Book Report: “The Catcher In The Rye” By Jerome David Salinger
Author’s Biography
Jerome David Salinger was born in New York City on January 1, 1919. He was the youngest son of a jewish and a catholic, Sol Salinger and Miriam. Not proving to be a good student, Salinger was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania after failing at the McBurney School in New York. Salinger later studied at Ursinus College and New York University. Salinger published a story for the first time at the age of 21 when he met and befriended Whit Burnett who was the founder and editor of the Story Magazine at Columbia University. Burnett encouraged Salinger’s writing talent and published his stories in his magazine. Soon Salinger’s work started making its way to more publications such as the Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s. Just when Salinger’s writing career had started taking off, he was interrupted by the break of World War II and had to serve in the Army (1942-1944). It was during this time that Salinger started working on his masterpiece, giving birth to the legendry character of Holden Caulfield. ”
Author’s and Text Context
J. D. Salinger was educated in exclusive schools in the upper west of Manhattan and was expelled from several because of his low academic performance. This is one of the many traits that he shares with Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. The field in which the young Salinger stood out, like Holden Caulfield, was the literary composition, here he began to dedicate his early efforts to obtain the recognition he aspired for and which had been denied him frequently. “Salinger’s biggest dream was to publish in the prestigious New Yorker literary magazine, but when he was about to achieve it, something unexpected happened, which took his life and the entire world to collapse: World War II. ” The experiences that he had in the war transformed him into a literary genius, into a unique author and also into a chronically ill person. “The consequences of this war inside Salinger were fright and hardening. Fright causes a recession and a stiffness. The withdrawal of Salinger shortly after returning from the war responds to this pattern. Holden Caulfield says in several fragments of the book that he wants to retire to a cabin that he would only abandon to see his mother before dying. On the other hand, the person who hardens itself, blocks and extinguishes emotions, stays in tension. ”
Salinger finished writing The Catcher in The Rye just after the traumatic experiences of the war, and the hardening draws special attention in Holden's character. He is cold, he doesn’t show any expression of interest even with situations that could arouse emotional reactions, nothing seems to matter much to him, except for Jane Gallagher, a friend for whom he seems to feel something. “J. D. Salinger suffered another major blow at the critical moment of the middle of the war that could contribute to his later mistrust in a love relationship. His girlfriend at that time, Oona O'Neill, daughter of playwright Eugene O'Neill, a very special and charismatic young woman, whom Salinger fell in love, and left him to marry with Charles Chaplin. ” This disappointment is also experienced by Holden Caulfield with the girl for whom he seems to feel something special, Jane Gallagher, when he discovers that he is going out with his roommate, the handsome Stradlater.
Settings
The setting of the story is realistic since the scenarios it describes are real and not created. The facts do not occur in the same place, the story begins in Pencey School in Agerstown, Pennsylvania, and then moves to the city of New York, where the protagonist travels most of the time. The different spaces through which the character moves, do not have an important relationship with the facts, they rather recreate the story and give rise to certain circumstances.
Narrator
The novel is told in first person, through the eyes of Holden, that’s why it could be totally considered as subjectivism since the whole novel is impregnated by the overwhelming personality of the protagonist. In the narrative, we witness the way Holden views the world.
Characters
Holden Caulfield: He is the protagonist of the novel, a teenager who is mainly characterized by being critical. During all the novel, Holden combines this criticism with irony, he is often judging the students of Pencey School, his teachers, or even the School itself, he thinks everything turns around hypocrisy and that’s why he hates everyone, he wants to be treated differently, but he ends up disappointed of people and prefers staying alone because nobody satisfies his expectations. He tries to behave like an adult and integrate into his world without realizing that it is a difficult world and that he probably is not prepared, but he keeps being innocent and immature. For instance, he smokes constantly, even in places where smoking is not allowed, like in school, furthermore, when he escapes from school and spends the night in the hotel, he asks several times for alcohol, something typical of adults as believed in the twentieth century.
Holden is also defined by being impulsive and indecisive, many times he takes decisions without thinking, following his instinct and doing what he desires the most at every moment. For example, when he calls Sally to take her out and just after hanging up he regrets; or when he goes in the taxi cab and suddenly he tells the taxi driver to take him to the nightclub where the famous Ernie plays, even though he criticized all the people who clapped, because in his opinion Ernie played horrible and they were all hypocrites. He suffers from a serious personality disorder, he can move from a state of mind to the opposite in a matter of seconds, but in short, he is a person who cannot find his place in the world. His pessimistic view of society and the world in general makes him think everything is negative, that there is nothing good in this world, except his already death brother Allie.
Holden’s biggest fear is that kids (specially his little sister Phoebe) could lose their innocence due to adulthood, that’s why his biggest dream is to be the catcher in the rye, he wants to avoid kids look through anything that could kill their innocence, for instance, when he is at Phoebe’s school he sees the words “fuck you” written in the walls, he tries to erase them.
Jane Gallagher: She is the girl Holden Caulfield likes, inside the story Holden talks many times about her likes, her ways of acting and her passions. Jane used to play checkers with Holden, that’s why he knows “she wouldn’t take her kings out of the back row when she played checkers…She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row”. There’s a strong relationship between both of them. Jane’s biggest weakness is her family because she has to deal with her stepfather and tense familiar conditions, “Her mother and father were divorced. Her mother was married again to some booze hound”.
Phoebe Caulfield: She is Holden’s little sister, she plays an important role inside the novel because most of the time Holden thinks of her and makes him reflect. She is only 10 years old, she is very pretty, very smart, thin and redhead. She likes to skate and write a lot even though she never finishes her stories. She is very mature for how small she is and she is also very sensitive.
