The Catcher in the Rye
"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."
The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days, grappling with feelings of loneliness, grief, and alienation. His search for something genuine in a world that feels insincere and superficial remains urgent and unmistakably modern.
In Holden's comic, cutting, and painfully sincere voice, readers discover a comradeship and understanding as they recognize the ache of being lost, and the impulse toward rebellion that comes with the passage into adulthood. The Catcher in the Rye resonates deeply and personally for every new reader.
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Readers say *The Catcher in the Rye* vividly captures adolescent struggles with an authentic voice and complex portrayal of Holden Caulfield. They agr...
I never knew much about the story, which made the reading experience that much better. I was able to dust off my literary reading skills and note the themes, symbols, and repetition of all the “phonies,” memories of his dead brother, and his affection for Phoebe, his little sister. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting a story about a kid wandering the streets of New York City at all. I really don’t know what I was expecting because I don’t actually know anyone who’s read it.
Personally, I thought the “salty language” was annoying but indicative of immature boys trying to be tough and manly. The irony is that Holden reminds me a little of Hamlet: sullen, moody, and overthinking everything to the point of inaction. He talks about calling people - possibly to make some sort of connection - but says he doesn’t feel like it.
Everyone is a phony and he dislikes them all, but then he pretends to be someone he’s not with everyone he meets the three days in NYC. He assumes an alias when talking to the mother of his classmate on the train, he assumes an older persona with the three ladies in the bar, and his height (6’2” and a half) and premature gray hair make him appear much older (although he admits to acting like he’s thirteen).
I’m sure there are plenty of articles out there that psychoanalyze Holden as a depressed teen suffering from the inability to deal with his younger brother’s death, but that’s all I could think of while reading it. The drinking, the smoking, the lack of concentration on school, and his desire to connect to others while simultaneously pushing everyone away.
Although the setting at the beginning is not specified, Holden makes enough references to intuit that he’s in a mental institution or sanitarium. At the beginning of the story, Holden talks about people and situations driving him crazy in a figurative sense, but this line of thinking escalates towards the end with him outright admitting he’s crazy and even begins to talk to his dead brother:
”Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear.”
That part really hit me in the feels.
I’m most interested in his fascination with the ducks in Central Park. It’s winter, and Holden questions both cab drivers where the ducks go - whether a guy in a truck collects them and takes them to a zoo until spring or if they fly south. Neither driver gives much concern for the ducks, but clearly Holden sees them as having their lives upended in winter - when everything dies. Hmm… metaphor for his brother’s death maybe?
Speaking of death, Holden thinks about it quite a bit. The one person Holden likes is James Castle who jumped from his dorm window to his death for refusing to give in to bullies. He also imagines dying several times throughout the novel. When Maurice punches him in the gut, Holden imagines he’s been shot but admits he really felt like committing suicide by jumping out the window. He also believes at one point that he’s dying of pneumonia or cancer. Even his favorite English teacher comments that he can see Holden “dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause.”
So, yeah. I get all the hype over this book.
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