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The Praises and Criticisms of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye Ever since its publication in 1951, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye has served as a firestorm for controversy and debate.
Critics have argued the moral issues raised by the novel and the context in which it is presented. Some have said that Salinger's tale of the human condition is fascinating and enlightening, yet incredibly depressing. The psychological battles of the novels main character, Holden Caufield, serve as a basis for the novel. Caufield's self-destruction over a period of days forces one to contemplate society's attitude toward the human condition. The portrayal of Holden, which includes incidents of depression, nervous breakdown, impulsive spending, sexual exploration, vulgarity, and other erratic behavior, have all attributed to the controversial nature of the novel, yet it also gives readers a critical look at the problems facing American youth during the 1950 s, and possibly still today.
The first step in reviewing criticism of The Catcher in the Rye is to study the author himself. J. D. Salinger was born in 1919 and grew up in the fashionable apartment district of Manhattan, New York, as 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. 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, who 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 the following years. In 1955 Salinger married Claire Douglas, the daughter of the British art critic Robert Langton Douglas.
They were divorced in 1967. Before his novel, J. D. Salinger was of basic non-literary status, having written for years without notice of the public. This novel was his first step into the real literary world.
This initial status left Salinger as a serious writer, almost unique in that he was not bound to critics opinions. This ability to write freely, with a status as a nobody in literature, was Salinger's greatest asset. Salinger is noted for what he is: a beautifully deft, professional performer who gives us a chance to catch a quick, half-amused, half-frightened glimpse of ourselves and our contemporaries, as he confronts us with brilliant mirror images (Stevenson 217). Much of Salinger's reputation, which is acquired after publishing The Catcher in the Rye, is derived from thoughtful and sympathetic insights into both adolescence and adulthood, his use of American morals and traditions, and his writing style.
While the young protagonist of Salinger's story has made him a longtime favorite of high school and university audiences, The Catcher in the Rye has been banned continually from schools, libraries, and bookstores due to its profanity, sexual subject matter, and rejection of traditional American ideals. One of the most widespread criticisms of this novel deals with the adolescence and repetitive nature of the main character, Holden. Anne Goodman commented that in the course of such a lengthy novel, the reader would grow weary of a character like Holden. Goodman wrote, Holden was not quite so sensitive and perceptive as he, and his creator, thought he was (20). She also remarked that Holden was so completely self-centered that any other characters who had wandered through the book, with the exception of Phoebe, had no worth at all. Goodman did have a point in the fact that Holden was something of an over-developed character, and he remained strictly in character throughout the story.
Salinger failed to address other characters with as much detail as Holden. This is probably due in part to the fact that Holden is the narrator of his own story, and also to the idea that a story told by Holden would never describe others, because of his self-centered ness. Although Goodman makes a good point, she fails to address the fact that Holden is telling this story from a doctors office, where he is held for having a mental breakdown. He is different in the opening scene of the novel, as in the final one, because he has been receiving help for his mental problems. Holden is undoubtedly pretty different at these times than how he was when he was actually experiencing the events he is recounting. Some critics have argued that Holden's character is erratic and unreliable, as he possesses too many of the societal values he claims to reject.
Later commentators, however, have praised the wry humor of Holden, and the skilled mockery of verbal speech by Salinger. These critics have commented that the structure of the novel personifies Holden unstable state of mind. Alastair Best remarked: There is a hard, almost classical structure underneath Holden's rambling narrative. The style appears effortless; yet one wonders how much labor went into those artfully rough-hewn sentences (id. in Davis 318). It seems as if Salinger purposefully made his character speak the way he does to give us a window into Holden's mind.
Holden is obviously educated and from a pretty wealthy family. So that he speaks the way he does gives the reader insight to his mental state at the time of each event. The Catcher in the Rye is a breakthrough in American literature, not because it tells the tale of an adolescent, but because it does it in a way never before seen in the 1950 s. Paul Engle praised the book in noting that it was not merely another account of adolescence, complete with general thoughts on youth and maturing. Engle wrote, The effort has been made to make the text, told by the boy himself, as accurate and imaginative as possible. In this, it largely succeeds (3).
Engle's viewpoint is one that is echoed by many, including myself. The Catcher in the Rye is not simply a coming-of-age novel with usual twists and turns, but rather the unique story of the harrowing journey from adolescence to adulthood. As Engle wrote, The story is engaging and believable... full of right observations and sharp insight, and a wonderful sort of grasp of how a boy can create his world of fantasy and live forms (3). This novel is, in essence, Holden Caufield's melodramatic struggle to survive in the adult world, a transition he was supposed to make during his years at a prep school.
Holden has flunked out of three prep schools, and that may symbolize that he is not truly ready for adulthood (Davis 318). David Stevenson commented that the novel was written as the boys comment, half humorous, half agonizing, concerning his attempt to recapture his identity and his hopes for playing a man-about-town for a lost, partially tragic, certainly frenetic weekend (216). Many of the problems that Holden faces throughout the book come from his misconceptions about adulthood. An example is shown in Holden's relationship with an old schoolmate, Luce. Although the older man is more experienced that Holden, he is not as mature as Holden believes him to be. There is also Sunny, the prostitute.
Holden expected a call girl to be older, more mature. Yet Sunny was barely as old as Holden himself. When Holden begins to feel overwhelmed, he flees to Phoebe, the only person whom he completely trusts (Davis 318) and a symbol of innocence and purity in the eyes of Holden. His innocence, his hunger for stability and permanence, make him both a tragic and touching character, capable of making dark activities on the surface seem silly below. In her review of the novel for the New York Herald Tribune, Virginia Peterson commented on Holden's innocence. Peterson wrote that Holden was on the side of angels, despite his contamination by vulgarity, lust, lies, temptations, recklessness, and cynicism.
