The Catcher in the Rye
Outline
- The Author: Jerome D. Salinger
- Plot Summary
- The Language & Style used
in the book
- Analysis of Holden's Character
- Jerome
D. Salinger was born in 1919 in New York City as the son of a well-to-do grocery salesman
- Attended
various east Coast private prep schools and afterwards a couple of
different colleges, but he never graduated.
- After
excelling in a creative writing class in college, his first short story
published in 1940; he continued to write even as a soldier in WWII;
however, his writing was sparely noticed by the critics.
- In
1951, his first and to this day only novel, "The Catcher in the Rye" is
published, and he appears on the international literary stage. Spurred
great discussions and critical acclaim, but also criticism,
- public
reception:
Noted book
reviewers from across America critiqued The Catcher in the Rye, bestowing both
praise and criticism at different levels
has been
banned continually from schools, libraries, and bookstores due to its
profanity, sexual subject matter, and rejection of some traditional American
ideals.
- After
the "Catcher", Salinger published a couple of short stories, which were
torn to pieces by the critics.
- In
1965, he published the short story "Hapworth 26, 1924" that received
exceptionally bad critcs, and in response to that, he withdrew almost
completely from public life
- Has
lived as a recluse Cornish, New Hampshire to the present day and not
published anything since then, however he seems to have kept on writing,
and after his death many of his later works may be published
2) The Plot
in a Nutshell
- Protagonist is Holden
Caulfield, 16, first person narrator: He comes from a well-to-do family of
New Yorkers
- At the beginning & within
the book he addresses the reader directly:
In a California mental hospital to recuperate from an unnamed
illness(Frame Story)
- Holden tells the actual plot
from his memory: The Plot starts one Saturday short before Christmas in a
private Pennsylvania Preparatory School:
- Holden is not allowed to return
for the next term b/c he flunked four of the five subjects he had been
taking, and he has been thrown out of three other schools for not applying
himself
- He visits his history teacher
to say good bye to him, and it turns out that Holden has great dislike for
all the customs of the world of the adults, what he calls phoniness, so he
almost pukes when Spencer calls "Good Luck" after him when he leaves
- He returns to his room and
begins to read, but then he is disturbed by two fellow students, Ackley
and Stradlater.
- He muses at some lengths about
those two students and why he despises them: Ackley is a slob and a has
very bad personality and doesn't care about anybody's privacy; Stradlater
is a womaniser and brags about his sexual successes.
- Essay about Allie's Baseball
mitt
- Stradlater doesn't like the
essay Holden wrote for him, and they get into a fight, Holden loses and
decides to leave the school and go to New York and stay in a hotel for a
couple of days until his parents have been told about his expulsion b/c he
doesn't want to tell them himself.
- In New York he doesn't know
what to do, he wants to call his kid sister Phoebe, but she'd be asleep,
or his former dates Sally Hayes or Jane Gallagher, but doesn't' call
anybody and gets himself a room in a cheap hotel.
- In his room he calls a
prostitute whose number he got from a friend at school, but she turns him
down.
- Instead, he walks around the
city aimlessly, goes to a night club, has a drink and feels quite
uncomfortable
- Back at the hotel, the lift boy
asks whether he would like to have a prostitute sent to his room, and he
answers yes
- The prostitute comes, but
Holden sees that she's almost as young as him, besides, he is still a
virgin and he gets so depressed that he pays her, but sends her away
without anything further happening.
- The following day, he arranges
a date with Sally Hayes, who is phony, but very good looking. They go to a
matinee and get along w/ each other well until Holden asks her to run away
with him and live in a cabin in the woods, and when she refuses, he calls
her a royal pain in the ass and walks away.
- He gets himself quite drunk and
finally decides to go home to see his little sister Phoebe, whom he likes
very much.
- When he tells her he flunked
out of school again, she asks him if there's anything he really likes. His
answer: (p 173)
- Holden decides to spend the
night at the house of a former teacher, Mr. Antolini, where he gets a
friendly welcome and discusses his problems in school with the open-minded
Mr. Antolini.
- However, at night he wakes up
and finds Mr. Antolini with his hand on Holden's head looking at him, and
Holden interprets thinks the teacher is making a pass at him and leaves.
- The next day, Holden becomes
ever more irritable and his account of the actions ever more paranoid and
delusional. This passage is taken from him rambling on in this erratic
state of mind: (p. 198)
- He sends Phoebe a message that
he wants to go away someplace and to meet him to say goodbye. When they meet,
she wants to come with him, but he doesn't want her to come. She refuses
to talk to him until he buys her a ticket for the carousel in Central Park
and the plot ends with him sitting in the rain crying and watching her
riding the carousel.
- The last chapter takes place in
the sanitarium from where Holden tells the story. He says he doesn't want
to talk any more about his sickness, and that telling the story in fact
only made him miss people the more, even the jerks.
3) Language
& Style
- Written in common, sometimes
profane language,
- the colloquial language used in the 50ies
- Reintroduced the common
language into American Literature
- at some points almost a
stream-of-consciousness technique, with very short or unfinished sentences
- The language mirrors the
situation, Holden talks differently to different people
- Holden's tone varies between
disgust, cynicism, bitterness, and nostalgic longing, all expressed in a
colloquial style.
4) Holden's
Character
In the 50's
, when the boo was published, a great number of people was able to identify
with Holden, even those that came from backgrounds completely different from
his.
Most
certainly, he is a unreliable narrator, so as the book is written as a first
person narrative, one cannot trust his account of the action but has to
make up his mind himself. He certainly has great psychological problems
that probably stem from his remembrance of the death of his brother Allie.
He alienates
himself and shows little more than contempt for the world around
him, in fact the only person in the whole book he seems to like is his
sister Phoebe, all the others he dismisses as phonies whom he
regards as superficial. Though, as well it might be that he himself
is superficial and fails to see them as whole personalities.
A second
facet of Holden's personality is his obsession with sexual matters. In
fact, he spends a good part of the novel trying to lose his virginity and
even more thinking about it. However, when it comes close that he might actually
have sex with the prostitute, he backs out of it by saying he doesn't feel
well because he has been operated on his "clavichord".
Some
critics also said that he might have a Madonna/whore complex. He keeps
thinking about Jane Gallagher, who he must have really loved at some
point, but can't make up his mind to go out with her, but makes passes at prostitutes
and women he doesn't really like instead.
The book is
a Classic American bildungsroman and has been compared to the
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn for this reason. The great theme of
the novel is the difficulty that lies in the transition from childhood to
adulthood. Although Holden is an adult in his outward appearance (over 6 ft
tall, he has grey hair), it becomes very clear that he is still very much a
child. He is very observative and notes every detail he sees, but
isn't able to understand the world around him and can't cope with
society's complexity. This becomes clearer every time he dreams about
leaving the city and living in the woods or pretending to be a deaf mute, and
flee from society is in fact what the author did.
Instead of
"growing up" and becoming and adult himself, he dismisses the world of the
adults as phony and superficial. He protects himself from it by alienating
himself and preventing others to get close to him with his cutting cynicism.
