Factual information about the book

Title: The Catcher in the Rye

Year : 1951

Author: J.D Salinger

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Pages: 234

Genre: Realistic fiction, Bildungsroman (coming-of-age), literary realism, modernism

Expectations and first reaction

I began reading this book because thought it was about a teenager trying to understand the adult world, which I thought I could relate to. Now, after reading this book, I think that description was not totally true; it’s more about a delusional teenager that cannot stand living in his society. Even though I did not expect that, I enjoyed it nonetheless.

The second thing I did not expect was how much satire and humour was used in the story, which was a pleasant surprise; it definitely made it easier to read. I also did not expect the first-person, dairy-like perspective, which I did not mind. Both of these were pleasant surprises because I do not normally see these things in literary fiction.

Lastly, I kept expecting that there was going to be some kind of twist in the story in the beginning, which made me read the beginning of the book a little too hurriedly. I later realized that this was just the what the book was written about, and I started reading it more consciously.

The summary

The story is about a 16-year-old boy named Holden Caufield. He has an older brother named D.B, who is a screenwriter in Hollywood, another older brother named Allie, who died of leukaemia, and a younger sister named Phoebe. Holden goes to a prep school named Pencey, but he has just heard that he will be expelled because he had failed all his classes except English. He visits his history teacher Spencer to say goodbye, but Spencer criticises him for his poor academic performance and tries to give him advice, which annoys Holden, and he leaves as soon as he can.

When Holden goes back to his dormitory, he gets irritated by his neighbour, Ackley, and his roommate Ward. Ackley is quite unhygienic and does not understand social cues, therefore making him unpopular amongst his peers. Ward has a date with Holden’s ex-girlfriend that he still likes, Jane, which makes Holden very nervous. Ward asks Holden to do his homework for him; it needs to be a descriptive essay. Holden decides to write an essay about Allie’s baseball mitt, where Allie used to write poems on. Then Ward comes back and refuses to tell Holden whether or not he had sex with Jane, and also dislikes the essay Holden wrote. Holden flies into rage and attacks Ward, but Ward is much stronger than him and wins the fight. Holden goes to Ackley’s room after the fight, but Ackley is tired and does not want to have a conversation with him.

Holden gets tired of his fellow students and decides to leave early and go on a train to New York. He wants to wait a few days before he goes home, because his parents have not yet received the news that he has been expelled. He meets a mother of one of his classmates on the train, and even though her son is very rude, he makes up stories to her about how humble and loved her son is. When arrived in New York, Holden thinks about calling up multiple people, but orders a taxi instead. He asks the taxi-driver something he has been wondering for a while; where the ducks of the Central Park lagoon go when it’s frozen. The taxi-driver gets annoyed at him and does not answer.

Holden checks in to the Edmont hotel but does not like the hotel very much. He calls a friend of an acquaintance of his; a stripper that sometimes prostitutes as well. He wants her to come over, but she thinks it is too late and suggests meeting up tomorrow, but Holden declines and hangs up. He goes to the lobby of the hotel and meets three girls there, but he is disappointed by their inability to keep up a conversation. He decides to go to a nightclub. While in a taxi, he asks the same question again; where do the ducks of the Central Park go in the winter? The taxi-driver gets even more annoyed at his question than the last driver.

At the nightclub, he runs into one of DB’s former girlfriends, who invites him to join her and her friend. Holden declines, saying he needs to meet someone. He walks back to his hotel after an uneventful night. That is why he decides to accept the offer to send a prostitute to his room for five dollars. However, when she comes over and introduces herself as Sunny, he does not want to have sex with her and tries to make conversation. When she does not want that, he pays her five dollars and lets her leave. Later, she and her pimp come back, insisting that he needed to pay ten dollars. When Holden insults her pimp, he gets punched in the stomach by him and Sunny takes five dollars out of his wallet. They leave afterwards and Holden goes to bed.

