The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye

File:Rye catcher.jpg
Author	J. D. Salinger
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Bildungsroman, Novel
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date	16 July 1951
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages	277 pp
ISBN	ISBN 0-316-76953-3
Preceded by	N/A
Followed by	Nine Stories (1953)

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel by J.D. Salinger. First published in the United States in 1951, the novel remains controversial to this day for its liberal profanity and portrayal of sexuality and teenage angst; it was the thirteenth most frequently challenged book of the 1990s according to the American Library Association.

The novel has become one of the most famous literary works of the 20th century, and a common part of high school curricula in many English-speaking countries, such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Around 250,000 copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 60 million.

The novel was chosen by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present. [1]

The novel's protagonist, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage alienation and fear. Written in the first person, The Catcher in the Rye follows Holden's experiences in New York City in the days following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a college preparatory school.

Protagonist

Holden Caulfield is the protagonist and narrator of the story. Holden is seventeen when he tells the story, but was 16-years-old when the events took place. His narration begins with his expulsion (for academic failure) from a school called Pencey Prep. He is intelligent and sensitive, but Holden narrates in a cynical and jaded voice. He finds the hypocrisy, phoniness 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 is unsure if he displays the exact phoniness, meanness, and superficiality of the people he says he despises. Throughout the book, Holden tries to hold on to the qualities of childhood and the innocence it provides. We, as the audience, can sense his loneliness and depression throughout the book. Template:Spoiler

Holden's siblings

• Allie Caulfield. Allie was Holden's brother two years his junior, who died of leukemia when Holden was thirteen. Allie was mild, considerate, intelligent, and very caring. Allie and Holden were very close. The night of Allie's passing, Holden smashed all the windows in the family garage with his bare fists leading to permanent damage to his hand. Stemming from this injury, Holden can no longer make a tight fist with his right hand. Allie's death reflects the underlying theme of the death of innocence and his death is presumably a major cause of Holden's turbulent maturation process.
• Phoebe Caulfield. Phoebe is Holden's little sister, whom Holden adores. She is in the fourth grade at the time Holden leaves Pencey Prep. Holden holds her as a paragon of innocence, and gets furious at the sight of graffiti in her school that reads "Fuck you", 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. Phoebe can be considered as Holden's catcher, as she helps him understand who he is and where he belongs in society.
• D.B. Caulfield. D.B. is Holden's older brother and lives in Hollywood. There he works as a writer. He also writes plots for films; and Holden thinks that's like prostituting himself. Nevertheless throughout the book Holden describes in depth movies he has seen. What Holden means by "prostituting" is that D.B. sold out to Hollywood (writes stories for money, not for people who enjoy his stories)

Plot summary

The cover of the 1985 Bantam edition of The Catcher in the Rye.

The novel covers a few important days in the life of the protagonist Holden Morrissey Caulfield, a tall, lanky, highly critical and depressed sixteen-year-old who academically flunked out of Pencey Prep boarding school. Because he is so critical of others, and points out their faults only to exhibit them himself later, Holden is widely considered to be an unreliable narrator, and the details and events of his story are apt to be distorted by his point of view. Nonetheless, it is his story to tell. Many flashbacks throughout the entire book create a feeling of knowing Holden.

On the first page of the book, the reader is given a clue that Holden is narrating the book from a psychiatric hospital in California: "I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy. ... D.B. [Holden's brother] comes over and visits ... practically every week end. He's going to drive me home when I go home next month maybe."

His story starts on Holden's last day at Pencey Prep. He is standing on the crest of a hill that overlooks the football field. It is the final game of the season, but Holden has never cared much for established tradition. He instead runs across the street to the residence of Mr. Spencer, his history teacher. It is revealed here that Holden has been expelled, and that he doesn't particularly care. Mr. Spencer is disappointed in Holden, and lectures to him about the importance of hard work and education. Holden becomes annoyed and lies about having to remove some equipment from the gym to get out of the discussion.

