The Catcher in the Rye is a 1951 American coming-of-age novel by American author J. D. Salinger. It was partially published in serial form in 1945–1946 before being novelized in 1951.
Originally intended for adults, it is often read by adolescents for its themes of angst and alienation, and as a critique of superficiality in society.Costello, Donald P., and Harold Bloom. "The Language of 'The Catcher in the Rye:' Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations: The Catcher in the Rye (2000): 11–20. Literary Reference Center. EBSCO. Web. December 1, 2010. The novel also deals with themes of innocence, identity, belonging, loss, connection, sex, and depression. The main character, Holden Caulfield, has become an icon for teenage rebellion. Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Allusions By Elizabeth Webber, Mike Feinsilber p. 105 Caulfield, nearly of age, gives his opinion on a wide variety of topics as he narrates his recent life events.
The Catcher in the Rye has been translated widely. About one million copies are sold each year, with total sales of more than 65 million books.According to List of best-selling books. An earlier article says more than 20 million: The novel was included on Times 2005 list of the 100 best English-language novels written since 1923, and it was named by Modern Library and its readers as one of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.List of most commonly challenged books from the list of the one hundred most important books of the 20th century by Radcliffe Publishing Course Alternate URL In 2003, it was listed at number 15 on the BBC's survey "The Big Read".
Plot Holden Caulfield recalls the events of a long weekend, shortly before the previous year's Christmas. Holden has been expelled from the elite boarding school Pencey Preparatory Academy after failing all his classes except English. On the night of his departure, he meets with a teacher and agrees to write an essay for his roommate Ward Stradlater. Stradlater is heading out on a date with Jane Gallagher, Holden's childhood friend and crush. Holden recounts Jane’s habits to Stradlater, and is upset when Stradlater is only amused at the mention of Jane’s stepfather being sexually inappropriate with her. Holden writes an essay about his late brother Allie, who died of leukemia at thirteen. Stradlater is angry at the essay, and refuses to say whether he had sex with Jane and they fight. After losing, Holden decides to catch a train to New York City and stay away from his home until Wednesday.
Holden stays at a hotel, where he drinks and dances with adults at a club. He hires an underage prostitute named Sunny, then refuses to have sex with her. Her pimp, Maurice, arrives to beat and rob him. The next day, Holden donates his money to two nuns, goes on a date with a girl he used to see and meets with an older ex-classmate at a club to pester him with questions about sex.
After running out of money, Holden sneaks into his family’s apartment while his parents are out to see his younger sister, Phoebe. She chastises him for getting expelled and asks if he cares about anything. Holden is distracted by thinking of a former classmate who was assaulted by bullies and threw himself out of the window to escape, committing suicide. He then shares a fantasy (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns' "Comin' Thro' the Rye"), in which he imagines himself saving children running through a field of rye by catching them before they fall off a nearby cliff. Phoebe points out that the actual poem says, "when a body meet a body, comin' through the rye." Holden breaks down in tears, and Phoebe tries to console him.
Holden leaves to visit his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini, whom he admires for having been the first one to retrieve his dead ex-classmate's body. Mr. Antolini gives him advice and a place to sleep. Holden goes to bed in his underwear, and is awoken by Mr. Antolini stroking his head. Fearing sexual intent, Holden gets dressed and flees. Disillusioned, he spends the night at Grand Central Terminal and decides he wants to run away.
Holden leaves a note at Phoebe's school explaining his plan. They meet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to say goodbye, but she instead asks to join him. Holden refuses, which upsets Phoebe. He tries to cheer her up by taking her to the Central Park Zoo and buying her a ticket to the carousel. It starts to rain, but the sight of her riding the carousel makes him happy. The novel ends with Holden alluding to meeting his parents, getting sick, being sent to a sanatorium in California near his older brother, D.B, and saying he hopes to go back to school next September.
History Various older stories by Salinger contain characters similar to those in The Catcher in the Rye. While at Columbia University, Salinger wrote a short story called "The Young Folks" in Whit Burnett's class; one character from this story has been described as a "thinly penciled prototype of Sally Hayes". In November 1941 he sold the story "Slight Rebellion off Madison", which featured Holden Caulfield, to The New Yorker, but it was not published until December 21, 1946, due to World War II.
The story "I'm Crazy", which was published in the December 22, 1945 issue of Collier's, contained material that was later used in The Catcher in the Rye. In 1946, The New Yorker accepted a 90-page manuscript about Holden Caulfield for publication, but Salinger later withdrew it. The school Holden attends is Pencey Preparatory Academy, a boarding school in Pennsylvania that Salinger may have based on the Valley Forge Military Academy and College.
The novel was scheduled for publication in the Spring of 1951 but the date was then set at July 16 after the Book-of-the-Month Club made its midsummer selection.
