April 2020 Classic of the Month: 'The Catcher in the Rye'
- Caroline Selby
- Apr 6, 2020
- 3 min read
Why J.D. Salinger's famous protagonist Holden Caulfield is more complex than your average teenager.
The classic of the month for April 2020 is The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. This is probably my favorite book written by Salinger (not to dispute the fact that his short stories are amazing), and one that I read for the first time at the beginning of summer after ninth grade, and reread for English class in tenth grade (and did a project on comparing it to George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying).
Holden Caulfield is not your typical narrator. A high school junior, recently expelled for flunking out, Holden is cynical beyond his years. Writing from an undisclosed location in California that Holden makes clear is either a mental hospital or sanatorium where he is undergoing treatment, he recounts the days between the end of the fall school term and Christmas, which he spends wandering around New York City.
In New York, Holden continually criticizes mainstream society. He is consistently faced with the challenge of growing up, yet he finds the ugliness of the world unbearable and tries to protect himself from the disappointment of the adult world through his cynicism.
New York City, the heart of entertainment, consumerism, wealth, and greed, stands for everything that Holden detests. New York not only allows Holden to express his disdain towards American culture, but also highlights his lonesomeness, despite the fact that he is in the largest city in America.
Holden constantly denounces the people he sees as phony, yet he is very hypocritical and uncomfortable with his own weaknesses, at times acting as phony as the people he denounces for the same reasons. His inability to successfully resolve the issue of growing up leaves him on the verge of emotional collapse.
Phoebe, Holden’s younger sister, is one of the only sources of happiness in his life. Holden sees Phoebe as a symbol of the innocence and purity of childhood, something that is lost in adulthood. She is Holden’s emotional anchor, ironically often acting more mature than him, despite being six years younger.
The Catcher in the Rye is aptly titled after an important symbol in Holden’s story. After talking with his sister about a kid he heard singing, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye,” Holden proclaims that he wants to be “the catcher in the rye.”
Picturing himself standing on the edge of a cliff in a rye field, catching kids to save them from falling over it, Holden’s desire to save kids from losing their innocence, particularly his sister, becomes obvious.
Holden recognizes that although he wants to save the children, his wish is crazy, unrealistic, and maybe even impossible. He doesn't want to accept the world as it is, but feels powerless to stop it.
Ending his recounted story with a scene of Phoebe riding a carousel, Holden is overcome with happiness. The infinity of the carousel shows Holden’s desire to be young forever, but by not going on it, it becomes apparent that Holden has finally accepted himself into the adult world.
By the end of the novel, Holden is much less cynical about the world and even starts to feel warmer towards other people. Ending the novel with the line “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody,” Salinger leaves readers with an optimism, not only in Holden’s story, but in life in general.
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