The next morning, Holden calls up a girl he has dated in the past and they decide to go to a play together. He decides to eat breakfast at a subway bar and meets two nuns there. They are English teachers, so Holden briefly talks to them about Romeo and Juliet and he gives a small donation. He then calls Jane, but her mother answers the phone, so he hangs up. He later goes to Central Park because Phoebe sometimes skates there. However, she is not there, and a classmate of hers says she might be at the museum. Even though Holden knows Phoebe would not go to the museum on a Sunday, he takes a taxi to the museum anyway, but he does not go into the building. Holden then takes a taxi to the Biltmore hotel to meet Sally.

Sally and Holden go to a play, and Holden gets annoyed at Sally for talking with a guy she knows afterwards. Sally suggests that they go ice-skating and Holden accepts. After finding out that they both cannot skate, they decide to drink something instead. Holden then tries to explain to Sally why he does not want to go to school, and he suddenly tells her that they could run away together, to Vermont or Massachusetts, and live in a cabin together. When she refuses, he insults her and laughs at her when she reacts angrily. He tries to apologize, but she does not listen and leaves.

Later, Holden calls Jane again, but she does not pick up the phone. He then calls Carl, a guy who was his student advisor from a few schools back, who does answer the phone. He agrees to have a drink with Holden after dinner. To kill time, Holden goes to yet another movie. He then meets up with Carl at a bar in a hotel. Because Carl used to talk frankly about sex with young students at Holden’s former school, Holden tries to get him to talk about it again. Because of Holden’s childish remarks about homosexuals and about Luce’s Chinese girlfriend, Carl makes up an excuse to leave. Holden stays at the bar and drinks several Scotches.

While Holden is very drunk, he calls up Sally. She instantly notices he is drunk, and hangs up, telling him to go home and go to sleep. He does not; instead, he goes to the lagoon in Central Park. He cannot find it at first, so he just walks around in the freezing cold. When he does find it, it is empty, and he cannot find any ducks. He sits down at a bench and starts imagining what would happen if he would get pneumonia and die. He starts thinking about how sad his sister Phoebe would be if he died and decides to sneak into his own house and wake up his sister Phoebe. When they start talking, Phoebe finds out he was expelled from school and gets mad at him. Holden tries to explain why he left school, but she says that he does not like anything. When she asks what he wants to be when he grows up, Holden references a poem from Robert Burns. He wants to be ‘the catcher in the rye’: someone who catches little children when they are about to fall off a cliff. Phoebe says that his misheard the poem; Robert Burns’ poem says, “if a body meet a body, coming through the rye,” not “catch a body.”

Holden calls his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, and he says that Holden can spend the night at his house. When Holden arrives, Mr. Antolini tries to talk some sense into him about going to school, but Holden is too tired to listen and Mr. Antolini lets him sleep on the couch. Holden wakes up to Mr. Antolini stroking his forehead, and thinking Mr. Antolini is making a sexual advance on him, he hurriedly leaves. He ends up sleeping on a bench at Grand Central Station.

The next morning, Holden goes to Phoebe’s school to give her a note. In the note, he says that he is leaving for good and that she should meet him at the museum. When she arrives, she is carrying a suitcase and says that she wants to come with him. When he refuses, she gets mad at him and starts crying. Holden starts walking to the zoo, knowing that Phoebe will follow him. When she is less mad, he buys a ticket for her to go on the carousel. It starts raining, but Holden is so happy to see his sister having fun at the carousel, that he almost cries.

The story ends with Holden writing about how he is now. He is currently undergoing treatment in a mental hospital or sanatorium. He will not tell the story about how he got home and got ‘sick’; instead, he talks about his future. D.B is going to drive him home after Holden’s discharge and Holden will start a new school. He seems optimistic about his future.

