Adolescence

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE  by J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the rye is a novel written by J.D. Salinger (1919-2010) and published in 1951.

The novel is about Holden Caulfield, a teenager who is both the narrator and the protagonist.

All the events took place in two days in which he moves to New York after being expelled from Pencey, a private school. He is supposed to be back home for Christmas holidays on Tuesday but he decides to loaf around NYC until his parents receive the news of his expulsion.

When he arrives in NY, he books a room in a hotel and after spending all night in some clubs, he is scammed by a prostitute and her ‘sugar daddy’, Maurice. The day after, because he feels alone, he calls his friend Sally to enjoy the afternoon with her and later calles another friend, Carl Luce, to spend the evening with him. At the end of the day, Holden still feels deeply alone and because of that, he decides to go home and see his sister Phoebe, who is the only one who can understand his loneliness. After confiding in her about his feelings, he goes to the house of his teacher, Mr Antolini, where he lives an embarrassing situation, so he leaves  and sleeps in a station. The last day he decides to leave NY so he meets his sister again to say goodbye, but she persuades him to stay. In the last chapter, he tells us he is in a sanatorium from where he’s writing the novel.

Why such a title? The answer is in the chapter twenty-two, when he talks to his sister Phoebe: in this chapter we can find references to a famous Scottish song by Robert Burns. The original song is:

Gin a body meet a body

Coming through the rye;

Gin a body kiss a body,

Need a body cry?

But when Holden tells his sister about this song, he mistakes the words and says:

If a body catch a body

coming through the rye;

Thinking about these words he images a lot of children playing in a field of rye near a cliff; every time someone comes close to the cliff and fall off, Holden would be down there to catch them. He wants to be the catcher in the rye who saves those children.

The title is one of the best examples of the crisis of adolescence, one of the main themes of the novel.
Holden is a teenager who, observing the adults’ world, doesn’t want to grow up and be part of it (that is what we usually call “Peter Pan syndrome”), because he can’t stand its “phoniness”. That’s why he leaves in his own “little universe”, made of illusions and dreams and describes it in an ironical way. The word “phoniness” is often used by the protagonist to describe the hypocrisy and  corruption of the adult’s word.

Another important topic covered by Salinger is Holden’s alienation. It could be read as if he feels different and superior, but this is just a way he uses to protect himself and maintain the stability of his life (the hunting hut he always wears is a symbol of self protection).

The hunting hut is a symbol as much important as the the ducks in the central park lagoon and the museum of natural history. The ducks symbolise the curiosity of youth. In fact Holden wonders where the ducks go in the winter, while the second one expresses the surprise that only an adolescent can feel when visiting it.

This book, which is a ‘cult’ of the 60’s , could be considered as an atypical ‘bildungsroman’.  The protagonist doesn’t want to face the growth process. It is written in a very original narrative style: a colloquial language characterized by cut sentences and bad words to express Holden’s spontaneity and a urban slang which reflects the protagonist’s age and shows us his attitude to the world.

This is one of the best novels to understand how difficult could be to become an adult, and how an adolescent might be scared by his future. It shouldn’t be a reading only for young people but also for adults, who usually forget how it was to be a teenager.

Biolchini Martina
Cozza Giulia
Russo Federico
Russo Simona
Sacco Giuseppina