[Spoiler at paragraph 12]
Some readers of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, have expressed frustration with the book, complaining that it has no plot or they have trouble relating to the spoiled, whiny rich kid narrator, Holden Caulfield. If you are among this crowd, read on. I had the same response when I first read it in 1964 at age nineteen.
Does it make sense to you that Holden was so traumatized by the deaths of his brother, Ailee, and his dorm-mate, James Castle, that he couldn't function? Today's diagnosis would be PTSD. Do you know anyone with that condition? If you did, you would recognize the symptoms in Holden.
Has anyone close to you died? Do you get it that people can be so torn up over the loss of a loved one that it takes them years to get over it unless they get professional help, if even then?
Does the book make sense to you knowing that Salinger himself spent time in a mental ward for "battle fatigue" during World War II after participating in the Normandy landing at Utah Beach, where he could see men, some perhaps close friends, cut to pieces and blown apart by German machine guns and artillery. He was also at the horrific Battle of the Bulge and other engagements, large and small, where American troops were decimated.
Salinger was among the first Allied soldiers to visit a concentration camp. He saw emaciated bodies piled up to be burned. Skeletal human remains were strewn about. The starved liberated prisoners were walking skeletons. "You could live a lifetime, Salinger told his daughter, "and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose."
Does it make sense to you that someone who had experienced what Salinger had might acquire a heightened sense of compassion for his fellow man and want to protect the innocent and vulnerable? Doesn't it make sense that he could relieve his pain by creating a character like Holden to express those feelings?
And doesn't this deeper perspective make the teenaged angst explanation of the book seem superficial, even dismissive?
Holden was almost seventeen and confronting the complications of life without much input from his parents, who themselves were probably still consumed by grief over Allie's death. Holden makes it clear on multiple occasions how alone he feels. PTSD could have made him edgy, jaded and negative.
All of life can be viewed from opposite poles, positive or negative. "Phony" is a term denoting a level of judgment that Holden's juvenile mind is too inexperienced to understand that people put up a social front often for valid reasons, with good intent. It's a defense mechanism, a tool for social navigation. Every human being has a public persona they polish to show the world, when deep inside they are scared little children or have other phobias or hangups.
The irony is that Holden thinks he is being cool by calling out the phoniness, when he has only skimmed the surface of humfan understanding. But at the end of the book he lets down his own defenses, "practically bawling" as he sits on the bench in the rain watching his sister Phoebe on the carousel: "She just looks so nice," he says, "in her blue coat, going around and around."
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is playing as the carousel turns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2di83WAOhU (As sung by The Platters a few years later.) Here are the opening lines: "They, asked me how I knew, our true love was true. I of course replied, Something here inside, Can not be denied."
The book is rich with deep insight into the humanity of an adolescent boy striving to understand the adult world he is growing into while weighed down by unresolved grief over the deaths of a brother and a friend. He is [spoiler] pulled back from the brink of running away by the innocence and unconditional love of Phoebe.
Reading the book fifty years after my first experience, I could see that Holden's were happy tears because he could not deny the love of his devoted little sister, who had just fought furiously for his well-being. Because of her he got the mental health care he so desperately needed, in a cushy "rest home" in California, where his big brother could see him every weekend.
What can be greater than discovering you are loved and not alone?
The Catcher in the Rye is not so much a book for young adults or teenagers, although it is promoted that way because of Holden's age. The themes of compassion and mental illness and redemption are more adult in nature. The popular academic focus on teenage angst barely scratches the surface.
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Some readers of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, have expressed frustration with the book, complaining that it has no plot or they have trouble relating to the spoiled, whiny rich kid narrator, Holden Caulfield. If you are among this crowd, read on. I had the same response when I first read it in 1964 at age nineteen.
Does it make sense to you that Holden was so traumatized by the deaths of his brother, Ailee, and his dorm-mate, James Castle, that he couldn't function? Today's diagnosis would be PTSD. Do you know anyone with that condition? If you did, you would recognize the symptoms in Holden.
Has anyone close to you died? Do you get it that people can be so torn up over the loss of a loved one that it takes them years to get over it unless they get professional help, if even then?
Does the book make sense to you knowing that Salinger himself spent time in a mental ward for "battle fatigue" during World War II after participating in the Normandy landing at Utah Beach, where he could see men, some perhaps close friends, cut to pieces and blown apart by German machine guns and artillery. He was also at the horrific Battle of the Bulge and other engagements, large and small, where American troops were decimated.
Salinger was among the first Allied soldiers to visit a concentration camp. He saw emaciated bodies piled up to be burned. Skeletal human remains were strewn about. The starved liberated prisoners were walking skeletons. "You could live a lifetime, Salinger told his daughter, "and never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose."
Does it make sense to you that someone who had experienced what Salinger had might acquire a heightened sense of compassion for his fellow man and want to protect the innocent and vulnerable? Doesn't it make sense that he could relieve his pain by creating a character like Holden to express those feelings?
And doesn't this deeper perspective make the teenaged angst explanation of the book seem superficial, even dismissive?
Holden was almost seventeen and confronting the complications of life without much input from his parents, who themselves were probably still consumed by grief over Allie's death. Holden makes it clear on multiple occasions how alone he feels. PTSD could have made him edgy, jaded and negative.
All of life can be viewed from opposite poles, positive or negative. "Phony" is a term denoting a level of judgment that Holden's juvenile mind is too inexperienced to understand that people put up a social front often for valid reasons, with good intent. It's a defense mechanism, a tool for social navigation. Every human being has a public persona they polish to show the world, when deep inside they are scared little children or have other phobias or hangups.
The irony is that Holden thinks he is being cool by calling out the phoniness, when he has only skimmed the surface of humfan understanding. But at the end of the book he lets down his own defenses, "practically bawling" as he sits on the bench in the rain watching his sister Phoebe on the carousel: "She just looks so nice," he says, "in her blue coat, going around and around."
"Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" is playing as the carousel turns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2di83WAOhU (As sung by The Platters a few years later.) Here are the opening lines: "They, asked me how I knew, our true love was true. I of course replied, Something here inside, Can not be denied."
The book is rich with deep insight into the humanity of an adolescent boy striving to understand the adult world he is growing into while weighed down by unresolved grief over the deaths of a brother and a friend. He is [spoiler] pulled back from the brink of running away by the innocence and unconditional love of Phoebe.
Reading the book fifty years after my first experience, I could see that Holden's were happy tears because he could not deny the love of his devoted little sister, who had just fought furiously for his well-being. Because of her he got the mental health care he so desperately needed, in a cushy "rest home" in California, where his big brother could see him every weekend.
What can be greater than discovering you are loved and not alone?
The Catcher in the Rye is not so much a book for young adults or teenagers, although it is promoted that way because of Holden's age. The themes of compassion and mental illness and redemption are more adult in nature. The popular academic focus on teenage angst barely scratches the surface.
# # #
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