Characters

Holden Caulfield (round character): Holden Caulfield is the protagonist of the book. Although he is actually intelligent and sensitive, he often acts very cynical and pessimistic. He is extremely judgemental of others; he criticizes people who are ‘phony’, insecure, confident, boring, I could go on and on. However, this might be because truly, Holden fears rejection and tries to avoid that by alienating himself from his peers. Holden is a virgin but spends a lot of time talking about the idea of sex. He thinks sex should take place between two people who love and admire each other; however, he often finds himself being sexually attracted to girls whose personality he does not like, which confuses him. It becomes clear throughout the novel that Holden is quite depressed, and in the end, his depression also causes him to feel physically sick. While Holden does not specify in which kind of institution he is in the end of the novel, I think it is safe to say Holden is in a mental hospital.

Phoebe Caulfield (round character): Phoebe is Holden’s 10-year-old sister. Holden loves her dearly, always telling the reader about how smart, pretty and mature she is; she understands everything Holden says. She often seems more mature than Holden, often talking sense into him and criticizing him. While Holden values her opinion and likes how they are often on the same page, he does seem to hope that she does not get even more mature. I chose to categorize her as a round character because she often appears in the story and Holden tells the reader a lot about her; the reader really gets to know her and her personality. However, as a reader, we do not see much of her own life and mostly just her and Holden.

Allie Caulfield (flat character): Allie was Holden’s younger brother. He died of leukaemia when he was eleven years old; Holden was thirteen years old at the time. Holden slept in the garage the night of Allie’s death and punched out all the garage windows with his bare hands. He needed to go to the hospital afterwards and missed Allie’s funeral. Holden never got over his death and often idealizes him; he was the most intelligent, sweetest, funniest kid. Holden often thinks of him and sometimes talks to him, hoping Allie can protect him.

D.B Caulfield (flat character): D.B. is Holden’s brother. He used to write short stories and he published a book with short stories called ‘The secret goldfish’, which Holden loved. D.B then became a screenwriter in Hollywood, which Holden dislikes; he feels like D.B sacrificed his art (writing stories) for money (writing screenplays). D.B was in the army for four years, which he really disliked and might have gotten traumatized by. While Holden dislikes D.B.’s lifestyle, it does seem like they have a good relationship. I chose to categorize him as a flat character because D.B never actually appears in the story; Holden only tells us a few things about him.

Jane Gallagher (flat character): Jane is a girl whom Holden used to spend his summers with. She is one of the only girls that Holden both finds attractive and respects, so she is very special to Holden. Her parents are divorced, and her stepfather is an alcoholic and possibly abusive. When she cries about her stepfather one day, Holden confusingly tries to comfort her, but instead starts kissing her, which seems to make her uncomfortable. I chose to categorize her as a flat character because, just like D.B, she never actually appears in the story and the things we do know about her were from when she was younger.

Sally Hayes (flat character): Sally is a girl Holden has known and dated for a long time. However, he does not actually seem to love her, often calling her stupid or phony; he is only sexually attracted to her. She is more conventional and more of a rule-follower than Holden, which he finds annoying.

Time

‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is set in the 1950’s. The USA had made significant progress compared to the Great Depression in the 1930’s: the lives of the middle-class notably improved, and the USA had a booming economy. However, everyone was still coming to terms with the cruelty of the war, such as the Holocaust and America’s atomic bombing of Japan.

However, these two big themes from the 1950’s do not seem to apply on Holden for the most part. Holden seems to be from the upper-middle class since his family can afford a live-in maid and Holden seems to go from one expensive private school to the other with no problem. However, it seems like Holden’s family were already quite wealthy before the 1950’s. While Holden’s brother D.B served in the army, Holden does not seem to have any direct connection with World War II.

What New York looked like in the 1950’s does play a major role in the story (See chapter ‘Space and place’). Holden is often shown roaming around town at night and drinking alcohol as a minor; this might have been more common in the 1950’s, but Holden probably would not have gotten away with that in our current time period.