But these are merely the devils that try him externally, she wrote, inside, his spirit is intact (3). Holden does not tilt against the entire world, for he knows that some decent people still remain, nor does he loathe his contemporaries, for he hates to leave them. An important part of the novel, as well as the part where it gets its title from, is when Holden tell Phoebe about his dream of being a catcher in the rye: I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around-nobody big I mean-except for me. And I am standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff.
I mean if theyre running and they dont look where theyre going I have to come out of somewhere and catch them... Id just be the catcher in the rye and all... (id. in 3; Salinger 173). In a way, this quotation shows how Holden feels a lack of love in society.
He wants to be a professional lover of children. Whereas he aims at stability and truth, the adult world cannot survive without suspense and lies. It is a testament to his innocence and decent spirit that Holden would place the safety and well-being of children as a goal of his lifetime. This serves to only reiterate that Holden is a sympathetic character, a person of high moral value who is too weak to pick himself up from a difficult situation. S. N.
Behrman, in his review for the New Yorker, also took a sharp look at Holden's personality. Behrman found Holden to be very self-critical, as he often refers to himself as a terrible liar, a madman, and a moron. Holden is driven crazy by phoniness, an idea which he lumps under insincerity, snobbery, injustice, and callousness. He is a worrier, and someone who is moved to pity quite often. Behrman wrote: Grown men sometimes find the emblazoned obscenities of life too much for them, and leave this world indecorously, so the fact that a 16 year-old boy is overwhelmed should not be surprising (71). He also labels Holden as curious and compassionate, a true moral idealist whose attitude comes from an intense hatred of hypocrisy.
The novel opens in a doctors office, where Holden is recuperating from a physical illness and a mental breakdown. In Holden's fight with his roommate Stradlater, he reveals his moral ideals: he fears his roommates sexual motives, and he values children for their sincerity and innocence, seeking to protect them from the phony adult world. Jane Gallagher and Allie, the younger brother of Holden who died at age 11, represent Holden's everlasting symbols of goodness (Davis 317). When critics consider the character of Holden, many point to the novels final climactic scene, when Holden watches as Phoebe rides the Central Park carousel in the rain, and his illusion of protecting the innocence of children is symbolically shattered.
Critics regard this episode as Holden's transition into adulthood, for although the future is uncertain, his severed ties with the dead past have enabled him to accept maturity. S. N. Behrman noted in his critique that the hero and heroine of the novel, Holden's dead brother Allie and Jane Gallagher, never appear in it, but they are always in Holden's mind, together with his sister Phoebe. These three people constitutes Holden's emotional frame of reference-the reader knows them better than the other characters Holden encounters, who are generally, except for Phoebe, non-essential (71). One of the most intriguing points in Holden's character, related to his prolonged inability to communicate, is Holden's intention to become a deaf mute.
So repulsed is he by the phoniness around him that he wishes not to communicate with anyone, and in a passage filled with personal insight he contemplates a retreat within himself: I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in peoples cars. I didnt care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didnt know me and I didnt know anybody. I thought what Id do was, Id pretend I was one of those deaf mutes. That way I wouldnt have to have any goddamn stupid useless conversation with anybody. If anybody wanted to tell me something, theyd have to write it on a piece of paper and shove it over to me.
Theyd get bored as hell doing that after a while, and then Id be through with having conversations for the rest of my life. Everybody would think I was just a poor deaf mute bastard and theyd leave me alone... Id cook all my own food, and later on, if I wanted to get married or something, Id meet this beautiful girl that was also a deaf mute and wed get married. Shed come and live in my cabin with me, and if she wanted to say anything to me, shed have to write on a piece of paper, like everybody else (Salinger 198). Holden's inability to communicate with others is also represented symbolically in the uncompleted phone calls and undelivered messages which appear throughout the novel...
On fifteen separate occasions, Holden gets the urge to communicate by phone, yet only four phone calls are ever completed, and even those have unfortunate results. A quote by Charles Kegel seems to adequately sum up the problems of Holden Caufield: Holden is in search of the Word. His problem is one of communication; as a teenager, he simply cannot get through to the adults which surround him; as a sensitive teenager, he cannot get through to other his own age (54). Kegel also commented that the novel could be read as Holden's quest for communicability with his fellow man, and the heros first person after-the-fact narration indicates... he has been successful in his quest (355). John Aldrige wrote that in the end of the novel, Holden remains what he was at the beginning-cynical, defiant, and blind.
This may be Salinger's intent, as Holden's world does not possess sufficient understanding of society to make the search for humanity drastically feasible (131). However, a slightly more optimistic view of the novels conclusion is what seems to me to be what Salinger had in mind. For example, Behrman remarked that Holden knows that things will not remain the same; they are dissolving, and he cannot allow himself to reconcile with it. Holden does not have the knowledge to trace his breakdown or the mental clarity to define it, for all he knows is that a large avalanche of disintegration is occurring around him (75). Yet there is some sort of exhilaration, an immense relief in the final scene at Central Park, when we know Holden will be all right. Charles Kegel wrote that Holden will not submit to the phoniness of life, but will attain an attitude of tolerance, understanding, and love which will make his life endurable (56).
In the end, The Catcher in the Rye will continue to be a point of great public and critical debate. One must remember, however, in the study and critique of the novel, the story was written in a different time. If originally published today, the novel would probably create little publicity and make only average book sales. The fact that a novel of such radical social opinion and observation was written in a time of conservatism in America made it all the more controversial.
Some critics scolded the novel as being too pessimistic or obscene, too harsh for the society of the 1950 s. Others, however, have nominated Salinger himself as the top-flight catcher in the rye for that period of American history (Peterson 3). They argued that Salinger's concerns represented an entire generation of American youth, frustrated by the phoniness of the world, just like Holden was.
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