Catcher in the Rye
Author: J.D. Salinger
Pages: 234
Obtained: Barnes and Noble
Date Began: August 19, 2016
Date Finish: September 9, 2016
Let this be a reminder that I am as susceptible to prejudice as anyone else. Before I read this classic, I read the reviews. There were some posters who disliked the novel because of of the main protagonist, who they said was just another whiny teenager. I almost went through the book missing everything this precious novel and Holden Caulfield stood for, if it weren’t for SparkNotes
Holden is a 17 year old who is disillusioned with the human condition. He is the age where he discovers that adults aren’t as genuine as they appeared. Adults are “phony”: they wear different masks to please people; They are unjust: they hate others for asinine reasons such as social class (as shown when his headmaster refuses to smile and engage in conversation when parent’s of lower class students come to visit); they are ruled by their superficiality, living for the next hottest car and whatnot; and as Reddit users NihilisticEndeavor and heretodiscussbooks pointed out in a thread about the Catcher, they are apathetic to the injustices of the world: “I mean, if we look around us we can see that the world is basically full of phoniness, this kind of complacent lemming behavior...”
But a subtle theme about Holden, is that he abhors the very idea of casual sex, which seem to epitomize everything wrong with society. It’s superficial and lacks emotional connection. He is furious when Stradlater won’t answer him if he had sex with Jane, a dear friend of Holden whom he has feelings for, and he tries desperately to wipe off a graffiti of “Fuck” in Phoebe’s school, giving up with despair. And so, Holden doesn’t apply himself at school, and he wants to stay a child forever. The novel’s title is Holden’s dream of catching kids when they fall off the cliff in a rye field. I didn’t need to be a SparkNotes scientist to know that he meant he wanted to save kids from adulthood.
Another subtle demon Holden is struggling with is grief. Holden loses his brother, Allie, to cancer at a young age. Afterwards, his older brother runs off to write for Hollywood, and his parents emotionally distance themselves, and send Holden to boarding school after breaking the windows in his grief, separating him from his sister, Phoebe. Holden sees Allie and Phoebe, as sweet and innocent. As SparkNotes duly notes, when Phoebe questions him what is one thing he really likes about the world right now, he says Allie. He has nothing but good things to say about his siblings.
After Holden visits Phoebe, he goes to stay the night at a teacher and adult who he still trusts deeply, Mr. Antolini. In his post-party living room, Mr. Antolini tells Holden that he isn’t the only one who is disgusted at the human condition, that there are many men who came before him having the same existential crisis and “left records of it in history, in poetry.” He goes to bed, but only a little while later, he wakes up feeling a someone petting his hair. It was Mr. Antolini, and Holden, believing he had homosexual tendencies, packs up a few of his things and rushes out of his house. On this chapter, SparkNotes brings up that Mr. Antolini might’ve been showing affection for a cared-for student’s pain, but that its one of the many times throughout the book that Holden over-simplifies reality.
From there, everything culminates into a nervous breakdown for Holden. Every time he left the curb, he thought he wouldn’t make it to the other side, pleading with Allie to not make him disappear. He sits down on a bench to regain his bearings, where he finally decides to travel out West to work odd jobs. He fantasizes about pretending to be mute for the rest of his life to make the world leave him alone. His relatives would come visit him He wouldn’t return home again. He goes to buy a stationary to write a goodbye note to Phoebe at school.
In the climax of the novel, Holden is waiting for Phoebe to meet him at the museum during Phoebe’s lunch period. When Holden finally sees Phoebe, she is pulling a suitcase. Phoebe begs Holden to take her with him, but Holden is unable to respond; he is struck speechless and lightheaded. When Phoebe pleads again, he becomes enraged, and flatly tells her, “No, shut up,” that she isn’t going, and that she would miss the play if she went, which Holden concedes he was partly angry because she wouldn’t be in his beloved play any more.
Here is what I say about this part from my annotations:
“Holden's strong reaction to Phoebe's desire to go with him out west, to quit school, her play, everything, is likely because he knows he's on a self-destructive path. Additionally, the play holds sentimental value to him, as it was the play all of his siblings, including Allie, went to every year.
Not only that, but Phoebe staying in New York City means she's going to grow up. She's going to see the vulgar graffiti that will take away her innocence, in Holden's view. So what this means is, deep down, Holden sees staying stuck in childhood as unhealthy. Going through the pain, confusion, and uncertainty of adulthood is the only step forward. And so when Holden sees the only person he really cares about, about go to on the same path as he, he feels enraged. He probably now understands how others whom care about him feel when he's doing exactly what Phoebe wanted to do.”
Holden checks her bag in the checkroom, and tries to walk her to back to school, but she wouldn’t have it. With Phoebe trailing on the parallel sidewalk, giving Holden the silent treatment, they go to the zoo. Phoebe eventually comes around and talks to Holden again. Phoebe rides the carousel while Holden watches, and the penultimate chapter ends with Holden being so profoundly happy at this moment, about the way his sister looks going around and around on the carousel.
Holden has learned to make compromises with adulthood in its current condition. Like we all have at one point in our lives, we accept that the world isn’t always fair and just. We have to learn to find happiness. And, if we dare, try to make the world a better place by being more careful about what kind of things we support (as consumers, voters, laborers, activists, etc.) about our society. But most of the time, we are beaten to submission into participating in society’s darkest vices. Holden’s growth here isn’t all that “good” in the moral sense because he’s giving in to society. In society’s eyes, however, they would consider Holden growth’s to be “good.” manonthemount on Reddit condenses this expertly:
“...Ironically, while his critics whine, the book chronicles Holden eroding into a shape that fits more readily into societal constructs. Holden's maturing leads to a dark conclusion where the place in society concepts of equity, truth, and hope reside are in an institution.
As you note, readers of varying maturities relate to Holden differently. The novel disillusions the young and validates the old, but the less introspective of the latter witness it with pleasure rather than well-earned regret.”
Staying true to the novel’s message, the final chapter does not give off a optimistic vibe. We learn that Holden is telling his story from a rest home, where is recovering from his breakdown. He talks about how stupid it is when he gets asked if he’s going to apply himself at school next September from a psychoanalyst, which he says to the readers that we don’t know if we are going to do something until we do it. We just think that we’re going to do it.
Holden mentions that his brother, D.B. visits him with his new girlfriend, and that he has asked what Holden thinks about what has happened in the past couple days (the novel takes place in just three days). Holden tells the reader that he “doesn’t know what to think about it,” and that he regrets telling so many people about it.
If I were to reflect on my life, I would say that I agree with Holden in some respects. I don’t always know the “ultimate” meaning if everything that has happened in my life, assuming that there is an “ultimate” meaning. Ultimately though, there is a certain freedom in being able to assign meanings. Sometimes, I’ll assign meaning to an experience in terms of personal growth. However, I can see how for some, typically, horrible experiences, it would be almost an insult to pressure others to extrapolate meaning from it, which insinuates that it “had” to happen for progress or whatever.
He just misses the people that he has interacted with in the novel, even including Stradlater, Ackley, and Maurice. In the final line of the novel, Holden gives us one last piece of advice, in which he tells the reader that we shouldn’t “tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.”
Holden is conveying here that you shouldn’t seek out new human connections or experiences, because they’ll eventually pass. This shows that Holden is “museum glass case” mindset, where he wants the special moments from his life, the people and his feelings, to always stay the same, will influence Holden in the future.