Manoj Regmi
J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951) is a story of a 16-year-old boy Holden Caulfield. The book revolves around the very desperate, confused, worried and restless condition of Caulfield. Caulfield is the protagonist as well as the narrator of the story. Salinger uses flashback technique throughout the novel and returns to the present at the very end of the book.
Characterization of Holden Caulfield
Holden is the main character and the narrator of the novel. Caulfield’s story begins with his expulsion from his Pencey prep school. According to the narration, we come to know that he had been expelled from his previous schools as well. He is just a teenager but already is very depressed, lonesome, confused, frightened and sickened with the human behavior–especially of the grown ups’ world. As one goes on reading, he/she realizes that there are very few things that fancy him. Whatever is normal for others is not normal for Caulfield. He finds everything very “phony” and “crazy”. He often uses the expressions like “drove me crazy’, “killed me’, etc. to the situation that irritates him. He almost hates everything.
He sounds frustrated with the world. Being fade up with his life, he wants to run away from his school and home all at once. He also has a plan for future. He wants to settle somewhere near the jungle and spend the rest of his life there. He seems sick of everything and everybody related to him, except her sister, Phoebe. He loves her little sister, unconditionally, which Salinger has portrayed very beautifully.
He looks very desperate and restless throughout the novel. He cannot stay in a place for a noticeably long time. Sometimes he cannot stand someone for a long time, and sometimes he irritates them and made them leave. All in all, nobody amuses him. Even if somebody does, it is just for a moment or so. The irony with Caulfield is, when he is with someone, he wants to cut out the moment. And when he feels he is in need of a human interaction and lonesome, he phones and attempts to meet people he has known.
His relation with his two of the teachers—Spencer and Mr. Antolini—also looks very confusing. He meets the former one to say ‘good-by’ before leaving Pencey. And later, he even goes to the Mr. Antolini’s house to have a chat and spend a night in his house, but he leaves the house in the middle of the night finding Mr. Antolini suspiciously patting his hair. He regards him as some kind of “fleet”. So he never goes back.
He looks confused and worried all the time, yet nobody understands his situation. Once he calls his friend, Luce, who amuses him, for a catch up. However, he annoys him by constantly asking about his sex life and all. He warns him but he ignores and keeps on reiterating same thing. As a result of this, he leaves him at the bar all by himself. He even asks very personal questions that people do not like being asked. Like the thing about their relationship with their girlfriends, sex lives and all. Luce also suggests Caulfield to see a psychoanalyst in this meeting.
Caulfield sets up a meeting with this girl, Sally and irritates her as well by asking her to join him to his journey to the west leaving everything behind. He tries to convince her describing everything–even though he has never been serious with her. He tells her about the money he had and how he would work and how they would live a happy life. However, he fails to convince her, too. She also tries to convince him talking about future but fails. This is how he constantly seeks for a company but fails every now and then because of his restless and depressed mentality.
Caulfield has also mentioned about few of his ‘black outs’ in the book. At the very end of the book, he says, “how I got sick and all, and what school I’m supposed to go to next fall….” Based on the description at the very end, we can assume that he is home and is going through some sort of counseling from a psychoanalyst for his unstable and depressed mental condition. However, he also leaves us with a hint that he is not sure if he is joining the new school sometime soon.
Language
Because of the foul and inappropriate language, it has been banned in the different educational institutions in the US for some time. It has got a lot of sexual references. He has also used slangs like “fleets” to refer to homosexuals. He even raises the issues of homosexuality which might have been inappropriate to read and write in the then US society. Likewise, people believed that the words like, “goddam” that is frequently used in the book are offensive to the moral values. Also, the main character being a minor indulges himself into smoking and drinking habits and talks about different sexuality. These issues had obviously been enough to ban the book on the moral grounds.
Title: The Catcher in the Rye:
The title of the book has been derived from the poem by Robert Burns, which Caulfield misinterprets and says, “The body catch a body coming through the rye.” Here he replaces ‘meet’ with ‘catch’, which Phoebe points out. We understand this when we read the conversation between Caulfield and his little sister. This reference is brought when Phoebe asks Caulfield about his future goal. On this remark, Caulfield says, “Anyway, 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 me. And I’m 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 they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be.” (86)
This is how Caulfield expresses his aim of being a ‘catcher in the rye’ and save the children from falling off the cliff. “crazycliiff” here metaphorically stands for “entering the adulthood.’ To be more precise, he wants to stop the children from entering the world of adulthood and keep the innocence they have intact.
The whole book is narrated in flashback technique and before the flashback ends, Caulfield meets his sister before he intends to leave for the west. However, he abandons the plan eventually. Phoebe wants to go with him wherever he goes. He does not want to take her with him and that upsets her. She even cries. Then they go on a walk where they see some children playing carrousels. He knows Phoebe likes carrousels, so he buys a ticket for her with the “Christmas dough”, he has borrowed from his sister the other night. He enjoys the sight of her sister enjoying the carrousels. This is the only situation where Caulfield enjoys the most. That is to say, he enjoys his sister enjoying her innocence being totally unaware of the ‘phonies’ of the mature world. In this context, he says: “I felt so damn happy all of a sudden. The way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don’t know why. It was just that she looked damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could have been there.” (229)
The most beautiful part of the novel is this relationship between Caulfield and his sister, Phoebe. Both of them love each other unconditionally. They miss each other very much. Caulfield always wants to see her in person or at least “buzz” her whenever he feels lonesome and depressed. The events described during Caulfield’s secret visit to his own house in the middle of the night and later out of Phoebe’s school during the recess at the end are the most beautiful parts of this book.
After reading this book, I have realized that some books test your patience to the limit and once you have gone through it, you will realize the beauty of the book. This doesn’t mean that all the books have a very beautiful ending. I was lucky this book had one. In a nutshell, I really enjoyed the “goddam” book and all.
[Manoj Regmi (1987) has passion for writing short stories, both in Nepali and English. He is originally from Pokhara, currently living in Canberra, Australia. He completed his masters’ degree in English from Tribhuvan University in 2012. A few of his stories and book reviews have been published in some of the online portals of Nepal.]