The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger, 1951

Reading JD Salinger’s classic The Catcher in the Rye I almost wish that I had read it as a restless 15-year-old yearning to escape from the suburbs of Perth to something more exciting.

I wonder if it would seem quite so melancholy I myself were still full of naive adventurous dreams and faith in my ability to strike out on my own.

So. Holden Caulfield.

A character so embedded in the literary firmament; made only more famous by his creator’s notorious solitude.

Holden is in his final year at Pencey Prep in Pennsylvania. He’s sick of school, of his teachers, his schoolmates, his roommates, his family, the whole goddamn phony world. He’s about to be expelled, and rather than wait for the school to kick him out, he leaves, heading for New York. This isn’t the first time Holden’s flunked out: he’s been expelled from three schools already.

Where I want to start is the day I left Pencey Prep. Pencey Prep is this school that’s in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. You probably heard of it. You’ve probably seen the ads, anyway. They advertise in about a thousand magazines, always showing some hot-shot guy on a horse jumping over a fence. Like as if all you ever did at Pencey was play polo all the time. I never even once saw a horse anywhere near the place. And underneath the guy on the horse’s picture, it always says: ‘Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear-thinking young men.’ Strictly for the birds.

He packs his bags, puts his red hunting cap on, and gets on the train to New York, leaving Pencey and all its phonies behind.

So begins his journey towards to breakdown and madness. His encounters in New York only serve to underscore his alienation and lack of ability to connect with others. He runs into nuns and prosititutes, old girlfriends and old teachers. We only see these characters through Holden’s jaundiced eye. None are given any opportunity to develop their own identities through the book. Despite a wide array of people coming in and out of his life, only Holden matters.

I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I though what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody… If we had any children, we’d hide them somewhere.

By the end of the book, his mannerisms and catchphrases begin to grate: phony, hell, goddamn, if you wanna know the truth. We are witnessing his descent into a grim parody of himself. No longer the cocky teen, but the frightened child, afraid to grow up, retreating into the familiar. But there’s no place for him there anymore.

There’s no redemption for Holden in this tale, no heart-warming, coming-of-age, rite of passage tale here. He refuses to grow up, but no longer has any claim on childhood.

His fantasy, as relayed to his younger sister Phoebe, is to spend his life as the catcher in the rye, preserving innocence for others to make up for the innocence he is unable to hold onto.

I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around – nobody big I mean – except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff – I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.

I still thoroughly enjoyed this book, but failed ultimately to identify with Holden Caulfield as he traverses New York City over the course of the few days after he flunked out of school.

The characterisation and voice that Salinger has achieved here is wonderful. This is an incredibly sad and melancholy portrait of a young man unable to find a place for himself in an adult world that room for people like Holden.

Had I encountered him in my teens, I may have railed against the unfairness of the world right along with him. Encountering him as an adult, Holden Caulfield, the lost, lonely little boy, broke my heart.