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The Catcher in the Rye has been steeped in controversy since it was banned in America after its first publication. John Lennon's assassin, Mark Chapman, asked the former Beatle to sign a copy of the book earlier in the morning of the day that he murdered Lennon. Police found the book in his possession upon apprehending the psychologically disturbed Chapman. However, the book itself contains nothing that could be attributed with leading Chapman to act as he did it could have been any book that he was reading the day he decided to kill John Lennon and as a result of the fact that it was The Catcher in the Rye, a book describing a nervous breakdown, media speculated widely about the possible connection. This gave the book even more notoriety.
J. D. Salinger was born and grew up in the fashionable apartment district of Manhattan, New York. He was the son of a prosperous Jewish importer of Kosher cheese and his Scotch-Irish wife. After restless studies in prep schools, he was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy (1934 - 1936), which he attended briefly.
When he was eighteen and nineteen, Salinger spent five months in Europe in 1937. From 1937 to 1938 he studied at Ursinus College and New York University. In 1939 Salinger took a class in short story writing at Columbia University under Whit Burnett, founder-editor of the Story Magazine. During World War II he was drafted into the infantry and was involved in the invasion of Normandy. In his celebrated story For Esm With Love and Squalor Salinger depicted a fatigued American soldier. He starts correspondence with a thirteen-year-old British girl, which helps him to get a grip of life again.
Salinger himself was hospitalized for stress according to his biographer Ian Hamilton. After serving in the Army Signal Corps and Counter-Intelligence Corps from 1942 to 1946, he devoted himself to writing. In 1945 Salinger married a French woman named Sylvia. They were divorced and in 1955 Salinger married Claire Douglas, the daughter of the British art critic Robert Langton Douglas.
The marriage ended in divorce in 1967. Salinger's early short stories appeared in such magazines as Story, where his first story was published in 1940, Saturday Evening Post and Esquire, and then in the New Yorker, which published almost all of his later texts. In 1948 appeared A Perfect Day for Bananafish, which introduced Seymour Glass, who commits suicide. It was the earliest reference to the Glass family, whose stories would go on to form the main corpus of his writing. The Glass cycle continued in the collections Franny and J.
D. Salinger was born and grew up in the fashionable apartment district of Manhattan, New York. He was the son of a prosperous Jewish importer of Kosher cheese and his Scotch-Irish wife. After restless studies in prep schools, he was sent to Valley Forge Military Academy (1934 - 36), which he attended briefly. When he was eighteen and nineteen, Salinger spent five months in Europe in 1937. From 1937 to 1938 he studied at Ursinus College and New York University.
After serving in the Army Signal Corps and Counter-Intelligence Corps from 1942 to 1946, he devoted himself to writing. In 1945 Salinger married a French woman named Sylvia. They were divorced and in 1955 Salinger married Claire Douglas, the daughter of the British art critic Robert Langton Douglas. The marriage ended in divorce in 1967. Salinger's first novel, The Catcher in the Rye, became immediately a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and gained a huge international success. It sells still some 250 000 copies annually.
Salinger did not do much to help publicity, and asked that his photograph is not used in connection with the book. First reviews of the work were mixed, although most critics considered it brilliant. The novel took its title from a line by Robert Burns, in which the protagonist Holden Caulfield misquoting it sees himself as a catcher in the rye who must keep the worlds children from falling off some crazy cliff. The story is written in a monologue and in lively slang. It tells about 16 -year old restless Caulfield as Salinger in his youth who runs away from school during his Christmas break to New York to find himself and lose his virginity. He spends an evening going to nightclubs, has an unsuccessful encounter with a prostitute, and meets next day an old girlfriend.
After getting drunk he sneaks home. Holden's former schoolteacher makes homosexual advances to him. He meets his sister to tell her that he is leaving home and has a nervous breakdown. The humor of the novel places it in the tradition of s classical works, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but its world view is more disillusioned.
Holden describes everything as phoney, is constantly in search of sincerity and represented the early hero of adolescent angst. Rumors spread from time to time, that Salinger will publish another novel, but from late 60 s he has succesfully avoided publicity. I like to write. I love to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure, said Salinger in 1974 to a New York Times correspondent. However, according to Joyce Maynard, who were close to the author for a long time from the 1970 s, Salinger still writes, but nobody is allowed to see the work.
