Catcher
in the Rye
by J.D.Salinger
This book gained the majority of its controversy
and criticism since it was banned in America
after it's first publication. John
Lennon's assassin, Mark Chapman, asked the
former Beatle to sign a copy of
the book earlier in the morning of the day that
he murdered Lennon. The fact that
it was The Catcher in the
Rye, a book describing a nervous
breakdown, gave the book even more notoriety.
So what is The Catcher in the Rye actually
about?
Superficially it is the story of
a young man's expulsion from school. However,
The Catcher in the Rye is in fact
a perceptive study of the individual's
understanding of his human condition.
Holden Caulfield, a teenager growing
up in 1950s New York, has been expelled
from school for poor achievement once
again. In an attempt to deal
with this, he leaves school a few days prior to the
end of term, and goes to New York
City to 'take a vacation' before returning to
his parents' inevitable wrath. Told
as a monologue, the book describes
Holden's thoughts and activities
over these few days, during which he
describes a developing nervous breakdown,
symptomised by his bouts of
unexplained depression, impulsive
spending and generally odd, erratic
behaviour, prior to his eventual
collapse.
However, during his psychological
battle, life continues on around Holden as
it always had, with the majority
of people ignoring the 'madman stuff' that is
happening to him - until it begins
to encroach on their well defined social
codes. Progressively through the
novel we are challenged to think about
society's attitude to the human
condition - does society have an 'head in the
sand' mentality, a deliberate ignorance
of the emptiness that can characterize
human existence? And if so, when
Caulfield begins to investigate
his own sense of emptiness and isolation,
before finally declaring that he world
is full of 'phonies' with each one
out for their own phony gain, is Holden
actually the one who is going insane,
or is it society which has lost it's mind for
failing to see the hopelessness
of their own lives?
When we are honest we can see within
ourselves suppressed elements of the
forces operating within Holden Caulfield,
and because of that I would
recommend this thought provoking
novel as a fascinating and enlightening
description of our human condition.
It strikes at our inner most fears in confronting the
truths within us and others. However,
beware... for that very reason
it is not comfortable reading.
One of my favorite passages in the opening
of the novel is the following:
If you really want to hear about
it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I
was born, and what my lousy childhood
was like, and how my parents were occupied
and all before they had me, and all that
David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel
like going into it, if you want to know
the truth.
A word about the author:
Jerome David Salinger was born in New York
City on Janurary 1, 1919. He published
his first and only novel, Catcher in the
Rye, in 1951. Leading up that point, he produced
several short stories, however only nine
of them were published in a final publication
known as Nine Stories in 1939.
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