“I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil” (Chapman) said Mark Chapman after shooting John Lennon to death. He also said that Lennon was a phony and deserved to die. He also signed many of his hate mails and statements as “The Catcher in the Rye” or “Holden Caulfield”. Such was the influence of J.D. Salinger’s book on this, then, a young man who was only 25 when he killed the celebrated Beatle. The influence of Salinger’s book can also be felt in the generations of young men and women who have been reading his work since its publication in 1951. The book’s story of escape and a search for happiness despite all the sham and drudgery in this world is the topic of this paper. Holden Caulfield’s struggles with alienation are just a phase (Menand) and his story is a sadistic kind of adult young fiction where the character’s growth is not explicit.
Author’s Biography
Jerome David Salinger is an American and the author of the well-known novel Catcher in the Rye. He is famous for his reclusive nature and the fact that he has been inactive in the writing business since 1965. He is so reclusive that he has not been interviewed since 1980. Born in 1919, he was raised in Manhattan, New York, and was a young boy at the time of the Great Depression. Even when he was still in High School he was already writing stories for publication. Like most young men of his time, he served in the military during World War II. However, it was the book The Catcher in the Rye which was published in 1951 that catapulted him to fame. To this day, his depiction of Holden Caulfield and his story of alienation and loss of innocence remains very influential among adolescent readers (Skow). This book is also the basis for this paper.
Aside from Catcher in the Rye, also published three collections of short stories; Nine Short Stories (1953), Franny and Zooey (1961), and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters, and Seymore: An Introduction (1963). His last published work is a novel called “Hapsworth 16, 1924,” (1965). Since then he has not published any new works and has declined any interviews since 1980. The reason he does not want to be interviewed is that he has long struggled with unwanted media attention spawning from his legal battle with Biographer Ian Hamilton in the late 1980s. Another reason is that publication of the memoirs of his ex-lover Joyce Maynard and daughter Margaret Salinger has led to the publication of information that he’d rather not talk about with people in media. He has also steadfastly refused to grant filming rights to Catcher in the Rye although many, many producers are asking for it. His enigmatic character and coyness in refusing the filming of Catcher in the Rye have led to Maynard saying; “The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger (Maynard 93)”.
Criticism
The book is popular among the youth and is even prescribed in many High Schools are required reading. However, it is replete with foul language such as “Fuck” (Art Or Trash) and “Goddamn” (Mydans 2). It also has many sexual references, blasphemy, undermining of family values and moral codes (Frangedis 272). Holden himself is a lackluster role model and encourages rebellion and promotes drinking, smoking, lying, and promiscuity. In other words, Holden Caulfield is not exactly the kind of person with which high schools should be familiarizing their students. There were numerous attempts to ban this book and censor it but such efforts only appear to make the book controversial and attract more people to read it.
The book is very atypical of normal young adult fiction. Normally in fiction meant for young adults, the story is told where the protagonist suffers some hard knocks but eventually finds redemption despite the darkness of his plight. In Catcher in the Rye things just seem to go bad to worse for Holden. He is also not nice at all, his dark cynical character is left with little redeeming quality. His nature and hatred for others make him more of an antagonist and make him worthy of contempt and hate himself.
Dystopia – a desire for escape
“If you 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 all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it if you want to know the truth (Salinger 1).” From the very start, Holden Caulfield starts on the wrong foot. Instead of starting with Once upon a time or some sort of more conventional beginning, he starts by lambasting himself and portraying his negative attitude about life. While other, more normal kids would love to tell others about themselves he would rather not get into his childhood which he considers lousy and unappealing. He immediately distances himself from the normal idea that a story is supposed to be uplifting or educational in any way. Later as we delve into what little of his background he cares to divulge we uncover why he has such a negative view of himself.
“I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by… I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I’m leaving it. If you don’t, you feel even worse (Salinger 4).” Since he doesn’t like the way his life is going he wants to escape. However, because he is so filled with self-loathing and anguish he is not able to accept that he has to leave and feels awful with the mere idea of doing so. “Life being a game and all. And how you should play it according to the rules (Salinger 8). He cynically tells us. Later he concludes that he does not know how to play by these rules which is why he is often trumped and ends up being a failure in life. He even tell us that; “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.” This line is a further attempt to erode his credibility to the reader and yet another incidence of his bitter negativity.