Back at the dorm, Holden talks to his roommate, Stradlater, a tall, good-looking ladies' man. Holden sees him very differently, describing him as a "secret slob" because he would shave and groom himself for women, but doesn't bother to clean the dirty, rusty razor he uses to do so. Stradlater returns home late from a date with Jane Gallagher, one of Holden's childhood friends with whom he has had a long-standing infatuation. During Stradlater's date, Holden had been told by Stradlater to write an essay for him on "a room or something", as the exact topic was never explicitly stated, but as long as it was descriptive Stradlater says. Holden finds inspiration in writing about his late brother Allie's baseball mitt. Allie was Holden's younger brother who died of leukemia and had written poetry in green ink on his mitt so that in the outfield he could have something to read. When Stradlater returns and finds what Holden has written about, he gets annoyed. Holden tears up the essay out of anger. A short while later, Holden inquires Stradlater what he did on his date. Stradlater refuses to answer his questions, but more specifically whether or not he had sex with Jane Gallagher. Holden becomes infuriated and tries to hit his unsuspecting roommate. Stradlater easily wins the fight, as Holden himself is not particularly strong, but also in part claims to be a pacifist. Holden repeatedly comes back to the question of whether or not Stradlater did anything sexual with Jane. The date between Stradlater and Jane took place in the back seat of the gym teacher Ed Banky's, car.

His socially inept neighbor, Robert Ackley (called Ackley for short), is also introduced. Ackley's relationship with Holden is fairly complex: On one hand, Holden expresses disgust at his hygiene, acne, and personality, yet spends time with him of his own free will; he is drawn to Ackley because there is nobody else, going to movies and having snowball fights with him even though he comments on how abrasive Ackley is.

That night, considering everything, especially the fact that he will be leaving Pencey very soon anyway, Holden packs a suitcase and leaves Pencey before the actual last day of school, and decides to stay in New York for the remainder of the period. En route, Holden meets the mother of one of his schoolmates, Ernest Morrow. This schoolmate is an antisocial bully, but Holden decides to lie to the mother because she was seemingly very attractive despite her age. He tells her that her son is a terrific young man and very friendly, and that when other students wanted to nominate him for class president, he humbly refused the honor. Holden tells Mrs. Morrow that his name is Rudolf Schmidt, who in reality is the dorm janitor. She is also the first person Holden asks out for a drink since his exodus from Pencey. However, like most of his encounters, she declines the offer.

Arriving at New York, Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel where he becomes increasingly disappointed by his surroundings, "screwballs all over the place." Having nothing much to do, he calls up a girl, Faith Cavendish, whom he was totally unacquainted with (a friend of a friend), to meet her for a drink, despite it being very late. She also says no. Unable to get comfortable, Holden goes down to the lobby downstairs in the Lavender Room to relax, trying his best to fit in with most of the older people. He makes a move on the young women sitting in the table nearest him, but they only laugh at him. Eventually they give in and Holden dances with each one of them. He enjoys the night but notes many times to himself they have almost nothing in common, thus plugging any opportunity to further a relationship.

Holden continues to wander New York City encountering more people in the midst, each escapade leaving him somewhat more depressed than before. Many times in between chapters, he remembers nostalgically of him and Jane doing various things to keep himself calm. As he becomes increasingly lonely and depressed, he takes another cab to a different bar, Ernie's, to get drunk. Typically he derides this one too saying there were too many phonies in there. He is forced to leave when he accidentally runs into his brother's annoying ex-girlfriend.

Back at the hotel, Holden encounters the elevator boy, Maurice, who offers to send up a prostitute to his room for five bucks. In a rather rash decision, he accepts the offer hoping the experience will cheer him up. But when the the young girl, Sunny, comes to his room, Holden cannot bring himself to have sex with her, feeling much too depressed. He tells Sunny he is recuperating from a surgical operation on his clavichord, an obvious play on clavicle and spinal cord, and pays her, instead, to sit down and keep him company for a while. Later, she leaves, only to return with Maurice shortly after, who intimidates Holden and uses brute force to hustle an extra five bucks from him.

The next day, he makes a date with one of his previous girlfriends, Sally Hayes. They attend a matinee performance of The Lunts and later go ice skating at Rockefeller Center, but retire indoors to talk once their ankles tire. Their conversation soon turns into a fight and the experience leaves him more depressed, as he realizes that they do not have much in common. Holden in a final attempt to make peace with Sally gets a sudden idea to leave and go Northeast, live off of the land and build a cabin, offering Sally a chance to go with him — get "married or something". Sally rejects him and his idea, especially after Holden plaintively blurts out that she's "a royal pain in the ass." At that point, Sally becomes offended and walks out on the date.

