A book review on 'The Catcher in the Rye' By J.D.Salinger

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A book review on ‘The Catcher in the Rye’

By J.D.Salinger

    This book is about a few days in the life of Holden Caulfield, At the beginning of the book Holden is expelled from his private school, ‘Pency’.  This is just one of many schools he has been expelled from.  Holden decides that, as the school term is about to break up, he would go to New York City for a few days until he is expected home.  So off he sets one night wearing his hunting hat that Holden loves because it represents independence from others.  He jumps on a train and goes to the big city.

    Holden Caulfield is the main character in this novel; he is a typical adolescent boy.  Holden is much more than a troubled teen going through "a phase”.  Holden is a very special boy with special needs.  He doesn’t understand and doesn’t wish to understand the world around him.  In fact most of the book details his guilty admissions of all the knowledge he knows but wishes he didn’t.  Though his innocence regarding issues of school, money, and sexuality has already been lost, he still hopes to protect others from knowing about these adult subjects.

    Holden, unlike the usual fictional teenager, doesn’t express normal rebellion.  He distrusts his teachers and parents not because he wants to separate himself from them, but because he can’t understand them.  In fact there is little in the world that he does understand.  The only people he trusts and respects are Allie, his deceased brother, and Phoebe, his younger sister.  Everyone else is a phony of some sort.  Holden uses the word phony to identify everything in the world, which he rejects.  He rejects his roommate Stradlater because Stradlater doesn’t value the memories so dear to Holden (Allie’s baseball glove and Jane’s kings in the back row) The kings in the back row are the kings on a checkers game that Jane would never move when she played with Holden one summer.  This is also shown when Stradlater says ‘’For chrissake, Holden.  This is about a goddam baseball glove.’’  Here, Stradlater rejects the paper Holden has wrote for him, he is also unknowingly rejecting Allie (Holden’s dead brother) this hurts Holden deeply, contributing to his self-frustration.  This is shown in chapter 4 when Holden says ‘’Ask her if she still keeps her kings in the back row’’, this quote demonstrated Holden’s childlike nature, though he is 16 years old and in high school he is still captivated by his early memories.  Even Ernie, the piano player, is phony because he’s too skilful.  Holden automatically associates skill with arrogance (from past experiences no doubt) and thus can’t separate the two.  Even Holden’s most trusted teacher, Mr. Antolini, proves to be a phony when he attempts to fondle Holden.  Thus the poor boy is left with a cluster of memories, some good but most bad.

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     Yet because of these memories, Holden has developed the unique ability to speak frankly (though not well spoken) about the people he meets.  Though he seems very skeptical about the world, he is really just bewildered.  His vocabulary often makes him seem hard, but in fact he is a very weak-willed individual.  Holden has no concept of pain, and often likes to see himself as a martyr for a worthy cause.  This is proven after the fight with Maurice, after which he imagines his guts spilling out on the floor.

     The end of the book ...

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