At the beginning of the book, Holden Caulfield is just a typical teenager, skeptical of authority and truant as a result of his cynical and naïve attitudes. His efforts to disparage his parents as “touchy” or his brother a sellout without actually tell the reader why he feels that way leads to the cynical interpretation that he simply hates them without justification. Likewise, his other relationships are characterized with a thinly veiled contempt except for his teacher Mr. Spencer and Selma Thurmer. Ironically, Selma Thurmer tries to alter her appearance but still finds herself seen by Holden in a positive light. Unapologetic in his cynicism and contempt about the only thing Holden respects is authenticity in himself and others. It is his preference for authentic persons over ‘phoneys’ that is seen many times in his view of others.
“Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it’s a game, all right—I’ll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren’t any hot-shots, then what’s a game about it? Nothing. No game (Salinger 9)” Despite the high regard he has Mr. Spencer Holden still finds his preaching contemptible. He agrees that life is a game. However, he takes exception to the idea that it is a fair game. As he says he thinks that if you are on the team with all the good players then thinking of life as a game is ok. However, if you get into a team where there are no good players then the game is no good because you will keep losing. In his cynic mind, life is an unfair game. He thinks that the dice can be stacked from the beginning and makes no mention of the possibility that the ‘loser’ team can better itself to eventually win the same way that a “loser” can actually improve and eventually end up a winner.
Such attitudes are not surprising considering that even today people are seen as having been born with a silver spoon in their mouth. People like Paris Hilton, heiress to the Hilton Hotel fortune, who can afford not to work and indulges in pet projects whenever she wants to. However, Holden belies the fact that people who seem to have nothing can succeed in life. Bill Gates was a college dropout when he designed MS-Dos and eventually became the world’s richest man. Even those who suffer from ‘stacked dice’ can still be successful. Theodore Roosevelt jr. suffered from Polio which ruined both his physique and his self-image yet he still became President.
“I didn’t throw at anything, though. I started to throw it. At a car that was parked across the street. But I changed my mind. The car looked so nice and white. Then I started to throw it at a hydrant, but that looked too nice and white, too. Finally I didn’t throw it at anything. All I did was close the window and walk around the room with the snowball, packing it harder (Salinger 36)” Holden is impotent and indecisive. Even when he decided upon a target for the snowball he soon decides against his course of action and chooses a different target. Even his new target decides not to attack it. He thinks that he will ruin the purity of those objects as they are too nice and white while his snowball will corrupt and ruin them. He is so patently unworthy that anything he touches becomes corrupted and unworthy of being inflicted upon other things. Instead of using the snowball for its intended purpose, a weapon to throw at the world, he decides to close the window and instead focus on taking it out on the helpless snowball. Leaving himself bitter and angry at his inability to strike out against the world he loathes.
Happiness?
Holden’s dystopia reaches its peak in Chapter 24. At this point he has secured funds to make good his escape and has been rejected by those who he expected to join him “I have a feeling that you’re riding for some kind of terrible, terrible fall…. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their environment couldn’t supply them with…. So they gave up looking. (Salinger Chap 24)” Mr. Antolini talks to Holden as he attempts to leave his parents’ apartment, following his conversation with Phoebe. At this point, he is heavy-hearted because Phoebe was willing to sacrifice her meager Christmas money to help aid in his escape so he decides to go to Mr. Antolini for some comfort. After all, Mr. Antolini is one of the few people that he can trust and confide in. He hopes that Mr. Antolini’s sound advice could help preserve his sanity which is on the breaking point.
Instead of preserving his sanity, Mr. Antolini’s admonition only helps in his full-blown breakdown. He perceives Mr. Antoli’s words as a homosexual pickup line because at this stage he is already very confused and distraught. Note that this line is pretty scary in the context of being a young adult fiction, coming to an elder for aid and comfort only to be assailed in a possible flirtatious way. He also resents the way that Mr. Antoli’s words upset his worldview and what he feels he has to do.
Mr. Antolini is trying to catch Holden during his fall the same way Phoebe tried to do in the previous chapter. However, his approach is very different from Phoebe who was trying to attract his pity. Holden’s belief of an idyllic world of childhood and its innocence from which children should be retained and held from falling into the adult world of drudgery and disenchantment. Holden thinks that he is the one who was trying to protect Phoebe. When in fact, then as now he is the one whose innocence is being protected by others. He is the one that needs a Catcher in the Rye. Or better yet, he is the one that needs to fall into the rye and grow up.
