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"Catcher in the Rye" is a book many high school students will read in most likely, senior English courses. It is a book, that was banned in my school district, which sparked the initial interest I had in reading it. I had heard amazing things, and it was banned, the combination was an itch to read this book that couldn't be scratched though public libraries or school libraries.
When I first got my hands on the book, I was seventeen. I couldn't put it down. It is a book, that I can read and reread endlessly.
Before I begin. The reasons for this book being banned are that the content is "questionable". To me, banning books is obscene. Regardless of the content, a book is expression, which last I heard, we were entitled to. So. This book deals with sexuality, it has quite a bit of profane language and it deals with teen angst. It was published in 1951, and written by JD Salinger. I believe, wholeheartedly, that the reason this book remains banned, or even just challenged in many school districts and public library systems is no longer based on the aforementioned, but because of things in his public life such as pedophilia and his relationships. Now. When I say pedophilia, what I mean is when he was around 50 or so, he was with an 18 year old lady. This is not the same pedophilia as well. Let's not get into that. The point is, this should have no impact on whether or not an author is good, or a book is good, or either should be barred from public premises. It was a rumor, or a claim, made in the past that has no bearing over the actual literary works. So, regardless of his personal love life, "Catcher in the Rye" is a very decent novel.
And it should be noted, that I do not actually know. This is just want a teacher once told me as the reason it was not on the book list for grade twelve English.
Those of you younger than 14 I would think, maybe should wait until you are a little older to read it. I feel like I am censoring you, which I am not. So by all means, go ahead and read this book, but the younger you are a) the less impact it will have emotionally or personally with you, which will inhibit some of the understanding or love for this work, or b) the more offensive/obscene it will seem. I have no right to say you cannot read it, I am merely saying that the age at which one reads this novel influences the appreciation and understanding of the story.
The novel is about a boy named Holden Caufield. It is told through the first person, as though he is a real live 17 year old boy, telling you face to face of his accounts when he was 16 and accidentally failed out of yet another, boarding school. He faces the dilemma of telling his parents, his mother won't take the news lightly. Everyone wonders what is wrong with him and going through his head, and he states out clearly what he is thinking as these events unfold in his life.
His story starts on the last day he is at Pencey Prep, the boarding school he attends. He decides that instead of staying until Christmas break starts on Wednesday, he will leave and stay in New York City. The story only covers 48 hours in his life, but you learn a lot about him as though the time he is speaking of it longer. The style of writing makes it very easy to imagine that Holden is a real young man speaking earnestly to you, one on one. 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 unbearable. A feeling, many teenagers can relate to, no matter their wealth or upbringing.
You follow Holden, as he tries to make sense of what he wants in life. One of the main themes of the novel is that alienating yourself protects you from things which you cannot change. Holden keeps himself feeling victimized and excluded by the world around him, he tries very hard to find where he belongs in a world which he feels he doesn't belong. Another huge theme is how painful it is to grow up. He is resisting maturity, he is overwhelmed by change and he fears the complexity that change brings. In the chapter where he is in the Museum of Nature Science, he remarks about how everything there behind the glass never changes. You come and you see it, it is always the same, but you are different. No matter what you do, every time you come, you are a different. He hardly speaks of these fears, because he knows he is guilty for the sins he finds in others. I believe these two themes are the easiest to relate to as a 17 year old.
The last major theme of the book is how the adult world is full of phonies. It is a simple word to express hypocrisy, pretension, shallowness, and anything superficial. He encounters this everywhere he goes, and the words "phony" and "phoniness" are used abundantly in the text. He uses it to describe everything that is wrong in the world, and excuse himself for withdrawing into his own cynical isolation.
Underlying themes include loneliness, relationships, intimacy and sexuality, and deception. He depends on his isolation to preserve his detachment from the world and to maintain a level of self-protection, so he often sabotages his own attempts to end his loneliness, despite wishing that he wasn't so lonely. It's an emotional manifestation of his alienation from the world, and although it brings him great pain, it is his only security. With the relationships and all that goes with it, the complexity of it all scares him and yet he longs for the emotional relationship side of things with girls. He talks of sex and his fears of it, and how he wishes he could do it and be done with it, but he can't advance on this project because he feels like he could never have sex with a girl he had no feelings for. The girls he has feelings for, he could never because he cares for the girls and doesn't want to be just another jerk. He has had plenty of opportunity he remarks several times, but he shies away from intimacy. As for deception, he feels most upset by it due to his own actions, the lies he tells when he cannot be upfront about his own shortcomings. He is very quick to blame others, the same as all the phonies he encounters.
The book has a few important symbols, but I will only touch on the one that leaves us with the title. Robert Burns song "Comin' Thro' the Rye." is being sung by a child on the road in New York. Holden watches as the child walks on the road singing and his parents (the child's) pay him no mind. Later in the book, when Holden is with his kid sister Pheobe, and she asks him what he wants to do with his life he says he wants to be the catcher in the rye. He says, he imagines a rye field up on a cliff, and he would catch the children and stop them from falling as they play in the field. Pheobe says to him, that the lyrics are not catch a body, but meet a body. The irony is, the word meet in the song relates to a romantic, one could say, encounter of two people in a rye field. The song is about, two people having this encounter and then not planning to have any sort of commitment to each other. It is the complete opposite of what Holden wishes, because when he substitutes catch for meet, he is planning on catching the children before they fall out of innocence, into the adult world which would include the knowledge of sex.
This somehow got warped into a lame attempt of a literary essay rather than a book review. Judging by the length upon revisiting I am going to end it there. I know this is a bad choice since I don't really have a conclusion but. This book is worth reading, so if it is appropriate to your age and reading level, please, do check it out.
-BP
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