Review: The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye. Authored by J.D. Salinger, and published as a complete novel in 1951. This novel was forced upon my friends back in high school. They were in the "gifted and talented" AP English class; I should have been, but I missed the testing date when I moved to Texas. However, many of my friends did not enjoy this novel at all.

I loved it. I read it in 2 full sittings. Maybe I share that shame in growing up, the sheer obviousness that adults are permanent liars/phonies. Maybe I wish that, for some people, there was someone there to catch them; maybe I wish someone was there to catch me. All I know is this book is written from a boy who wants to be Peter Pan but cannot fly off to Neverland. In total, I think that it's a must-read.

Style: Stream of consciousness ramblings of a disenchanted, New York prep-school dropout. The narrator is Holden Caulfield: a liar, full-time, and student no longer. There are curse words galore, exaggerations every time a detail is retold, and some darkness that hides within Caulfied. The story does not have much action at all; it takes place around 2-3 days of wandering the streets of New York. The main action is what Caulfield thinks; he judges everything, ponders life, and the purpose of it all. If Virginia Woolf had been a man, in the 1940's, this could have been one of her works. I mean purely from descriptions and lack of actions: these two have extremely different styles.

Character: There is a definitive reason why this should be read in high school, or soon thereafter. There is nothing quite like being in a state of mind when one is a teenager, reading about another teen's coming-of-age crisis. There is something so desperate about Caulfield, trying to figure everything out, trying to be real and honest, but all the while being a liar and a fake. The multiple prep schools Caulfield attends just continue to prove his own point that people can be nice, but they can also be a phony. Phonies are the worst: they represent all that is "adult", and all that is the 1940-1950's era. That saccharine kindness that makes you cringe: the polite-to-their-face-judge-behind-their-back kindness. The genuine passion and love and kindness that come with being a child disappears before Caulfield's eyes, especially when it comes to his little sister (the only person he really likes).

*Slight spoilers*

Title: This title, looking at it, makes very little sense. That is, unless, you love Robert Burns' poetry, or have studied it, etc. While wandering, Caulfied overhears a child singing "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." Later, while talking to his sister in her room while his parents were out, Caulfield tells Phoebe (the sister) that he would like to be the body in the rye that catches the other bodies before they fall. Phoebe corrects him that the actual line is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye," and his retort is that he doesn't care, he'd much rather catch the bodies in the rye. All I could think of is the boy at his most recent prep school who was beat-up and then fell through the window to his death. This premature death just reinforces this loss of innocence; Caulfield wanted to catch the body before it fell (not literally, obviously).