Mr. Anotolini sees that Holden is in a stage when he feels disconnected from his environment. Holden has decided to isolate himself in an attempt to preserve his innocence. Mr. Antolini’s ideal of what it is to fall is an accurate image of what awaits Holden if he continues his descent. He will discover the weakness of his romantic outlook of innocence that needs to be preserved and children who need to be caught. After all, children who ‘fall’ into the rye aren’t falling into oblivion or death. They are merely falling into maturity and reality.
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. (Salinger 188)” This is Mr. Antolini’s rebuttal of Holden’s romanticism. Instead of forcing himself to be a martyr and sacrificing himself to preserve innocence, Holden should instead stop seeing himself as some sort of bold hero and just remember that he is a normal person. He should stop being so idealistic in his cynicism and face up to the reality that he will eventually have to confront the realities of growing up. Even his ideas of going west and living in a cabin of his own are just markings of his immaturity and his desire to remain in his blissful immaturity.
The next day he decides to leave a message for Phoebe so she can meet him one last time before he leaves. He is surprised because his younger sister wants to come with him to the west. Shocked by her determination Holden does his best to shoot down her attempts to follow him silencing her with a curt “Shut-up” instead of trying to reasoning with her. Apparently, because reasoning with her and trying to dissuade her would be equal to dissuading himself from continuing with his planned trip. She bursts into tears and says that she will never go to school again in imitation of her older brother. To comfort her he promises that he won’t go west anymore. With both of them angry and resentful they decide to go to the Zoo.
Later on, he is seen walking in the Zoo quietly shadowed by his sister Phoebe who is still simmering with anger over his refusal to bring her with him in his exile. Eventually, she relents and tells him that she isn’t made anymore. Holden offers to buy her a ride on the Carousel and she rides an old horse on the Carousel. It is here that his journey comes full circle. Seeing her spin around and around grabbing for the gold ring just as young children are wont to do his sanity is slowly redeemed. He begins to cry and realizes the hubris of what he has been trying to do.
In the end, Holden is optimistic, his cynical phase cautiously ended. He believes that he will attend a new school. He might decide to apply himself well in his new school. He also misses all the people he ruthlessly slandered in the previous chapters. In other words, his period of loathing and doubt is at an end. Perhaps his future will be much brighter than what he originally envisioned. There is no promise of a happily ever after for him. But then like they always say, Happily, Ever-After is for stories that haven’t ended yet. Holden is only 17, his story has barely begun.
Conclusion
Having delved into the mind of J.D. Salinger via his surrogate Holden Caulfield I can safely say that he is neither as abnormal or freakish as critics allege or quite normal as an everyday person. His views on reality indeed have a harsh tinge of negativity and cynicism which belie living a harsh life. Yet his life is neither excessively hard nor oppressive. He is a normal teenager who suffers the occasional hard knocks and failures.
However, he clings to a view of innocence that must be preserved at all costs. His desire to preserve his innocence is so strong that he is willing to abandon all that he knows just so he can travel to a place where he will never fall and never need to lose his innocence or need a Catcher. In the end, he eventually sees the error of his ways and slowly brings himself to the path of redemption.
Ironically, even if Holden is just an immature kid many in the past have come to imitate his example. The most famous example is the man who shot John Lennon. I don’t agree with the idea that the book should be censored or kept from children since perhaps the best way to make children read a book is to tell them that it is forbidden. By telling kids it is taboo it will only encourage them to seek it and might even generate interest where there was none. Instead of censoring the book teachers should instead take it up in class and responsibly lecture the students as to why Holden Caulfield felt that way. Later they can emphasize that in the end, Holden did break away from the cycle of self-hate and loathing that he left him deflated and gaunt.
Works Cited
Skow, John. “Sonny: An Introduction”, Time, 1961-09-15.
Maynard, Joyce (1998). At Home in the World. New York: Picador Chapman, Mark’s Statement. Web.
Menand, Louis. “Holdn at Fifty”, The New Yorker, Web.
Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye.
“Art or trash? It makes for endless, unwinnable debate”. Web.
Mydans, Seth. “In a Small Town, a Battle Over a Book”, The New York Times, 1989-09-03, pp. 2.
MacIntyre. Ben “The American banned list reveals a society with serious hang-ups”, The Times, 2005-09-24.
Frangedis, Helen. “Dealing with the Controversial Elements in The Catcher in the Rye”. The English Journal 77 (7).