What does this title mean? I recently read the book and loved it but couldn’t quite understand the expression.
I did however found out on the net that the title/book got nothing to do with the “presidential assailants”, and apprently this was just a coincidental phrase allegedly associated with CIA operatives.
There’s a song (actually a poem) Holden mentions in the book about “if a body meet a body coming through the rye.” The line, as his sister points out, is actually from a Robert Burns poem called “Coming Through the Rye.” Holden’s desire to be the “catcher in the rye” symbolizes his desire to protect innocence and preserve the genuine emotions of childhood.
Thanks. But I’m a little confused. What’s Rye in this? The field of Rye? And what’s a “catcher”?
I read that book about 35 years ago, so I’m a little fuzzy on the details. As I recall, the protagonist, Holden Caufield, beholds an imaginary situation (might’ve been a dream) where he is standing in a field of rye and there are little kids running through the rye. Holden must catch these kids to prevent them from exiting the rye, where something bad will happen to them.
My (I think) 8th grade English teacher led us to discover that the children were unaware of their surroundings while in the rye, and by catching them and preventing their departure from that field of rye, Holden was forestalling their inevitable fall from innocence.
On preview I see it’s from a poem…
Hmm … OK … I had to dig out my copy of Catcher. When he’s talking to his sister about the song, Holden says he keeps picturing all these kids playing in a field of rye and he’s the only big guy around. His job is to keep the kids from falling off this nearby cliff. He says, “I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all.”
So he sort of imagines this scenario, and his role as catcher, from a small bit of a song that he remembers. The original song/poem doesn’t have all the much to do with it.
Actually, Ringo, seems like you remember it pretty well for 35 years ago.
Er, its’ been a few years since my Salinger fetish, but as I recall Holden imagined children careening through a rye field when he read the poem and he was worried that some of them would go flying out of the rye field and hurt themselves. He wished to be the “catcher” and keep the kids from flying out of the rye. Combine that with aaslatten post and serve iced.
Or maybe he wanted to work for Maurice. 
Here is a link to the original Robert Burns poem/song Comin’ Through the Rye. There’s no explicit reference to a “Catcher” – that’s a Salinger addition.
I wonder what’s going on with the SDMB collective consciousness today? Just 25 minutes before the current OP, someone asked (in this thread) about the origin of John Steinbeck’s title Of Mice and Men, which also harks back to a Robbie Burns poem.
Thanks all. That explains it.
How are other books of JD Salinger? I’ve only read this one and wanted to get other of his works. Any recommendations?
Antonius, actually when I read the thread on Of Mice and Men, it reminded me of the Catcher In The Rye question I had in mind for a while now. So you can say it’s not a coincidence 
*Franny and Zooey[/] and Nine Stories (two story collections) are worth reading, IMO. There’s not much else.
I always thought the book was about baseball and that was his position.
Looks like I missed the point again.
Yeah, I did, too. Before I read it, I thought it was about a former baseball player that opened a bakery. You can imagine my embarrassment.
I vaguely remembered something bad outside of the rye, and even thought perhaps a cliff (goes great with a fall from innocence, eh?). As coincidence, I actually used the title as an expression in a thread a few days ago, although…wait, now I remember - it was a thread about your parents lying to you.
Since this is about a literary work, I’ll move it to Cafe Society for you.
Off to Cafe Society.
DrMatrix - GQ Moderator
One important detail:
I think Holden says that he had mistaken the line as “if a body catch a body, comin through the rye,” and expresses disappointment at discovering that the original verse said “meet,” because of his above-mentioned fantasy of being “the catcher in the rye.”
I seem to remember this once before - ah yes:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=92814&highlight=catcher
This is a lovely little thread which gets into the meaning of the title about halfway down. I thought I made some good observations, if I do say so myself.
That’s right. It’s the character’s mistake, not the author’s. I think it’s his sister who tells him he’s misremembering the poem. But even though it’s wrong as far as the poem goes, the image Holden has of himself protecting these kids from the world is key to the book.
