first, I would like to say, I did indeed search on this topic for archives on the matter, seems the message boards are goofed up for me or really slow at this point. Anyway, I really like the debated threads that come up in posts anyway, so I hope you people can help me out. In high school I never paid attention enough to even read the catcher in the rye, or if I did, I sure do not remember it. I am 26 now and re-read it over the past 2 days. It was a nice read, rather simple, easy to get throught, and certainly not a regret, but I just do not get it. I have a few questions…
Why is this book so well known, even mandatory high school reading if I recall correctly, seems to me if I were to write a pasage out of a few days of my life, I could create about the same thing, did I mess the whole godamn point on this one.
I found only toward the end of hte book, when his sister asked him what he really liked, he said he wanted to be a catcher in a rye field, is they the significance to the title, is there more, I am having a hard time understanding why that was used as the title, seems like nothing to me…could have been “prostitute offered in elevatror” if you ask me, I must have missed something here as well.
So I guess my real bottom line is why all the hoopla about this book, it was nice, not great to me, I persoanlly liked it couse I could realte to Holden a bit.
Why have a heard that some serial killers really like this book, thanks for all your responses, they are always very helpful
Well, you’re supposed to read it when you’re sixteen, not 26. The sense of alienation that Holden expresses (at tiresome length) is, indeed, a psychological event that huge numbers of teens pass through. This means that his ranting strike a bit of a responsive chord among many teens. (I’m not claiming that an adult is not capable of reading and enjoying it, only that the visceral reaction to the work is best experienced when one is, oneself, going through similar feelings.)
(And, of course, since the publishers actually chose not to edit out the word fuck (as written by the author), it tends to be seen as evil by a certain segment of the population, making the reading of it more appealing to those who hear that the bokk has been banned on several occasions.)
(Query: is this more suited to the Cafe Society Forum?)
You didn’t miss much. I read it at 16, and I hate it with intense passion.
The symbolism of “The Catcher in the Rye” is that Holden wants to stop the kids from going over the cliff and becoming adults (read: phonies.)
Indeed, the killer of John Lennon, Marc Chapman, did have some sort of attachment to the book (I heard he had Lennon autograph his copy it hours before he killed him.) My guess would be that they identify with Holden Caulfield a bit too much, and become militant against “phonies.” But I don’t think that The Catcher in the Rye has ever been the sole/major reason that anyone committed a homicide, just part of the serial killer’s profile.
Thanks for the reply Tom, the irony of the situation, is when I was 16, I was too busy acting and thinking like Holden to have any desire to sit down and read any book that my school told me to. But your comment on the word “fuck”, as far as I recall, the only reference to it is when Holden is talking about his disgrace for it as grafitti on a wall, so he was against it all together, how can that be appealing to the angst of a teen? And is this the reason it has been banned, is it being banned today, or is this all from a long time ago, I mean literally there are tenny-bopper magazines out there with profanity in them.
I did indeed read it in high school. Hated it. I was totally pissed at my teacher for making us read it.
Skip forward a few hundred years…
I read it again at age twenty-eight. Still hated it, but understood it a tiny bit better. Didn’t have a teacher to go off on, but still…
Skip forward a few more hundred years…
Decided I was a dip. Re-read it again at age thirty-six. Hmmm…this DOES suck. I hated Mrs. Hortenstein with all my might and had she not already been dead I would have put out a contract on her Phi Beta Kappa ass.
Yes, it’s good literature. Yes, I can say, without a doubt, I have read it. Yes, I get it. But I thought it was horrid. With or without the F-word. In fact, I probably would have enjoyed it much more with that word intact, although I’d never have gotten to read it had Mrs. Hortenstein known it was there.
oops, almost forgot one more part I did not get, quite a bit was gone into in regards to Holden not feeling well in the end, stomach ache, almost pucking, passing out, etc, nothing really explained as to the cause of it all, as well as the odd feelings of anxiety he experienced as crossing the street downtown, is there more to be had surrounding those comments, or is it just some random unimportant event.
Same goes for the part about the 5 or 10 dollor whore, it seemed pretty clear that she was a 5 dollar whore, not a 10, is there more to that as well. Perhaps all the attention to this book is making me want to take it for more than face value, it seems it is simply a simple count of a few days of a kids life, no more, no less, but then it makes no sense to me as to why any school would make it a mandatory read. Seems to me a better assignment would be to read Catcher in theRye, then go out and write something better on your own.
