciousness

This style, used throughout the novel, refers to the use of seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes used in a pseudorandom and highly structured way that is used to illustrate a theme.

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Controversy

The Catcher in the Rye has been shrouded in controversy since its publication. Reasons for banning have been the use of offensive language, premarital sex, alcohol abuse, and prostitution.

Mark David Chapman, murderer of musician John Lennon, was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police shortly thereafter. [2]. John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.

Critics see Holden as a disturbing influence on youths they consider to be "social outcasts". Holden is portrayed as a juvenile who rejects and is rejected by many peers and individuals. People like Chapman and Hinckley come to relate themselves to Holden, the person that nobody understands and that can't understand anybody else.

Thirty years after its publication in 1945-46, The Catcher in the Rye was both the most banned book in America as well as the second most taught book in public schools.

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Time period

The Catcher in the Rye clearly takes places in the late 1940s to the early 1950s, which is about the time the novel was written. The death of Allie, Holden's younger brother, is given to be July 18, 1946 and it is stated Holden was thirteen at that time. It follows, therefore, that the bulk of the story takes place in approximately December of 1949 and the story's "present" is the summer of 1950. Given that in 1949 Christmas fell on a Sunday, the two days that consume most of the novel are most likely December 18 and 19 (if it was one week later, the second day of Holden's romp would be Christmas and, if it was one week earlier, Pencey would be letting its students out two full weeks before Christmas).

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Memorable and significant quotes

  • "If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."
  • "I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera."
  • "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn't have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody."
  • "You never worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were."
  • "Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will."
  • "I think, even, if I ever die, and they stick me in a cemetery, and I have a tombstone and all, it'll say "Holden Caulfield" on it, and then what year I was born and what year I died, and then right under that it'll say "Fuck you." I'm positive."
  • "Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
  • Recurrent: "No kidding.", "So what I did was, ...", "I'm a madman.", "That killed me.", "Goddam.", "some kind of ...", "hell of a ...", "I did. I really did.", "Very big deal.", "... if you want to know the truth."
  • "Girls. Jesus Christ."
  • "If you had a million years to do it, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world."
  • "What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff- I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."
  • "Who wants flowers when you're dead? Nobody."
  • The last sentences of the book: "If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it....Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
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Cultural references

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Movies

  • In the 1965 British film The Collector, the book is briefly discussed leading to a heated exchange between the film's two main characters. Ironically, given the book's reputation as a favorite among loners and outcasts, the film's lonely and troubled "hero" Freddie Clegg (Terence Stamp) professes a great hatred of the book.
  • The 1997 film Conspiracy Theory, featuring Mel Gibson, uses the book quite prominently, although it does not explicitly link the book's content to the theme of mind control but rather to the bibliomania of an assassin.
  • In the film Annie Hall, Woody Allen says that he only has books with the word death or dying in them. But Diane Keaton holds a copy of The Catcher in the Rye and says, "What about this one?"
  • In the movie Pleasantville Bud is asked by one of the teenage residents of Pleasantville what the book is about, as all literature had been out of reach to the citizens, on account of it's controversial themes in that period of time. Bud tells the crowd of people what the book is about, then later it is one of the many images painted on the Police Station wall by Bud and a friend.
  • The 2002 film Igby Goes Down starring Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon, and Claire Danes, has been compared to "The Catcher in the Rye" in its tale of a teenage upperclass boy discovering himself and reality while living alone in New York City after being kicked out of several prep schools.
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Songs

  • American rock band Green Day, in their Kerplunk! album, has a song titled "Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?" The song is based on how frontman, Billie Joe Armstrong, could relate to the main character in a sense of being an outcast.
  • New Jersey Ska band Streetlight Manifesto reference both J. D. Salinger and Holden Caufield in the song 'Here's to Life' (Track 8 on their debut CD Everything Goes Numb). The exact lyrics are: 'Holden Caufield is a friend of mine, we go drinking from time to time, and i find: it gets harder every time', and then further in the song, 'Hey there Salinger what did you do, just when the world was looking to you, to write anything that meant anything, you told us you were through. And it's been years since you passed away, but i see no plaque and i see no grave, and i can't help believing, you wanted it that way.'
  • The Belle And Sebastian song 'Le Pastie de la Bourgeoisie' contains the lyric "Give yourself up to the allure of Catcher in the Rye."
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TV Series and Cartoons

  • The anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex has references to the book throughout the series. The main story arc involves the case of a cyber-terrorist known as The Laughing Man, whose name is taken from one of Salinger's short stories, and the use of symbolism referring to the novel as well as some quotes of it. The most notable quote is the one plastered on the Laughing Man's logo: "I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes".
  • In an episode of "Roseanne", Jackie walks in on Darlene, who is reading "The Catcher in the Rye" and the two discuss the book in relation to Darlene's feelings that she is in Holden's situation.
  • In episode #244 of the award-winning webcomic, Orneryboy, you will see a tombstone with a partial Holden Caulfield, 1928-, Fuck You.
  • In numerous episodes of Gilmore Girls, there are comparisons of Holden Caulfield and Jess, Stars Hollow's rebel.
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Trivia

  • Holden Caulfield's middle name is Morrisey. Although it does not appear in this book, Salinger used it in a 1946 short story featuring Caulfield called "A Slight Rebellion off Madison," that ran in the New Yorker.
  • When John Lennon was assassinated in 1980 by Mark Chapman, Chapman started reading Catcher in the Rye after he had committed the killing. It is believed Chapman had killed Lennon because he believed that Lennon was the ultimate "phony", which is a recurring theme in the book.
  • No movie has ever been made of The Catcher in the Rye.
  • The name Sally appears 54 times in the book, 4 more than the name Jane which appears 50 times.
  • The word "goddam" appears in the book 245 times and on at least every other page.
  • The word "fuck" appears in the book only 6 times and was sometimes given as reason for it being banned. However, in context Holden is trying to remove the word from the walls of a school and the Museum of Natural history to preserve the children's innocence.
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External links

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