Spinozablue: An Eclectic Journal of the Arts

The World of Holden Caulfield:
Revisiting The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger. Photo by Lotte Jacobi. 1951

I read J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye in 1970 as a teenage girl with a dis­af­fected out­look on the world very sim­i­lar to the nar­ra­tor and main char­ac­ter, Holden Caulfield. I recall think­ing it was a won­der­ful book I could relate to on many lev­els: as a child of the 60s, I shared Holden’s dis­dain for pre­ten­tious­ness, dis­cour­tesy, hypocrisy, reg­i­men­ta­tion, and social climb­ing. I longed des­per­ately for some mea­sure of peace with myself and the world around me in spite of my con­tempt for the behav­ior I observed in peo­ple – phonies, as Holden would call them. That was as far as I could go with my appre­ci­a­tion for this won­der­ful book at that young age.

A week ago I decided to have a reunion with Holden for the first time in over 30 years.  What emerged from my excur­sion back to his world was a sense of awe at Salinger’s mas­ter­ful cre­ation of a bright teenager from an extremely promi­nent fam­ily expe­ri­enc­ing what we would now refer to as a total melt­down. It is an account com­pletely lack­ing in self-​​pity, inex­orable in its down­ward spi­ral, and ruth­lessly unspar­ing in its appraisal of the var­i­ous peo­ple Holden encounters.

The quin­tes­sen­tial ago­nized ado­les­cent for all ages, Holden Caulfield has lost his younger brother to leukemia, a cat­a­clysmic event for his entire fam­ily. His grief haunts him through­out a series of events that only serve to exac­er­bate his strug­gle.  The reader enters Caulfield’s world as the semes­ter is com­ing to an end just before Christmas.  His par­ents do not know about his expul­sion yet, so the reac­tion of his bril­liantly suc­cess­ful father, his griev­ing, anxiety-​​stricken mother, and the rest of his fam­ily is loom­ing before him.

Things spi­ral fur­ther out of con­trol as he loses his tem­per with his stereo­typ­i­cally hand­some, ath­letic room­mate on a Saturday night.  The end result is a bloody-​​faced Holden, too stunned to prop­erly clean his face before he ven­tures out of the dor­mi­tory and into the heart of New York City.  His plan is to stay there until he is due home on Wednesday.

The ensu­ing events, most of them direct con­fronta­tions with the darker side of human­ity as Holden des­per­ately attempts to alle­vi­ate his lone­li­ness and despair, only serve to exac­er­bate his ten­u­ous hold on his san­ity.  The pace of the novel increases pro­por­tion­ately as he free-​​falls deeper into depres­sion and increas­ingly more des­per­ate acts.

Eventually the reader learns that Holden has at some point been fur­ther trau­ma­tized as wit­ness to a tragic, gory sui­cide.  And the teacher who emerges from this event as a hero in Holden’s eyes turns out to be a predator.

At 16, I saw Holden as a rebel and a mav­er­ick.  At 54, I saw him as a fright­ened child des­per­ate for help but unable to find it, a tragic enigma unable to find his way through the evils of the world in spite of his priv­i­lege and intel­li­gence.  He is simul­ta­ne­ously fero­cious in his antipa­thy toward the human race and des­per­ate in his desire for human com­pan­ion­ship and love.  What stands out is not his rebel­lion, but his love for oth­ers, good and bad alike.

It is this great love and long­ing for humans and their com­pan­ion­ship that emerges in the nar­ra­tive – that and the dis­turb­ing series of emo­tional shocks that rob him of his inno­cence as he attempts to find solace.  He is a latter-​​day Werther, whose sor­rows are as stark as the bleak land­scape of his inner world, yet his nar­ra­tive is never maudlin or com­plain­ing.  The voice of Holden Caulfield is as real as it gets – his com­ing of age moves inex­orably to a strug­gle to survive.

And so it is that the worth of this great novel is con­firmed and enhanced – it is a time­less, haunt­ing story that every­one should read.  Sadly, an entire gen­er­a­tion of young peo­ple are now deprived of this impor­tant work of lit­er­a­ture because of their par­ents’ reli­gious zealotry.  Today’s teenagers, who must go to school won­der­ing if they can get through the day with­out get­ting shot and killed, sim­ply can­not be allowed to read a great novel with foul lan­guage in it, so say the Philistines who call the shots at our nation’s schools.  It is both an irony and an injus­tice, the ulti­mate kind of blind­ness that Salinger sought to expose in his mas­ter­piece, Catcher in the Rye.

–Rebecca Parton

Author’s Biography

Rebecca Parton lives in Dallas, Georgia with her son and daugh­ter, her two cats, and her minia­ture schnau­zer.  A life­long book­worm, she spends most of her spare time read­ing his­tory and lit­er­a­ture.  She has a degree in his­tory from Louisiana State University and works in Atlanta as a Senior Technical Writer and Trainer.

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Copyright©2008 Rebecca Parton and Spinozablue. All Rights Reserved.

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