Holden could have “written” an entire chapter opposing the word fuck; the fact that the word was printed at all is what angered various parents. It may not currently be banned anywhere, but it has had calls for its banning as recently as the 1990s.
Hmm, one of my favorite books. i think the whole book’s “point” is summed up nicely in a single paragraph. the one where HC mmets with that male teacher and the teach gives a little speech about “You’re headed for a fall…”
Interesting idea… “Never trust a man with the initials ‘H.C.’” ~~ Hagbard Celine
And here I absolutely loved it. I think the inanity, as some of you have put it, is essential: How many of us have great thoughts, and spend time on them? Nobody. We have mundane thoughts that are reflections of our life, not great thoughts that our lives become reflections of. So being able to see how a Salinger or a Hemingway looks at the mundane is to see how a Salinger or a Hemingway thinks. Which I think is great and definitely worth reading.
Good grief! What this thread has really brought home is that I have no recollection whatsoever of what’s in that book! I remember reading it, because I know it was assigned reading back when I was in high school and because my stepmother was a high-school English teacher at the time it was assigned to me, and she thought I’d like it. I remember laying on a couch at a friend-of-the-family’s house reading the danged thing.
But, and this is where the “good grief” really comes in, I’d honestly have to go find a copy of the book just to verify, for myself, that the main character’s name was, indeed, “Holden Caulfield.”
That’s how memorable the story was for me. I remember the color of the couch, and the book - both brown - while the actual story is completely lost.
I read this book in high school, at about 15 or 16, and loved it. I read it again recently and, although I didn’t hate it, it certainly meant a lot less to me the second time.
I think that the really important thing is the whole idea of alienation. A great deal of the time, we as adults look at teenagers as just hormone crazed freaks. But Holden is trying to show us the other side of that. Sure, its a pretty average kids life, but his angst and his confusion are so real they ring true for a lot of teenagers. Holden is caught in between being a child and being an adult, at a scary time in his life. Yes, he’s old enough to get into a bar to drink, to try to sleep with a prostitute, to wander around NYC on his own, but really he doesn’t know what he wants. He doesn’t know how to deal with the prostitute wanting more money, he doesn’t really know if he is ready to lose his virginity, he is lost and lonely.
Holden tells us about the death of his brother, and the death of a fellow student by suicide. He has been through a great deal and is still young, but it seems that his school and parents have given up on him, there is nowhere left for him to turn. I think if nothing else one can take from this that you never know what another person has been through.
I think the part about him not feeling well, etc., is just to drive home his anxiety. He is making a big decision, the desicion to step over into the responsible world of adulthood (thus his symbolic trip across the street). He says at the end that he wanted to be The Catcher In The Rye, preventing other people from the pain of growing up. But when he watches his sister on the merry-go-round, he comments about her reaching for the ‘brass ring’; this is his realization that it is impossible to stop the inevitability of growing up, and that every life contains pain and suffering, without which there would be no meaning.
Sorry if this is really long-winded. I think I used up all my brain cells remembering things like the plot details of this book, which would explain a lot about my life.
I think it’s one of those books where you had to be there.
I just want to reiterate the point made by tomndebb in his first post: It is a book written for mid-teens, about being a mid-teen and probably, IMHO, holds more resonance for males less equipped to communicate their age related angst.
It certainly hit me like a bolt of lightening when I read it at that exact age.
Also, I’d add that the style and general accessibility of the book made a huge impression on me at the time - in retrospect, it all seems so tame, even predictable but back then the complimentary discordant themes (style, characters, plot devices, etc.) opened up to this naive country boy an entirely new creative world.
Er, that is the point. Do you think it’s easy to create a fictional voice that sounds like any ordinary teenager, going through ordinary experiences, and make it entirely believable?
Give it a try – using what you can recollect of your own adolescence – and you’ll see.
Even though I’m not a big fan of Catcher in the Rye, I’ll definitely agree with Fretful Porpentine on this one. It does sound authentic, and that alone is worth it’s consideration as a masterwork.
It is almost inconceivably hard to tell a story in a voice other than your own and have it come out sounding right. If you’ve never done any writing, you can be forgiven for not understanding this intuitively.
But your comment on the word “fuck”, as far as I recall, the only reference to it is when Holden is talking about his disgrace for it as grafitti on a wall, so he was against it all together, how can that be appealing to the angst of a teen? And is this the reason it has been banned, is it being banned today, or is this all from a long time ago, I mean literally there are tenny-bopper magazines out there with profanity in them.