The Catcher in the Rye, J.D.Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye, J.D.Salinger

This is my second reading of the famous Salinger novel. The first one was a little bit disappointing to me, especially because it wasn’t in the original language (and the translated result loses a lot of its substance) and that I was a little too young to savor the style. It is therefore, to my mind, a real rediscovery.[pic 1]

Holden Caulfield is a disillusioned and relatively marginal adolescent. After yet another dismissal (because he collects its) from Pencey College, in no hurry to know the reaction of his parents, he decides to run away without warning. Then follows three days of wandering in New York, between funny meetings and disillusions, the hero tells us about his doubts, his past, his difficulties on a humorous and casual tone. It is a story told by Holden himself, who recalls his misadventures which seems to have led him to an internment.

Published in the 1950s, it was the superficial American Dream that is vitriolic attacked: a desire for superficial and meaningless success where the ultimate consecration translates into the purchase of a

“cadillac”. The adult world is full of people just as "phony" as each other.

Beyond the context, it is a more universal theme that is raised, the loss of innocence and the disarray in the face of changes in existence.

An additional pressure weighing on Holden who ignores what he wants to become. Because he is going through this troubled period of adolescence, this phase of transition between childhood, a paradise not yet lost that he already regrets and an adult world which is emerging and he is rejecting with apprehension.

The title (inspired by a poem by Robert Burnes), moreover expresses this feeling, when he evokes his desire to protect children from the fall of a cliff in the fields of rye. The fall is engulfed by the adult world and its hassles. He also remains on this cliff, with the lucidity on the risks when we fall. It’s a fairly marked Peter Pan syndrome, reinforced by his adoration for his younger sister "Old Phoebe" and his dead brother who will never grow up anymore. “Nobody’d move… Nobody’d be different. The only thing that would be different would be you.”

We find, more prosaically, other inherent subjects of reflection in this pivotal moment. The relationship with others, in all its complexity and contradictions, punctuates the monologue offered by Holden. In the rejection of others, the young man's deep solitude is striking, he spends his time desperately seeking contact with his fellows. He offers regularly to share a drink with everyone who has met. He is refused every time. His cynical judgments seem like an awkward way to better protect himself from the sight of others.

Object of fascination and fear, sexuality and the relation with the body occupy Holden’s mind. He is not the only one in this case, we know that adolescence and its boiling hormones bring its own upheavals and complexes. Attention to detail, obsession with hygiene, Holden is not very comfortable and doubts of his power of seduction while he shares his room with an annoying belligerent. The little miseries get huge for the teenager who is not half-hearted, with funny exaggerations and exacerbated emotions.

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