Nowadays there are a lot of young people who don’t pay any attention to moral principles. If something is “cool” or “fashionable” even if it’s not good in their opinion that is still the way they want to be because if it has been adopted by society and many other people have accepted it, why should they differ? It’s necessary for them to be alike otherwise it would be difficult to be an equal member of society.
But of course there are exceptions for whom their motto is “ to be the way they are “. They don’t want to lose their own personality because the most important thing for them is their principles. They can’t stand pretentiousness and falseness.
So as for Holden himself he really wants to be sincere with people, he desires to talk about his life without any concealing and showing off. When he starts his narrating he has no intention to pretend and that’s why he tells the readers the whole truth about his brother being a famous and talented writer but at the same time he calls him “ a prostitute” meaning by that his ability to sell his talent for money.
Holden wants to have a contact with the whole world, he makes attempts to express everything that is going on in his soul. But the way he does it ( in a rather rude way, mixing up his confessions with teenage slang and irony ) makes the book unique and it makes the connection between the reader and narrator deeper so one can easily forgive Holden for being rude because he’s “alive”.
Being so open it’s rather difficult for Holden to deal with his mates. “ It’s all pretentiousness and falseness “ – that’s the way he determines his school and all its social group. In Holden’s opinion the ideals and purposes which his mates follow in life are “really phoney”. He doesn’t know how to live and what to believe in. But one thing is clear – he doesn’t want and simply can’t live like others.
His relationships with his room-mate Stradlater don’t seem to be good either. Stradlater is a boy of very good looks and always worries about his appereance because he is madly in love with himself. He likes to show off a lot because this is the way he can self-affirm himself in life and show his superiority. Stradlater likes others to watch him, admiring his beauty so that he feels important and satisfied.
He is rather stupid and narrow-minded though because he asks Holden to write an essay for him. But even in this case he wants to be superior and to show his intellectual abilities, pointing out to Holden where to put comas. He is not bothered about the things Holden tells him, he is not even insulted when Holden plays rather unpleasant jokes on him. The only thing he can do properly is to humiliate and to pretend.
A “ normal “ society is preoccupied with every day routines, it wants to derive benefit from everything and everybody, it is absorbed with material success. So it sounds absolutely ridiculous when Holden asks innocent and sincere questions about ducks in the Central Park when the water in the lake is frozen or when he is interested whether Jane still leaves the king in the back row while playing chess. People that surround him do not wish to know about these ducks or chess, saying to Holden that there are much more important things in life. Of course partly it is true but only partly: showing the indifference of Holden’s conversationalists to ducks Salinger takes into consideration the wider situation. The whole society is aggressive to everything that is rather reasonable.
Holden constantly desires to be doing something, he can’t keep still but all his attempts to be active and “ alive” have no results. It seems as if all that he wants to do is impossible or unreal.
He goes with a fencing team to New York and leaves the equipment on the subway and by this action he upsets his mates. He says good bye to his ex-friends shouting “ good night, morons “ but at the same time nearly falls down and breaks his neck. Holden writes an essay for Stradlater on the wrong topic and then being upset with his ungrateful attitude, tears it into small pieces. He buys Phoebe her favourite disk but accidentely breaks it and hands her only the splinters. And that’s the way he is. Only in his dreams is Holden the master of his situation. Only deep down in his soul is he brave enough to give short shrift to old Maurice, to catch children in the rye, to have a good relationship with a stomach-turning society. But in reality everything is different. It seems as if the whole society takes vengeance on Holden for his arrogance and doesn’t want to submit to him.
To further complicate matters, Holden’s awareness isn’t limited to the unpleasant side of the people around him. Holden is also aware that on a level deeper than his annoyance he cares for the people that are making him so miserable. That may be the source of what he calls “ cowardice “ throughout the novel, but it comes consciously and clearly at the end, “ About all I know is, I sort of miss somebody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance.” Holden comes to self-awareness of his outlook in his meditations on Harris Macklin. He initially sees Harris as one of the millions of guys “ that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars … that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf … that are very mean … that never read books … that are very boring” but then he remembers how great a whistler Harris is, and Holden’s concluding thoughts are, “ They don’t hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they are secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows? Not me.” Here Holden’s thoughts are a blip of light in a very dark account because he’s willing to consider, for just a moment, that the majority of the world’s morons and phonies may have something human that has been suppressed for some reason.
