Insecurity and Safeguarding Ideal: The Catcher in the Rye
“The Catcher in the Rye”, this inspirational literary work, Jerome David Salinger’s masterpiece, marked the adolescence of many and it continues to fascinate teenagers and adults alike. The adventures of Holden Caulfield, which describe several days in his life, seem to reveal an autobiographic experience, as it vividly describes thoughts, feelings and sensations that could only be felt, not imagined. Salinger’s novel seems a story told to a friend in the dorm, in a sleepless night while secretly sharing cigars, although the smoking is denied within the boys’ dormitory. “Catcher in the Rye” is an expression of the original teenagers, who choose to be awkward, introverted, socially isolated, expelled or brutalized, rather than complying to social standards.
The entire development of the story tells one episode, from the moment when Holden finds out that he will be expelled from yet another school where he did not want to be in the first place until the moment when his little sister convinces him not to run away from home as he intended. However, there are multiple scenes that compose this full episode. The final days in the dormitory with the interaction between Holden and his dormitory colleagues, including the beating scene when Caulfield is seriously hit by his roommate could be seen as one scene, presenting the main character as a troubled teenager. The train trip and the encounter with the nuns could be another scene, showing Holden’s soft side, helping the nuns with generous financial contribution. The New York adventures, the night-life, the drinking, dancing, and again the beating, this time from a pimp, is another scene that shows Holden’s adventurer and defiant spirit. His visit to his parents’ house, and the time spent with his sister could be another scene, expressing Caulfield’s protective nature and the true love for his family, despite everything that happens to him. There are also, across the novel, passages in which Holden talks about his two brothers, Dough, the famous Hollywood script writer and Allie, his dead brother. The way in which he talks about them reflects his nostalgic nature, but also his critic personality. As such, he disapproves of Doug’s going into Hollywood, thinking that he is “prostituting” into the movie-making industry, wasting his writing talent, and he praises Allie’s poetic style, indicating that he was the best writer in his family.
Even from the beginning of the novel the readers encounter a strange character, who is quite relaxed, despite the fact that he is about to be expelled from school. Soon, the story reveals that although Holden failed in most classes, he is a very talented writer, being able to create original, realistic and sensitive descriptions, writing a composition for his roommate, who is too superficial to appreciate it. Across the novel Holden shows many aspects of his personality, transforming under the eyes of the reader from a teenager with no perspective into a deep intellectual with fine reading tastes and an analytical sense, into a party man, an effeminate, a loving brother or an arrogant brat. The book also reveals less pleasant sides of his personality, depicting his depressive side. In various episodes he details on his desolation and boredom, which transmit the reader his extreme sadness, as Holden repeatedly states that he feels like dying or expresses his wish he was dead. As many teenagers, Holden passes through multiple mood changes, which also influence his haste decisions. Dromm and Salter (“The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy”) note that Holden is like most adolescents, who often feel misunderstood, hiding their feeling of not belonging in inappropriate and offensive language or behavior. Moreover, the experiences through which he passes during the few days that make the whole book gradually transform Holden, making him more aware of whom he is and accepting himself as such: an insecure teenager, unprepared to take life on his own.
Salinger tells the experiences of his teenager hero in a slyly manner, influencing readers who are at the same age with Holden to see themselves through his description. The book is filled with memorable scenes, which seem to be extracted from the direct reality of New York and of a famous boys’ school. The most memorable scene of “Catcher in the Rye” is the one where Holden’s little sister, Phoebe, meets him carrying a luggage, stating that he will join her brother if he decides to leave home. This scene is powerful and meaningful especially for the readers who have siblings and are able to understand the magical connection, the spirit of sacrifice unique love between them. Before this scene, Phoebe criticizes her brother for his poor academic results and for his social misconduct, arguing that he is negativist and grumpy because he does not like anything. She demonstrates a surprising maturity level for her age and she has significant influence upon his brother. However, she also shows responsibility towards her family and loyalty towards her brother. Although she disagrees with Holden’s lifestyle and his choices, she stands by him, supports him and decides to accompany him on the road, just to be with him, to take care of him.
Rose (77) observes that Phoebe appears to be more knowledgeable than her brother, this because she is more willing to accept the changes in life that come with the age, which Holden is not yet prepared for. In fact, Holden resists the imminence of growing up and denies any prospects of being like other boys of his age, because he does not associate with them. The final scene, with Holden and Phoebe in the rain, wherein Holden implies that he will return home with his little sister is memorable because Holden is forced to accept who he is and to stop running away of his responsibilities. In a way, Phoebe corrupts her brother to be a normal boy, grabbing him from his alienation. Alienation or not, Holden is admirable because he had chosen a life of solitude instead of acting and being like his peers, whom he disliked and criticized for their actions and superficiality. By deciding to return home with Phoebe, the teenager chooses to be responsible for his sister and to respond to her affectionate sacrifice with the same answer: by sacrificing his own desire to escape a world of falsehood, wherein growing up means copying specific behaviors.
Another memorable scene is the one with the prostitute, Sunny, and her pimp. As Holden stays in a cheap and vulgar hotel, he is offered the opportunity of being with a woman, in exchange of a certain amount of money, and he agrees. When he sees the sadness of the prostitute, Holden cannot go through a sexual act, because he was not aroused and he pitied the young Sunny. However, he paid her anyway, but she claimed that Holden had to pay her more. The scene ends up with Holden being beaten by Maurice, the prostitute’s pimp. The entire scene symbolizes Holden’s reaching to a crossroad in his life. He is on the edge of decaying into maturity by accepting the prostitute’s services, but as he thinks of his situation, he declines this perspective, which suggest that he is not yet ready to accede to a pervert life as an adult. However, the fact that he suffers the consequences (being beaten by Maurice), indicates that he is responsible for his own life choices. Moreover, the fact that Holden approaches this event in a playful manner, imagining that he is dead after being punched in the stomach by the pimp, when in fact he was raging in fury, suggests that Holden is still a kid, with an immense imagination.
