Do people think of Holden Caulfield when there's a school shooting? My mind automatically goes to that final scene, with Phoebe going round and round on the carousel and Holden "damn near bawling."
Each one of those kids killed in Connecticut was a delicate, vulnerable human being. As were the adults. In The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger was saying that we should be aware and protective not just of children but of all mankind. He finished the book after returning from war: Utah Beach at Normandy, The Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of a concentration camp and working in military intelligence, where he interrogated battle-scarred and wounded enemy soldiers. He'd been hospitalized from "battle fatigue," militaryspeak of the period for a nervous collapse.batman Bruce Wayne childhood trauma holden caulfied ptsd Robin Rosenberg superhero The Catcher in the Rye
Every year, a few teachers and students grumble that The Catcher in the Rye is outdated and irrelevant, but for most the book will remain forever a warning that we need to be vigilant not just our children from school shootings, but all of mankind, from danger of every source. We need to look out for each other. We're in this together.
We would have fewer cases of teenagers going postal if CATCHER were used to teach about mental illness. Like John Voss in EMPIRE FALLS, and John Bender in the cult film, BREAKFAST CLUB, Holden Caulfield shines a golden light on the teenager in crisis.
Try and view CATCHER as less about teenage coming-of-age angst and more about a kid struggling against the downward spiral of a mental breakdown. Without professional help Holden was doomed to submerge and did, ending up in a "rest home."
Holden was barely "holdin' on."
Teenage angst is a gross oversimplification of Holden Caufield's erratic behavior. It us Salinger's masterfully rendered array of extreme symptoms that is largely responsible for the success of the book. But it's too complicated or too sensitive for most English teachers to talk about mental illness; so they focus on the simple and obvious.
As an undergraduate in the '60s I could barely get through CATCHER. I didn't care about some crude spoiled preppy kid who couldn't get his act together. In a word, I was clueless. Unguided, a lot of people will react to the book in this way. That's what a teacher is for, to shine a little light now and then.
Holden is a fictional character, but the book is autobiographical, and a careful reading provides valuable insight into the human condition because of it.
Clues into the psyche of J.D. Salinger can be found in the film FINDING FORESTER, whose reclusive main character, played by Sean Connery, is based on Salinger. In a 1953 interview with a high-school newspaper, Salinger said that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical: "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book ...it was a great relief telling people about it."
In rereading the book last fall it appeared to me that Holden was suffering from PTSD stemming from the death of his brother and from witnessing the suicide of a schoolmate who bailed out of a dorm window wearing the sweater Holden had loaned him. I researched and listed the symptoms: depression, poor concentration, attention deficit, crying, uncontrollable rage, lack of motivation, self-isolation, sleeplessness, etc.
(I'm intimately familiar with these symptoms because my own PTSD diagnosis stemming from childhood trauma.I get Holden's struggle. I live with that same feeling that I need to save kids from danger. I had to watch boys get horrific beatings in the orphanage where I spent the last nine years of my childhood. It's this compulsion to protect children that drives my own writing.)
Salinger, when writing CATCHER wouldn't have had a clue about PTSD, as it wasn't even in the diagnostic manual (DSM) for psychologists until decades later. He was just writing what he felt, blasting his feelings onto paper and letting the chips fall.
Still, the story is pretty advanced for the average reader under twenty years of age. In high school, a teacher would need to do a good bit of student preparation. There's too much going on with too little background. For example, the book is sparse in setting description. Someone who hasn't experienced an urban living environment or hasn't lived in a dormitory will have trouble visualizing most of the scenes.
By addressing the mental health aspects of The Catcher in the Rye, teachers have a phenomenal opportunity to reach kids who are in crisis or who know of someone who is.
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