In all Salinger’s characters we can’t see any understanding. The best episode which proves that is when Holden says good bye to Mr. Antolini. Probably we can reproach Holden with his disobedience and disrespectful behaviour – he yawns at a very inappropriate moment then he feels tired, uninterested and he suspects the teacher of being so that he runs away without realizing where to but deep down in his soul he knows that it’s wrong. Actually the teacher is right but the thing is at that very moment Holden doesn’t need either reasonable advice nor his compassion. Mr. Antolini is so infatuated with his eloquence that he doesn’t see the state Holden is in. But when at last the teacher wants to help him Holden doesn’t accept it. Maybe this is not a very important thing but it shows the way people treat each other in society in general.
Talking about the name of the book, I think the rye here is a symbol. It is a symbol of growing into an adult life which is full of problems, difficulties and many negative moments. The rye is a limit between a child’s world, the world of kindness and sincerity and an adult’s world, which is full of lies, pretentiousness and conflicts.
For Holden children are the world of light and hope because at this very age they can’t lie, pretend or to seem better than the way they actually are. In Holden’s mind children symbolize that ideal world in which he wished to see all other people. Children are the only hope for saving the most valuable things that are in his soul. Holden doesn’t want them to grow up quickly, he wants them to remain innocent and honest. That is why he says to his little sister Phoebe that he wants to “be a catcher in the rye”, a standing guard over children playing in a rye field. Presumably he wants to keep them from going over the edge and falling into a phony, moronic adulthood.
This isn’t too different from Holden’s desire to rub all the “ Fuck you” off every wall in the Museum of Natural History. The point is not that someone wrote it on the wall. For Holden the main point is that little kids walking through the museum could see it.
However these desires reveal his own faults . When Holden feels lonely he calls an old acquaintance from college Luce. During their conversation Luce tells Holden that he ‘s got an immature mind. This is a good description of Holden and his behaviour. He is immature, very sensitive and reflective. Throughout the book Holden reflects on the people and situations around him. But largely these reflections are negative and critical. He is unable to successfully communicate with and get on with the people around him. He sees only the worst side of their characters and consequently rejects them. Holden can only find good qualities in children. His own relationships with others era like those of a child, but his behaviour is not child-like which is innocent but rather childish which is trivial and sometimes spiteful.
Of course we, the readers, like Holden. He respects innocence, honesty and he has a fine sense of humour and that makes him a likeable character. But although he respects honesty and innocence he himself is no longer an innocent child. He has grown into a young adult. But his to deal with adulthood and the people around him shows him to be immature.
Some interesting questions arise from reading the book.
Firstly, I wonder how revolutionary or shocking the novel appeared to the early 50’s American public when it first came out in 1951. Holden’s laziness, his depressive character, lack of ambition and weariness with life must have seemed shocking to post-war America. That society was confident and optimistic in the post-war years and reading about a teenager such as Holden with his whole life ahead of him but with such little hope or interest in the future must have been hard to swallow.
Secondly, the whole tone of the book is informal. The use of a first person narrative means using informal language, slang and swearing. Expressions such as “ beat it” instead of go, “ it killed me” meaning I loved it, “ stuff”, “ babe”, “ flitty” are all street language which must have seemed unconventional for a novel of 1551. In addition Holden swears a lot. So, was it acceptable at that time for a novel to use such words as “ son of a bitch”, “ Jesus Christ” and “ Goddam” ?
Thirdly, is the novel autobiographical? When reading the book, I often wondered about Salinger’s life and if he was drawing from his own experiences. The character of Holden is so well portrayed that it seems difficult to believe that there isn’t something of the author in Holden, is there?