After he gets drunk at a bar and almost drowns looking for ducks in a pond in Central Park, Holden then decides to surreptitiously visit home to see his younger sister Phoebe. During a short conversation with Phoebe, Holden reveals the meaning of the novel's title. The idea is based on a misreading of a line in the song "Comin' Thro' the Rye," by Robert Burns, which Holden heard a young boy singing. The young boy mistakenly substituted "When a body catch a body, comin' thro' the rye" for "When a body meet a body, comin' thro' the rye." Holden interpreted the line literally, imagining a field of rye at the edge of a cliff, in which children constantly wandered, and that someone had the job of catching any who might fall. Thus, he says that he wants to be the catcher, because it serves a real purpose in a world that is otherwise so often phony/trivial. Holden quickly leaves the apartment as his parents come home from a party.

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. Holden views Mr. Antolini as a father-figure and holds much respect for him. Mr. Antolini speaks as if he has been in Holden's situation before, hopelessly hating every person he ever sees. After preparing the pull out couch with Mr. Antolini, Holden awakes to find him stroking his head. Holden, taken aback by this, interprets this as a sexual advance, and runs out of the apartment to sleep in Grand Central Station, against the wishes of Mr. Antolini who says he was just admiring him.

In the morning, he decides to hitchhike west and build a cabin for himself away from the people he knows. However, he can't leave without saying goodbye to Phoebe first. Holden gives someone at her school a message to give to Phoebe explaining the situation. He tells her to meet him outside the nearby museum at lunchtime so he can give her back her money she had lent to him. At the same time, Holden witnesses several "Fuck You" messages graffitied on the walls, and worries what effect it would have if the children were to see it.

When Phoebe finally arrives at lunchtime, she is carrying one of Holden's old suitcases full of clothes. Phoebe tells Holden that she is going with him. He angrily refuses, feeling that he has influenced her to 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 forget about his plan to run away and return home on Wednesday. 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 remorse, longing, and bittersweet happiness.

At this point in the book, the reader is given more clues that Holden is narrating the book from a mental hospital. 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 finishes talking with the words, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody".

Major themes

Given that 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 actually meant that is under contention.

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. There is evidence that Holden exhibits much of the same "phoniness" he denounces in others. 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, many 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. Possibly, the "phoniness" is about not being honest with yourself about your feelings of pain and disappointment. Holden's "phonies" rarely give the impression of admitting their flaws and insecurities, and this could be what he has in mind when he labels them as such. In contrast, though Holden labels other people as "phonies," Holden reveals much of his own carnality, showing himself to the readers as being self-righteous and judgmental. Sometimes, he himself can be a bit phony, such as the time he decides he's going to pretend to be a deaf-mute so he doesn't have to speak to anyone. Either way, Holden believes that he is honest with himself, and the reader, throughout the book.

A reoccurring event in this book is Holden’s disdain for anything that robs the innocence from children. After he awakens to his favorite teacher Mr. Antolini rubbing his head, Holden even admits that he was previously taken advantage of by adults. Child exploitation is seen by Holden as another way how adults destroy childhood innocence. Holden's fascination with young children deals with his deeper desire to return to the innocence and truth that only children have. In a world where he considers adults and phonies to be equivalent, children are considered to be a fresh escape from Holden's middle-class background.

Loss of innocence

One more significant theme is that the loss of innocence might be unavoidable. Holden's idea of a "catcher in the rye" illustrates how he wishes to wipe out corruption from the world and protect children, such as his sister, from becoming like the many "phonies" he hated; e.g., adults. This is clearly illustrated by Holden's attack on Stradlater after the date with Jane Gallagher. Nevertheless, Holden finds it impossible to maintain innocence. After seeing some vulgar graffiti (saying "Fuck You") on the walls in his sister Phoebe's elementary school, a bastion of learning and culture, he tries to rub them off. In disgust, he states "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the "Fuck You" signs in the world." To Holden, the "Fuck You"s represent the things that remove the innocence of people. Thus he realizes that he won't be able to protect children from the world indefinitely. Holden believes that society will never get better, and it will always have some sort of flaw.

Also, in Holden's scheme of moving west and building a cabin, he mentions that he may have children, but hide them, probably to maintain their innocence.

Throughout the story Holden tries to maintain innocence. One situation Holden finds himself in is his dorm at Pencey Prep and is ready to leave for the movies and he begins to "[pack] a snowball with [his] bare hands…," and then admits "I didn’t throw it at anything, though. I started to throw it. At a car that was parked across the street. But I changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then I started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked too nice and white, too. Finally I didn’t throw it at anything."