More than a memorable scene, probably he lite-motif of the book, is Holden’s obsessive question: “By any chance, do you happen to know where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over?” (Salinger 35). This obsessive thought, brought up in the novel repeatedly, symbolizes Holden’s awareness, fear and fascination for death (Drom & Salter, “The Catcher in the Rye”). In the above described scene, with Maurice’s punch in his stomach, Holden imagines himself being shot and raising up from death. His quest for answer in relation to what happens to the ducks shows his believed nature of being immortal and of sympathizing with the fable creatures who cannot escape death (Kubica & Hochman 160).
Holden is highly aware of the imminence of death because he is seriously troubled by his brother’s early death, which profoundly marked his childhood, his adolescence, and as it looks, will also affect his adult development. Despite this aspect, at times, he chooses to mock death and life, by playing with his future. He shows irresponsibility towards his family, taking each effort that his parents make for assuring his education as a joke. He does not think of the importance that his education has for his parents and he takes everything that he is offered for granted. From this point of view, Holden acts like a spoiled brat (Kubica & Hochman 199), who believes everything is for granted. He is not preoccupied by his parents financial efforts of keeping him in a good school, but only mocks their need of being aligned with the rest of the good families from New York. However, although if he is a spoiled brat, he has different reasons of acting as such, compared to his peers, demonstrating that he is a different teenager, who does not want to go on the same pattern of growing up, with all the wrong values, as his school mates and other acquaintances his age were doing.
He sees himself as a savior of the good children that are obliged to go into the adulthood, following the wrongly taken road of their predecessors. He is the catcher I the rye, protecting children from “falling over a cliff” and entering into the mean and false world of the maturity (Bloom 135). However, he finds himself in the impossibility of rising up to his aspiration, because he is very confused and does not like anything that the world has to offer. With this state of mind, Holden describes thousands, if not millions of teenagers around the world, who associate with him just because they do not know who they are and what is their life ideal (Menand 2).
Salinger’s character is a strange one, who does not even deliberately tries to avoid being like the rest, because he is naturally different. Schulzke (in Dromm and Salter “The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy”) observes that Holden naturally does not conform to the social standards, living upon another reality and totally different time. He mingles his present with his past, as his past influences his current life, with his dead brother always coming to his mind. In a way, Holden sees all purity of the world as dead and gone when his brother Allie and since then it seems that he developed into a grumpy teenager, not liking anything around him. He only finds comfort in his little sister, who he still finds pure and innocent because of the freshness of her age.
The publication of Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” was initially declined by New Yorker, for the reason of being an unrealistic presentation of four siblings, wherein the author showoff his intellectual properties instead of presenting real adolescence issues (Menand 1). However, years later, the novel inspires teenagers all around the world. Teenagers secretly resonate with Holden, because of his acid wit and critic personality, but also because of the fact that he suddenly passes from one state of mind to another, often being sad and depressed without knowing why (Menand 2). Moreover, “Catcher in the Rye” also inspired famous writers, such as Sylvia Plath, who believed that her adolescence was perfectly described in Holden’s personality and who later published “The Bell Jar” with a similar character to Holden, Esther Greenwood (Menand 5). In fact, Kubica and Hochman consider that Holden is the face of the American teenager (160-162), who, just as Huck Finn, is the character that most American boys his age see when they are looking in the mirror. Moss (in Bloom 93) notes that “The Catcher in the Rye” is one of the rare influencing books, who characterizes and marks a generation, and then another, and each new generation claims it represents their time.
The publication of the book might have changed the conceptions of teenagers that they are the only ones feeling miserable and sad without any reasons, misunderstood and unable to fit with their peers. The character of Holden Caulfield accurately and personally described all the sensations, ranging from ecstasy to complete disgust and depression and all the shades of grey and purple that every teenager felt, but knew not how to express them.
A controversial novel in the past, “The Catcher in the Rye” is now believed to portray the uncertainty, vulnerability and anger of middle class original and intelligent teenagers, being a major influence upon generations of teenagers throughout the world. The character of Holden gradually develops within the novel and the readers get to know his deepest fears, his sarcastic and instable personality or his strange humor and compassion for those in need. Moreover, Holden becomes a responsible teenager at the end of the novel, which is somehow paradoxical for boys his age, but it is an indication that he accepted himself as he is, for the sake of his little sister, who outsmarted him, letting him know how much she loves him. In the end, no loving brother cannot resist the candor and innocence of a younger sibling. Although he aimed to catch the children falling from the cliff of innocence into the falsity of adulthood, Holden sacrificed his ideal for the sake of his sister.
Works Cited
Bloom, Harold. J.D. Salinger’s the Catcher in the Rye. New York: Infobase Publishing. 2009. Print.
Dromm, Keith & Salter, Heather. The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy. Chicago: Court Publishing Company. 2013. Print.
Kubica, Chris & Hochman, Will. Letters to J.D. Salinger. Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press. 2002. Print.
Menand, Louis. Life and Letters Holden at Fifty. New York: The New Yorker. 2001. Print.
Rose, James. You and Your Mid-Adolescent. London: Karnac Books Ltd. 2007. Print.
Salinger, Jerome David. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 1951. Print.
