Salinger's Catcher

The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger

The Catcher in the Rye was quite an enjoyable read. For all who are fearful of extremely long reads, this one is quite a short one and is packed full with reasons why it is a classic. I know this was a Year 11 high school text in the English syllabus but I never did mainstream English so, here I am ticking a must-read off my list.


Much like Franklin's My Brilliant Career, I absolutely hated the narrator of TCR, Holden Caulfield. The consistently pre-assumed judgements he makes on people are ridiculously irritating despite how it makes reading the book so much quicker. After reading several analyses on this novel, I've concluded that Salinger's attempt at dealing with youth relations and issues are quite exaggerated and dramatic. That being said, a normal teenager's life would probably be too mundane to base a novel on. 


Salinger's use of stream of consciousness is extremely effective in this novel. As the novel is written in first person, it is debatable as to how reliable Caulfield is as a narrator. His biased perspectives on people and self-proclaimed 'better person' makes it difficult for me to sympathise with him being kicked out of Pencey. He claims others are such phonies, and that he but in saying so, reflects the exact image upon himself. Using this narrative technique is extremely clever of Salinger in highlighting the flaws and issues Caulfield is struggling with as he deals with aging and the events in his life. 


Despite how much I disliked Caulfield however, I did thoroughly enjoy the novel as a whole. It  was engaging and the plot developed in a slow and steady manner, just how I like it. Sometimes I feel a clear climax is too unrealistic, which is why I suppose I am drawn towards longer reads or slower-paced novels. But that is just sometimes. 


There's a part in the novel I thoroughly enjoyed reading and I thought I would share it with you readers. Allie is Holden's brother and he is someone I feel who brings Holden back to his senses a little even though he has passed away. 


"When the weather's nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie's grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. In the first place, I certainly don't enjoy seeing him in that crazy cemetery. Surrounded by dead guys and tombstones and all. It wasn't too bad when the sun was out, but twice- twice- we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That's what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on the radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner- everybody except Allie."


Caulfield talks a fair bit about what drives him crazy throughout the novel, but when I read that, I felt his anger and the significance of his frustration. And after that, I didn't put down the novel until I got to the end.