The Catcher in the Rye
J D Salinger’s ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is another one of my favourite classic novels. Everything about it — from the characterisation of Holden Caulfield, to the plot, to the structure — is a masterpiece, and I fell quickly in love with it. I first read it as part of a project during my A-Levels to read more classics, and I read it pretty much everywhere until I finished it: on the bus, in between lessons, before school started, etc. It’s just a magical book and I got completely invested in Holden’s story; his struggles, his pain, his adventure.
‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was originally intended as an adult novel, but it’s widely read in schools and often enjoyed by teenagers and adolescents. Its themes of alienation, frustration with society, and anger often resonate better with young people, and it’s easy for teens to identify with how Holden, a teenager himself, is feeling. Interestingly, this novel has been widely associated with murderers and assassins. Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s killer, was arrested with a copy of the novel on his person, a note written inside indicating that the book served as his manifesto. John Hinckley Jr, the man who tried to assassinate Reagan, admired Chapman and also owned a copy of the novel. Other shooters have also identified with Holden and found that the book expressed emotions that they had never been able to.
Holden is writing from an unclear location — though he hints that he’s undergoing some sort of treatment — about an event that happened a year ago, when Holden was 16, and the novel follows Holden’s journey through New York after he’s expelled from school. He refuses to tell his parents, instead embarking on an adventure which the novel follows closely: we see everything he does in vividly described detail over the span of a few days. His adventure revolves heavily around sex as he sees people in his hotel room having sex with prostitutes, flirts with women in their thirties, and desperately tries to reconnect with girls from his past. All the while, he drops subtle hints about his mental state and personal life; we learn of his history, his family, his friends, and I gradually formed a sense of fondness for this very misguided, ignorant young boy.
Salinger writes in a subjective POV, following Holden’s thought process exactly. This allows for interesting and wider discussions to follow from minor actions. Furthermore, the style of narration includes a lot of placeholders in his speech — ‘sort of’, ‘really’, ‘boy’ — which create a vernacular, speech-like flow of prose and mirror the speech patterns of an American teenage boy in the 1940/50s. The narration also generalises and uses hyperbole liberally, but this is part of what I like so much about the novel. Holden is an unreliable narrator, he’s telling his story from a narrow point of view that I think perfectly encapsulates how so many of us perceive our own lives. Holden isn’t fake — or ‘phony’, as he would say — he acts as a mirror for the reader, even if we might not like our reflection.
Salinger doesn’t solely limit the story to Holden’s perspective though. He cleverly weaves in dialogue to show how other characters are perceiving the situation and demonstrate an outsider’s opinion of him. With Holden playing both protagonist and narrator, without this break from his own head, the structure of the novel could become smothering, so Salinger prevents this by subtly diverting our attention elsewhere. Holden often misunderstands things, but instead of Salinger mistakenly presenting his opinion then as fact, he will show the dialogue of something somebody says to him so the reader can understand the true interpretation, and then present Holden’s misinterpretation, allowing us to see his ignorance even through his unreliable narration.
A full analysis of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ would take thousands and thousands of words, but I hope that I’ve conveyed here just how clever Salinger is with this novel. He makes a frankly quite stupid and sexist main character somewhat likeable, and the reader roots for him even through his misguided actions and deluded thought processes, following his fascinating journey through the streets of New York. It’s a brilliant take on teenage angst and youthful male ignorance, and for a novel written in the early 1940s it portrays mental health issues reasonably well, too. Salinger tells an excellent story here and it’s a novel and character that I feel very fond of — I highly recommend that you pick up a copy and see its strength for yourself.
(Plus, a gorgeous new edition has just been released so it’s the perfect time to read it!)