Peter Beidler in his A Reader's Companion to J. D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" identified the movie that the prostitute "Sunny" refers to. In chapter 13 she says that in the movie a boy who looked like Holden fell off a boat, and from this detail, Beidler deduced that the movie was Captains Courageous (1937), with the boy played by child-actor Freddie Bartholomew.
Writing style The Catcher in the Rye is narrated in a subjective style from the point of view of Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought processes. There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes; for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events, such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences.
Critical reviews affirm that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time. Words and phrases that appear frequently include:
"Flitty" – homosexual "Give her the time" – sexual intercourse "Killed" – gave a humorous impression "Necking" – kissing, hugging, and caressing passionately "Phony" – people who are dishonest or fake about who they really are "Prince" – a fine, generous, helpful fellow (often used in sarcastic fashion) "Rubbernecks" – people who turn their heads to gaze in curiosity "To shoot the bull" – To make small talk to pass the time "Snowing" – deceiving, misleading, or winning over by glib talk, flattery, etc.
Interpretations
As a coming-of-age story Bruce Brooks held that Holden's attitude remains unchanged at story's end, implying no maturation, thus differentiating the novel from young adult fiction. In contrast, Louis Menand thought that teachers assign the novel because of the optimistic ending, to teach adolescent readers that "alienation is just a phase." While Brooks maintained that Holden acts his age, Menand claimed that Holden thinks as an adult, given his ability to accurately perceive people and their motives. Others highlight the dilemma of Holden's state, in between adolescence and adulthood.Graham, 33. Holden is quick to become emotional. "I felt sorry as hell for..." is a phrase he often uses. It is often said that Holden changes at the end, when he watches Phoebe on the carousel, and he talks about the golden ring and how it's good for kids to try to grab it.
Each Caulfield child has literary talent. D.B. writes screenplays in Hollywood; Holden also reveres D.B. for his writing skill (Holden's own best subject), but he also despises Hollywood industry-based movies, considering them the ultimate in "phony" as the writer has no space for his own imagination and describes D.B.'s move to Hollywood to write for films as "prostituting himself"; Allie wrote poetry on his baseball glove; and Phoebe is a diarist. This "catcher in the rye" is an analogy for Holden, who admires in children attributes that he often struggles to find in adults, like innocence, kindness, spontaneity, and generosity. Falling off the cliff could be a progression into the adult world that surrounds him and that he strongly criticizes. Later, Phoebe and Holden exchange roles as the "catcher" and the "fallen"; he gives her his hunting hat, the catcher's symbol, and becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher.
Sexuality, rape and innocence Critics like Grossman have argued that Holden's own difficulties with sex stem from the sexually violent upper-class culture he grew up in. At one point, Holden confesses he's a virgin because he stops when a girl says "no," unlike Stradlater, and wonders whether or not he's supposed to. Similarly throughout the novel, Holden is preoccupied by his failure to have and discomfort with sex, mirroring his overall discomfort with growing up and fixation on innocence.
During the first part of the book at Pencey, Holden shares how Stradlater often had sex with girls who actively refused on double dates, an act that would fall under the modern definition of rape, while Holden was in the same car. Afraid Stradlater would do the same to Jane, he attempts to humanize her by sharing her quirks, like lining up her kings in the backrow during checkers, and then more desperately, her "lousy childhood," where her alcoholic stepfather would expose himself to her. When Stradlater refuses to answer whether or not he had sex with her, an act that is equivelant to assault for Holden, they get into a fight.
Strauch writes that Jane's kings in the back row symbolically represent defense against a sexual attack, and that Holden's moral rejection of the sexually violent culture of his peers is one reason for his dislike of and alienation from them. Further, he writes that Jane is part of Holden's "private world of innocence... which embraces a secret goldfish, Holden’s dead brother Allie, his sister Phoebe (all children, in fact), Jane Gallegher, nuns, and animals…" Stradlater's possible assault becomes a symbol for his fear of society's corruption of what he holds to be dear and innocent, a fear that runs throughout the novel.
There is disagreement among critics whether Mr. Antolini carressing Holden's head while Holden was asleep and undressed constitutes a sexual advance. Nevertheless, several interpretations characterize Holden's strong reaction to Mr. Antolini's actions and Holden's own confession that similarly "perverty" things had happened several times to him, as evidence Holden was molested as a child, and a possible source for his trouble with sexuality.
As a reflection of war and national identity In their biography of Salinger, David Shields and Shane Salerno argue that: "The Catcher in the Rye can best be understood as a disguised war novel." Salinger witnessed the horrors of World War II, but rather than writing a combat novel, Salinger, according to Shields and Salerno, "took the trauma of war and embedded it within what looked to the naked eye like a coming-of-age novel."