Modernism was seen as a revolt against the traditional values of Realism. ... Jerome David Salinger uses Holden's personality and his writing style of allusions (references to writers, poets etc) , first-person narrations, and themes of alienation to reflect Modernism characteristics. The Catcher in the Rye falls under the genre of Modernism.

‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is written in past tense and mostly chronologically. The story is written in past tense because the whole story, with exception of the beginning and end, is written in retrospect; Holden looks back at the events in the book later on. This means that most of the story is a flashback. Flashforwards are also used, such as when Holden says “I didn't know it then, though.” Time is often delayed in the book, since simple things can trigger complicated thought processes by Holden, which are then extensively described. In the end of the book, a time jump is made; it goes from Holden looking at Phoebe in the carousel to Holden being in some kind of institution. The time span of the story is a couple of days.

Space & place

The story starts in Pennsylvania at Pencey, the prep school Holden attends. When he gets expelled, Holden returns to his hometown; New York. The majority of the story takes place in New York. Holden often talks negatively about New York, both because of its theatre and its performance culture. While most of the story takes place in different taxi cabs, night clubs and hotels that Holden often talks negatively about, there are also a few places that Holden goes to multiple times throughout the story and actually likes, such as:

• The museum of Natural History. The museum of Natural History is a museum in New York that Holden frequently visits. When he was younger, he often went there with his class. Because Phoebe is in the same school as he was, she also visits the museum quite frequently. Holden enjoys this museum because it remains the same every time he visits it. This matches the abstract motive of the story, which is fear of change.
• Central Park. The Central Park is close to the museum and is also a place that keeps coming up throughout the novel. It is quieter than the rest of New York, being a good place for Holden to walk around and think. Some of Holden’s darkest moments of the story (him drunkenly searching for the ducks and contemplating death) and his brightest moments (seeing Phoebe spin in the carousel) take place in Central Park. The leitmotif of the ducks in the lagoon and the leitmotif of the golden ring in the carousel both take place here.
• The rye field. While this is not a real place, and only exists in Holden’s mind, it still pays an important part in the book; it is even in the title. Why the rye field is so important is explained in the title explanation of the chapter ‘Theme’.

Writing style

The writing style of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is informal and uses teenage colloquial speech from the 1950s. Words like ‘flit’ instead of homosexual, ‘chew the fat’ instead of small-talk and ‘snowing’ instead of sweet-talking are used. Curse words like ‘hell’ and ‘damn’ are also often used. A word that Holden uses a lot to describe people is ‘phony’, which means superficially acting a certain way only to change others’ perceptions. The book is easy to read, since it does not use difficult words or long sentences often. While dialogues are often used in the story, the reader merely reads about Holden’s exact thought processes. Two literary devices that are often used are hyperboles and generalizations, which emphasises Holden’s immature speech. An example of a hyperbole in ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is:

“In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two hemorrhages apiece if I told anything pretty personal about them.”

And an example of a generalization is:

"He was always asking you to do him a big favor. You take a very handsome guy, or a guy that thinks he's a real hot-shot, and they're always asking you to do them a big favor. Just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor. It's sort of funny, in a way."

Perspective

‘The Catcher in the Rye’ uses first-person narrative, with Holden being both the narrator and the protagonist. This gives us a biased, subjective look of the world that Holden is living in. Holden actually addresses the reader directly throughout the novel, often using sentences like ‘You probably heard of it’ and ‘I wish you could've been there’.

Theme

The main theme of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is the protection of innocence. Holden is fascinated by the beauty of childhood, the idea of child-like innocence, throughout the novel. As he begins to grow into adulthood himself, he finds that the adult world is unfair, superficial, and boring, while childhood is the world of honesty, curiosity, and innocence. He often idealizes his younger siblings Phoebe and Allie because they are still children as well. Holden wants to protect children from losing their childhood the way that he did; he wishes that children could stay children forever, and never have to learn about a world full of swear words, corruption, superficiality, and sex. However, in the end of the novel, he realises that that is impossible; you cannot stop children from entering adulthood and you should not try to either.

