Recently Re-Read The Catcher in the Rye

[keilj]

Read this as an adolescent, now in my late 30's.

I have to apologize to Holden for getting away from the things that he taught me when I was a kid. Principally, to reject all the bull**** things and people that one encounters in life (those bull**** things being pretty much everything you encounter in life)

Amazing that such an important lesson, learned so young, could be forgotten. I suppose as you grow older, the instinct is to settle down and try to find your place in the world

On the re-reading, the one thing I was a little unclear on was what Salinger was trying to say with the ending. After all, Holden ends up in a psych clinic, and even says that me misses those schoolmates which he criticized so harshly earlier in the book

[AjaxAscendant]

Good for you. Having only recently discovered the hypnotic charm of Catcher, I applaud your decision to pick it up again, after your impressionable years have passed.

[Austin Butler]

One way to read the ending is that Holden becomes an adult. (It's up to the reader if this is a good or bad thing.) The passages that allude to Gatsby when he's rubbing out the "**** you's," when he teaches the two boys about mummies, when he identifies his emotions, when he gets mad at Phoebe for not wanting to be in the play, when he talks about the golden ring and letting kids reach for it, and especially when he's watching Phoebe on the carrousel and "damn near bawling" and writes, "God, I wish you could've been there" I think all support that possibility. Holden is like the salmon Dwight talks about, how they spawn in the same rivers they're born in. They are wild but always manage to find their way back to their home. By then end of the novel when Holden and Phoebe visit the zoo Holden is "tame," he's not the same guilt ridden, angsty adolescent he was. That was one of the ways I thought of the book. I hope it continues your thinking about the book. I think it's greatest quality is that you can read the book at ANY point in your life and your experience is always different.

[keilj]

One way to read the ending is that Holden becomes an adult. (It's up to the reader if this is a good or bad thing.) The passages that allude to Gatsby when he's rubbing out the "**** you's," when he teaches the two boys about mummies, when he identifies his emotions, when he gets mad at Phoebe for not wanting to be in the play, when he talks about the golden ring and letting kids reach for it, and especially when he's watching Phoebe on the carrousel and "damn near bawling" and writes, "God, I wish you could've been there" I think all support that possibility. Holden is like the salmon Dwight talks about, how they spawn in the same rivers they're born in. They are wild but always manage to find their way back to their home. By then end of the novel when Holden and Phoebe visit the zoo Holden is "tame," he's not the same guilt ridden, angsty adolescent he was. That was one of the ways I thought of the book. I hope it continues your thinking about the book. I think it's greatest quality is that you can read the book at ANY point in your life and your experience is always different.

Thanks for the response. Yeah, I partly wondered if Salinger wrote that ending as a way of saying "don't go too far with this 'reject society' stuff." Particularly by having Holden basically break down.

Re-reading the book was definitely a different experience. I think it should certainly be read by everyone when they are around the age of 15 - it really drills right into your heart at that age. I was impressed by Salinger's ability to maintain the rebellious tone throughout the entire book.

[eraserhead]

From the original jacket:

"The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it."

That's the key behind it all.

[YW1990]

I think it's the alienation and angstyness that attracts adolescent readers to this book. They find they can identify with Holden and his views about the world. My friend made a point about it and she said that the reason why people like reading this book is because everybody is Holden and that everyone can relate to his feelings of distance and alienation through their own personal experiences of this.

[AjaxAscendant]

I think it's the alienation and angstyness that attracts adolescent readers to this book. They find they can identify with Holden and his views about the world. My friend made a point about it and she said that the reason why people like reading this book is because everybody is Holden and that everyone can relate to his feelings of distance and alienation through their own personal experiences of this.

Well, that's cited so often as to be almost a trope in modern literary discourse. But I think the ending can also be read in terms of Holden finally growing into his adult responsibilities, personified by Phoebe, the one person he repeatedly professes his feelings for. It's a potent visual image of a teenager's metamorphosis into a full-fledged adult. It is this facet that attracts me to Catcher.