Catcher In The Rye...My Views

Holden Caulfield.  This is one tormented guy who goes through much in a three day period! He’s a rebel. He’s an outcast. He also seems to be the hero of assassins or failed assassins in real life. This part I do not understand, but that will come later.

“The Catcher in the Rye” is a very good read. For some strange reason, my high school and subsequent colleges never assigned this book. Aside from liberal use of the word ‘godamm’ and a few ‘fuck’, they are nothing an average American teenaged boy hasn’t uttered a thousand times.

To sum up the story, college screwup Holden Caulfield has failed to achieve at yet another high-level college. Instead of waiting until his last day, he decides to leave four days early after a nasty brawl with his roommate. He ends up in his home town of New York City. After a clumsy attempt to pick up women, he agrees to a short tryst with a hooker. The tryst is a disaster and he has a somewhat violent run-in with her pimp. The next day arranges a date with an old female friend but he messes that up, too. Holden ends up going home and has a talk with his beloved younger sister Phoebe, including a fantasy about being a catcher in the rye, catching all of the children before they go over the edge. He then leaves and is going to spend the night at the home of one of his old teachers. After Holden wakes up to hind the man gently tousling his hair, Holden panics and runs out. Later on, tells Phoebe that he is running out west to become deaf and dumb and live in the woods. She wants to accompany him, but he refuses, then changes his mind about going when he sees Phoebe is upset. At the end, he is happy watching her ride the carousel in the rain.

Overall, the story works quite well as it explores Holden’s angst over three days. There is also much open to interpretation. For example, I can see possible homosexual repression in him. His awkwardness with the few women in the book, the way he runs from the hair-tousling teacher, they are all possible signals. Or, Holden could simply be a disaffected youth who refuses to fall into the categories of acceptable society. 

Actually, I take that back about simply, because that in itself pigeonholes Holden into the larger realm of society’s outcasts. Back in the early 1950s, outcasts of society had a tendency to be institutionalized if they were feared in any way (read “Girl, Interrupted” or “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” for 2 great examples of that time period).

So where does this fit in with murderers of public figures? Mark Chapman, John Hinckley, and Robert Bardo were said to have been carrying or owning copies of “Catcher In The Rye” and that somehow it influenced them to kill John Lennon, ATTEMPT to kill Ronald Reagan, and kill Rebecca Schaeffer, respectively. Am I to understand that Holden Caulfield is a symbol for society’s outcasts and he influences them to kill? Holden kills NOBODY, he just beats up on himself. Is it perhaps his fantasy of being the poetic catcher and rescuer of the children before they go over the edge that inspires them? Whatever it is, those people were sick to begin with, and using a book to inspire them is just plain madness as well. John Lennon had supposedly gone over the edge before he left the Beatles, Reagan was way beyond the edge on many levels (but I love the guy anyway!) and Rebecca Schaffer had supposedly gone over by becoming “another Hollywood whore” in Bardo’s eyes. Well, Hollywood is filled with them, males AND females, so why focus on her? It makes no sense. The way that MIGHT have made sense based of the catcher theory was to kill Lennon in 1968, Reagan in 1966 before he became governor of California, and I won’t even go into Rebecca Schaeffer, her career was still only a few years in the limelight. Do not mistake that into thinking I condone these people, it’s just a take on the catcher fantasy.

Holden is a lost soul in post-war America. He is struggling to find himself and figure out where he belongs in the world. I suspect there was a lot of that in the late 1940s, early 1950s youth who felt out of place, those in a somewhat opulent family life who weren’t badly hit by the Depression. Where do they fit in? Holden is not a jock, not a deep intellectual, apparently 2 categories that one could make a life on. He doesn’t even click with other misfits like fellow dormmate Ackley, who suffers from acne and badmouths Holden’s roommate Stradlater even though one senses Ackley wouldn’t dare fight Stradlater if the opportunity came up. Unlike “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, in Holden’s world even outcasts resent other outcasts.

I think in one way or another I am like Holden. I didn’t really fit into a particular category growing up. There were the jocks, semi-jocks (water polo, bowling, and golf), bandheads, and smart nerds among the guys, and athletes, bandheads, cheerleaders, and “the clique” among the females. I used to clash with the jocks in junior high, but developed a decent acquaintance if not direct friendship with some of them by high school. The clique of girls didn’t have any particular skills except to gossip about others, discuss fashion and music, and rag on my ass for no particular reason. In some ways I hated them more than the jocks, but not all of them, every group has their anomalies. I tried flute in 4^th grade but sucked at it, so bandhead was not a future for me. Some of them were snobbish in their own way as well. I sort of took part in some intramural volleyball in 10^th grade and spent my spare time in the high school TV studio, but apart from that I was a lost soul who completely sucked in my dealings with females. I also tried to avoid conflict and didn’t really fight anyone even when a few of them could have improved from a black eye or bloody nose or both. The reality was, I’d been around what I then considered to be the same assholes for 10 years and I just wanted to graduate and get the hell out… problem was, I felt that early in the 11^th grade. On the homefront, there were problems as well, but that’s a whole can of worms not needed for this article. A question here is, if I had read “Catcher in the Rye” during those dark times, might I have become a homicidal maniac? Thinking of myself back then from a current seasoned age of 42, I don’t believe so. In fact I think I may have been happy to finally read about someone I could identify with, but nothing more than that.

In conclusion, “Catcher in the Rye” is a must-read for anyone who’s felt disaffected by the world and expectations of them. It could also be an assigned read that high-schoolers and/or college freshmen groan over because they want to go party instead of write a literary response. Either way, it deserves its place as a classic.