The title of this book is ‘The Catcher in the Rye’, a reference to a poem from Robert Burns from 1782. The first reference to the catcher in the rye is when Holden overhears a child singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye.". However, those are not the actual lyrics, the actual lyrics are “"If a body meet a body coming through the rye." Holden wants to be the catcher in the rye; he imagines a field of rye near a cliff, with children playing on it. When they almost tumble over and fall into the cliff, Holden catches them. Symbolically, Holden wants to catch children before they fall out of their childhood innocence, which matches the main theme of the story, which is the protection of innocence.

The real poem is about whether it is wrong for two people to have a sexual encounter hidden in the fields, not actually wanting to commit to one another. This is ironic, since what Holden pictures with it is children not having to become adults, and not having to know about things like sex. This shows that what Holden wants, the protection of childhood innocence, is virtually impossible, and the world will always be full of things like recreational sex or swear words.

The abstract motives of this story are:

• Or, as Holden would say, ‘phoniness’. Holden uses that word quite a lot, and it means something like acting superficial, not acting like yourself. Holden finds most of his peers at Pencey, but also a lot of people in New York, phony. However, children are not phony; they always act themselves and often care less about what others think. Holden uses phoniness as a justification for how he loves children so much, and as an excuse to isolate himself from the rest of the world.
• Alienation and isolation. Throughout the book, Holden seems to not fit in with the rest of society and often feels like he does not belong. His response for this, a form of coping mechanism, is alienating himself from society. By talking about how unintelligent and superficial most, if not all, people are, he convinces himself that he is above interacting with them. While in reality, social interaction is something he is scared of, because it overwhelms and confuses him. This made-up superiority gives him a source of stability, but is also in the way of his happiness since it leads to him isolating himself and not sharing his thoughts and troubles with others. His negative worldview and pessimistic attitude is also a result of this alienation.
• Relationships and sexuality. Holden spends a good portion of the novel trying to get in a relationship and have sex, but he never comes further than flirting, often with women that he does not actually like and just finds sexually attractive. Holden sees himself as a romantic and does not understand how he could be attracted to a woman if he does not like her personality. Holden stays a virgin throughout the book, still being sexually confused.
• Fear of change. Holden is terrified of change, mainly because of his brother Allie’s death. He wants everything to stay exactly the same, so he knows what to expect every time. That is also why the museum of natural history fascinates him so much; he has been going there since he was a child, and it has stayed the same. This also translates to his fear of children growing up; that is another part of change that Holden needs to learn to deal with. Piece by piece, Holden starts to realize that in the end, change is inevitable.

The leitmotifs that reappear throughout the story are:

• Holden’s red hunting hat.

Holden keeps wearing a red hunting hat throughout the story, that he bought in New York for just one dollar. Holden does not hunt; he simply wears the hat indoors and in the city. He recognises how dumb the hat looks but wears it anyway. Holden’s motive for wearing the hat is not quite clear throughout the book, but there are a few theories.

The first theory is about the hunting hat fitting the theme of alienation. While Holden may wear the hat as just a way to look unique and feel himself, I do not think this is the case. See, Holden does not actually like the way the hat looks on him; he is often embarrassed with the hat on and usually does not wear it around people he knows. He uses the hat as a way to differentiate himself from his peers and to not fit in with the rest of the society. It reinforces the idea that Holden cannot blend in with the rest of the world. When he gives the hunting hat to Phoebe, it is a gesture to show that she is one of the people that accepts his quirks. However, Phoebe later gives it back: he cannot get rid of his red hunting hat, just like he cannot get rid of his approaching adulthood and society’s expectations.