I think Salinger only published twenty-some stories including Catcher in the Rye. Fourteen are currently being sold: Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Raise High the Roombeam Carpenters/Seymour: An Introduction, and Franny/Zooey. The rest were published in magazines from the 50s, so if you are really interested you can do a little research and track them down. I’d heard that the ones only in the magazines* aren’t as good as the rest though. I might be back with revalent links if someone doesn’t beat me to it.
My personal fav is Raise High, but it is best to start with Franny/Zooey to get some background.
*They were actually published in book form without Salinger’s permission. Copies of that book are very rare and usually in Japanese or Italian.
Holden Caulfield did something many of us have done at one time or another: he completely mis-heard a song lyric, and built an interpretation around what he mis-heard.
Holden isn’t as malicious or (quite) as crazy as, say, Charles Manson, who built a whole world-view and philosophy around his misinterpretations of Beatle songs… but in principle, he’s not so different from Manson.
He mis-heard the old Robby Burns lyric, and thought the words said “if a body catch a body coming through the rye.” And that misinterpretation led to an elaborate fantasy about being a hero who stood in a field of rye, protecting children from harm.
It’s a silly fantasy, but then MOST adolescent fantasies are silly.
To echo what has been said above: Holden misheard a line in the poem as saying “catcher in the rye” rather than “catch her eye”–that is, attract her attention. His sister Phoebe corrects him.
Holden Caulfield is mentioned by name in at least one other story, a short story published in Esquire which was included in an anthology of stories from the magazine which was published in the early 1960s. It is narrated by his brother (presumably, the one who is “prostituting himself” in Hollywood). In it he expresses his anxiety and grief in having just received word that Holden, who is serving in the military, is missing in action. IIRC, he is serving in the Air Corps in WOrld War II.
There is, of course, a time paradox here, as in The Catcher in the Rye he is apparently attending high school in the early 1950s. This is hardly unprecedented in literature, as authors are known to “reinvent” characters over time. The character Studs Lonigan was introduced in a story by James T. Farrell called Studs; in it, he dies in his mid-20s. Most of the action described in the The Studs Lonigan Trilogy–including everything which takes place in the last novel, Judgment Day, occurs when Studs is older than when he was originally said to have died.
There are brother and sister who seem an awful lot like Phoebe and Holden in one of the stories included in Nine Stories, except that they are both about six years older by this time.
As for The Catcher in the Rye and assassinations, there are conspiracy theorists who argue that numerous seemingly unrelated crimes are the work of the same vast and shadowy conspiracy, and an idea has grown up that they sometimes use the novel when training brainwashed assassins.
Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon, and John Hinckley Jr., who attempted to murder Ronald Reagan, were obsessed with the novel. After shooting Lennon, Chapman pulled out his dog-eared copy of the book and read until the polic came. One of them had even considered having his name changed to Holden Caulfield. After their crimes both young men issued a manifesto in which they attempted to justify their actions. Both said that reading Catcher in the Rye had caused them to despise hypocrisy, and had given them the idea to act as they did.
Citing this coincidence, some conspiracy writers have argued that the book was somehow used in “programming” the young men to kill. According to some theorists, Hinkley’s “handlers” were also responsible for his fixation on actress Jodie Foster. (A thought which just occurred to me: in Taxi Driver–the film which is said to have obsessed Hinckley–Robert DeNiro’s character, Travis Bickel, is convinced he has a duty to protect Jodie Foster from the dangers in her life, a bit like a “catcher in the rye”).
In promoting this theory, some writers have made an analogy to The Manchurian Candidate. This novel, and the far better film which resulted from it, concern a man who is brainwashed into being an assassin by “handlers” who train him to respond to the sight of the Queen of Hearts. The two situations aren’t really very similar; in The Manchurian Candidate the man becomes a sort of hypnotized zombie whenever he happens to be shown this card; he doesn’t go around talking about it and staring at it all the time. One can also ask why an incredibly clever, invisible conspiracy couldn’t make the effort to find a second book to use.
In the film Conspiracy Theory, Mel Gibson plays a cab driver who is obsessed with conspiracies, and with the book Catcher in the Rye; he has bought dozens of copies over the years without ever reading it. Eventually he learns that his fascination with conspiracy theories comes from his supressed memories of being trained as an assassin by an evil group which conditioned him to respond to the sight of the book. (I’m not really giving away much of the plot here).