Ian Hamilton's unauthorized biography of Salinger was rewritten, when the author did not accept extensive quoting of his personal letters. The new version, In Search of J. D. Salinger, appeared in 1988. In 1992 a fire broke out in Salinger's Cornish house, but he managed to flee from the reporters who saw an opportunity to interview him. Since the late 80 s Salinger has been married to Colleen ONeill.
Maynard's story of her relationship with Salinger, At Home in the World, appeared in October 1998. The Catcher in the Rye is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a sixteen year-old boy recuperating in a rest home from a nervous breakdown, some time in 1950. Holden tells the story of his last day at a school called Pencey Prep, and of his subsequent psychological meltdown in New York City. Holden has been expelled from Pencey for academic failure, and after an unpleasant evening with his self-satisfied roommate Stradlater and their pimply next-door neighbor Ackley, he decides to leave Pencey for good and spend a few days alone in New York City before returning to his parents Manhattan apartment.
In New York, he succumbs to increasing feelings of loneliness and desperation brought on by the hypocrisy and ugliness of the adult world; he feels increasingly tormented by the memory of his younger brother Allies death, and his life is complicated by his burgeoning sexuality. He wants to see his sister Phoebe and his old girlfriend Jane, but instead he spends his time with a girl named Sally Hayes, a shallow socialite Holden's age, and Carl Luce, a pretentious Columbia student Holden treats as a source of sexual knowledge. Increasingly lonely, Holden finally decides to sneak back to his parents apartment to talk to Phoebe. He borrows some money from her, then goes to stay with his former English teacher Mr. Antolini. When he believes Mr.
Antolini to be making a homosexual advance toward him, Holden leaves his apartment, and spends the rest of the night on a bench in Grand Central Station. The next day Holden experiences the worst phase of his nervous breakdown. He wanders the streets, looking at children and talking to Allie. He tries to leave New York forever and hitchhike west, but when Phoebe insists on going with him he relents, agreeing to go back home to protect his sister from the ugliness of the world. He takes her to the park, and watches her ride on the merry-go-round; he suddenly feels overwhelmed by an inexplicable, intense happiness. Holden concludes his story by refusing to talk about what happened after that, but he fills in the most important details: he went home, was sent to the rest home, and will attend a new school next year.
He regrets telling his story to so many people; talking about it, he says, makes him miss everyone. Perhaps the most apparent literary technique used by Salinger in The Catcher in The Rye, is the metaphor. There were several examples throughout the book, some were discreet, and some rather bold. Three examples are these: Holden s hunting hat represents Holden s isolation from society. He loves this hat because it symbolizes his independence from others. The hat, like Holden, is out of place in such a big city as New York.
Holden sees himself as the catcher in the rye when he wears this hat. He tries to articulate this when he says to Ackley, I shoot people in this hat. The hat itself also helps Holden identify himself as a martyr for innocence, since he is often ridiculed for wearing it. As the story progresses, Holden becomes more and more attached to his hat, demonstrating his growing commitment to his fantasy of being the catcher in the rye. New York City is the setting of the story and very fitting because like Holden, the city is constantly changing and transforming, learning new things and finding new experiences. Holden s mind is like the city, always absorbing new experiences but never being able to come to any rational conclusion about them.
Kings in the back row is the concept that Jane would always put her kings in the back row and is very fascinating to Holden. Throughout the story Holden continually references this childhood fascination. The kings show how Holden can t separate his past from his present. Though consumed with many adult ideas, Holden is still captivated with the concept of the kings. After reading Catcher in The Rye, I have thought a great deal about my life in comparison to Holden Caulfield s. The main character did experience a sort of mental breakdown in the novel, but perhaps his views on life were very intuitive.
Although Holden was viewed as extreme at times, and rightfully so, any reader, as I did, can learn something from him. I have just really began to expand my thoughts and take a view from someone else s perspective of the world, such as Holden Caulfield. It has been said by many people that this book can give you a new outlook on life. Well, for me, it hasn t completely changed my outlook on life, but has made me think about other possibilities and other, more extreme ideas such as the ones by Holden Caulfield.
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Research essay sample on Valley Forge Military Academy Holden Caulfield