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 probably doesn't want to be a kid anymore, but still feels like the adult world is cruel and unfair. He's stuck in between child and adulthood. 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. He spends much of the novel pursuing women, attempting to lose his virginity. He also tries to drink alcohol in every bar he can, but is turned away because he is too young. Having been rejected, Holden's response is an even stronger rejection of the people with whom he was trying to fit in. This resentment, combined with his observations of "phoniness" in many of the people around him, cause him to be outcast by society and to sometimes view himself as a loner with outsider status. Holden also changes his mind at the end of the book when he lets Phoebe grow up.

Education

Another theme in the book is whether or not Holden's education is important. Holden has failed out of several schools in his life-time, and exhibits no signs of remorse or promise of change. 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 arrange the ideas 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.

Writing style

Salinger uses colloquial and street language in a stream of consciousness manner. This style, used throughout the novel, refers to the use of seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes used in an apparently random medley, but in fact in a highly structured way, that is used to illustrate a theme. For example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events (such as picking up a book or looking at a table) unfold into long discussions about past experiences.

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, assassin of Beatle, musician and political activist 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. 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. Critics hold that people like Chapman and Hinckley come to relate themselves to Holden, the person that nobody understands and that cannot understand anybody else.

Thirty years after its first publication in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye was both the most banned book in United States as well as the second most taught book in public schools. [2]

It was number 13 on the American Library Association's list of most frequently challenged books from 1990-2000.[3] It was one of the ten most challenged books in 2005.[4]

Not withstanding the above, the story remains required reading in many public schools English literature curricula in English-speaking countries.

Dating the story

The Catcher in the Rye takes place in the late 1940s to the early 1950s, which is about the time the novel was written. World War II was over and the atomic bomb, which was mentioned in the book, had already been invented. The death of Allie, Holden's younger brother, is given to be July 18, 1946, and it is stated Holden was 13 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 Christmas fell on a Sunday in 1949, the two days that consume most of the novel are most likely December 18 and 19; if it were one week later, the second day of Holden's romp would be Christmas, and if it were one week earlier, Pencey would be letting its students out two full weeks before Christmas.

Attempted film and stage adaptations

Early in his career, J. D. Salinger expressed a willingness to have his work adapted for the screen. However, in 1949, a critically panned film version of his short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" was released; renamed My Foolish Heart and taking great liberties with Salinger's story, the film is widely considered to be among the reasons that Salinger has refused to allow any subsequent movie adaptations of his work. The enduring popularity of The Catcher in the Rye, however, has resulted in repeated attempts to secure the novel's screen rights.

When The Catcher in the Rye was first released, numerous offers were made to adapt it for the screen (with Sam Goldwyn, the producer of My Foolish Heart, among them.) In a letter written in the early fifties, Salinger spoke of mounting a play in which he would play the role of Holden Caulfield opposite Margaret O'Brien, and, if he couldn’t play the part himself, to “forget about it." Almost fifty years later, the writer Joyce Maynard definitively concluded, "The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger." Despite this, Salinger told Maynard in the seventies, "Jerry Lewis tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden," and luminaries ranging from Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio have since made efforts to make a film of Catcher. In an interview with Premiere magazine, John Cusack commented that his one regret about turning twenty-one was that he had become too old to play Holden Caulfield. Legendary Oscar-winning writer-director Billy Wilder recounted his abortive attempts to snare the novel's rights, saying,

Of course I read The Catcher in the Rye....Wonderful book. I loved it. I pursued it. I wanted to make a picture out of it. And then one day a young man came to the office of Leland Hayward, my agent, in New York, and said, 'Please tell Mr. Leland Hayward to lay off. He’s very, very insensitive.' And he walked out. That was the entire speech. I never saw him. That was J. D. Salinger and that was Catcher in the Rye.

In 1961, Salinger denied Elia Kazan permission to direct a stage adaptation of Catcher for Broadway. More recently, Salinger's agents received bids for the Catcher movie rights from Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg, neither of which was even passed on to Salinger for consideration.

In 2003, the BBC television program The Big Read featured The Catcher in the Rye, intercutting discussions of the novel with "a series of short films that featured an actor playing Salinger's adolescent antihero, Holden Caulfield." The show defended its unlicensed adaptation of the novel by claiming to be a "literary review," and no major charges were filed.

See also

Main article: Cultural references to the novel The Catcher in the Rye

External links

• Wiki The Catcher in the Rye summary
• The Catcher in the Rye and Related Matters
• Character list and information on censorship of Catcher in the Rye
• Article listing themes in Catcher in the Rye
• Photos of the first edition of Catcher in the Rye