Allie Caulfield: Allie was the perfect boy, worth of admiration, kind, handsome, sincere, good student, etc. , but leukemia took him with only 11 years. Holden tells that the night he died, he broke all the windows of the garage, because of the sadness and impotence he felt, and also, he had to be hospitalized because of the cuts. Undoubtedly, the object of more personal value, and the one that Holden most appreciates, is the baseball glove left by his brother, full of poems written by his own hand.
D. B Caulfield: He is Holden's older brother. He lives in Hollywood and is a writer. He owns a large amount of money and is famous. According to Holden, he prostituted himself writing for the cinema instead of keep writing his stories.
Sally Hayes: Sally is, for Holden, like most girls. She’s attractive, but in the end it's superficial. Holden has the impression that the world is full of Sallys. What bothers him the most is that she is completely false.
Carl Luce: He’s an older friend of Holden, he met him in another school differently from Pencey. Carl was known by having sexual experiences so that’s why Holden called him, looking for a sexual talk, apparently Carl has grown up and he stopped having that type of conversations.
Mr. Antolini: Holden's old school teacher, with whom he has a lot of confidence. Holden goes to sleep one night at his house, but when he wakes up discovers that he is touching him and leaves quickly.
Sunny: Prostitute who sends Maurice to Holden. She was relatively young to be a prostitute. She has blonde hair.
Ackley: He lives in the room next to Holden in Pencey, he is dirty and unpleasant. He has bad habits such as cutting his nails and leaving them in the floor.
Rhetorical Devices
Imagery
Imagery means to use figurative language to represent objects, actions, and ideas in such a way that it appeals to our physical senses. The purpose of this rhetorical device is to create an image in our minds, but for making that visual representation of ideas its necessary the use of figures like simile, metaphor, personification or onomatopoeia too. In this case, we can find that the author uses imagery many times due to the personality of the character. Holden has a strong relationship with the reader because he’s always telling us everything with details, examples, short stories or even comparisons.
Example: “He could take something very jazzy, like “Tin Roof Blues”, and whistle it so nice and easy - right while he was hanging stuff up in the closet – that it could kill you. ” In this example we can clearly see how the simile the author used had a direct effect appealing to our senses, letting us picture this words in our minds.
Allusion
Allusion is a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing or idea of historical, cultural, literary or political significance. The purpose of this rhetorical device is to make the reader familiar with the allusion or hidden meaning usually used to associate them with extra information.
Example: “He was singing that song, “If a body catch a body coming through the rye”. As it is explained before, allusions are intended to associate them with something extra. This song is probably the most important part inside the novel because Holden wants to be that catcher that doesn’t allow kids to fall and also because he feels better when he hears it, but the original format of this song is a poem by Robert Burns which questions about if casual sex is fine. That’s why the original poem relates with what Holden wants, being the catcher in the rye, because he doesn’t want kids to lose their innocence.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole, from a Greek word meaning "excess, " is a figure of speech that uses extreme exaggeration to make a point or show emphasis.
Example: “…but some old lady around a hundred years old was sitting at a typewriter. ” In this example, the author uses hyperbole when it exaggerates the age of the old lady with the purpose of making the reader think on how old this lady was.
Symbolism
Catcher in the Rye: The phrase comes from a popular song by Robert Burns: "Comin 'Thro' the Rye. " In chapter 16, Holden listens to a small kid singing it and in chapter 22 Holden reveals to Phoebe, his sister, the meaning that phrase has for him, means that there is someone who serves as a guardian among the rye, preventing children from falling into an abyss, and this is the only and true interest in Holden's life. On the other hand, it is important to know that the word "Catcher" comes from the baseball game in which the catcher is the one who grabs the ball with the glove, if it is in a grass field planted with rye, the work is hindered by the lack of visibility and the impossibility of running. So, the task that Holden has set is to grab the children as if they were balls thrown at random, that if it were not for him they would be lost or they would end up in the abyss.
The symbolism of the word catcher does not end in the title, it also connects with the fact that Holden writes about the baseball glove that his brother Allie had, a glove that he kept and in which his brother had written poems in green ink. The writing was made for Stradlater Holden's roommate, seeing that he rejected it, Holden breaks it indicating that Stradlater does not deserve the innocence and purity that represents Allie's glove.
Ducks: The concern he has for Central Park Ducks is apparently foolish, and to everyone he asks, it seems silly; but in reality, his concern goes further, Ducks do not die, they leave, but they come back, and he wants to make sure of that, that they come back, nothing happens to them, they do not change and that they do not die as Allie died. Winter changes everything, but there is always a spring that returns everything to normal, Holden would like his life return to normal.
Red Hunting Hat: Holden buys a hunter's cap, is an unusual cap that is not fashionable and that rather makes him see little out of focus, he always lets the reader know when he puts it on and when he takes it off, he puts on his cap when he is alone and somehow wants to distinguish himself from others from superficiality, he takes it away when he is around people who can judge him, that is the conflict that Holden and almost every teenager have between being different, unique, and at the same time belong to a group. By the other hand, the color red for Holden is something natural that means innocence, simplicity and happiness as the hair color of his brothers Allie and Phoebe.
Personal Appreciation
The Catcher in The Rye is a book which touches many controversial topics, for instance; adolescence concerns, the step to maturity, the inner conflict in adifficult personality, or criticism towards the hypocrisy of people and society, also the denunciation of the adult world, marked on all occasions by dirtiness, falsehood, brutality and degeneration, and finally the nostalgia of childhood as the period of life in which it is only possible pureness and innocence. Thanks to the protagonist, the author lets the reader know the essence of these topics that concern teenagers from Holden’s own experience.