The second theory is about the hunting hat fitting the theme of protection of innocence. Holden wears the hat as a form of protection. As a form of protection from adulthood, since the hat is silly in contexts other than hunting, like something a child would wear, but also as a form of protection from the world. He gives the hunting hat to Phoebe because the hat has protected him from the world, and therefore hopes that the hat can shield her from the world as well and protect her innocence. Later, when it starts to rain, Phoebe gives the hat back to Holden. The hat barely protects him from the rain, and he gets soaked anyway. That makes Holden realize that just like the hat does not protect you from the rain, there is nothing that can protect a child’s innocence forever; all protection will eventually wear off and there is nothing he can do about it.

• The ducks in the Central Park lagoon.

Throughout the book, Holden keeps wondering and asking people where the ducks in Central Park lagoon go when it is winter, but no one gives him an answer. This is one of the only moments in the book where Holden is not being pessimistic and uninterested, but actually seems curious and youthful. The ducks can symbolize different things. Holden could be interested to see how the ducks survive the harsh winter environment, since he feels out of place in his own environment. He might also want to know it because he wants to know how the ducks deal with such a big change in environment, since Holden has a hard time accepting change, such as Allie’s death.

• The golden ring of the carousel.

The story ends with Holden watching Phoebe spin on a carousel in Central Park. There is a gold ring outside the carousel that children can try to grab as they pass by. When they successfully grab the gold ring, they get a prize of some sort. When Phoebe tried to grab the ring, Holden was afraid that she would fall off her horse. However, he tells the reader that you need to let the children try to grab the gold ring, and if they fall, they fall. It is important not to say or do anything and to just let them try. With this statement, Holden seems to be finally coming to terms with childhood being temporary. Children grow up, and there is nothing you can or should do about it. 

• Allie’s baseball glove.

Allie’s baseball glove is a minor leitmotif of the story, but still worth noting. Allie, Holden’s younger brother, used to play baseball. He would write poems on his baseball glove, so he had something to read when he was on the field. After Allie’s death, Holden still keeps it with him. This symbolizes Holden’s love for Allie and how he still has not gotten over his death.

Author

Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010) was an American writer best known for his first novel called ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. He served in the military during World War II and published short stories for ‘Story’ magazine before publishing ‘The Catcher in the Rye’. Holden Caulfield was already a character in several short stories of Salinger before ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ was published. ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ is the only book Salinger has written; all his other works are short stories. Salinger remained healthy until his sudden decline from New Year’s 2010 to his death on January 27, 2010.

Salinger seems to be similar to Holden in some aspects, including their childhood. They both had upper-class parents and lived in New York. Salinger has attended multiple colleges, such as Columbia University, without graduating any of them. This could be compared to Holden dropping out or getting expelled from different schools. However, Salinger has neither confirmed nor denied that the character is based on his personal experience.

Opinion

My opinion about this book is mixed.

I liked the writing style of the book; it was like a breath of fresh air, since other literature novels often use a more sophisticated writing style. It was amazingly easy to read and quite funny at times. I also liked how Holden was a teenager; as a teenager, I could sometimes relate to him, and even if I did not, I could still imagine myself in his situation. I also think it was fascinating to see how many different places Holden visited and how many different people he met. I found many characters from the story, such as Phoebe, quite interesting. While I would not want this writing style to become the norm for novels, I did quite enjoy it.

However, the theme of this book did not interest me. I kept waiting for something to happen, but the whole story is just Holden going to different places and meeting different people. While it was a bit interesting once I got used to it, I still did not like it very much. I think it would have been more interesting if we actually saw Holden get expelled from Pencey, or that we actually saw him go to the (mental) hospital and the reason why. I often did not like Holden or the way he acted as well; he seemed very self-absorbed and judgemental at times. There were also quite a few theatre and literature references that I did not understand or know about.

Overall, this was an interesting book to read, but I do not know if I would recommend it to others.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Catcher_in_the_Rye
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger
https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/literature/catcher-in-the-rye
https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/c/the-catcher-in-the-rye/the-catcher-in-the-rye-at-a-glance
https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/catcher/context/
https://sites.google.com/site/saypleasethrice/holden-s-cap
https://www.litcharts.com/lit/the-catcher-in-the-rye