How (and Why) to Read The Catcher in the Rye
Against the critics
J.D. Salinger’s most popular novel receives a lot of negative criticism. In part, this is the lot of being an author’s most popular novel. I was just on a podcast with Mike Cosper where he admitted to not liking Moby Dick. I’ve heard other people complain about The Great Gatsby. Popular works draw more readers, and the more readers you have, the more chances there are that someone will dislike what you wrote. In the case of The Catcher in the Rye, the criticisms tend to center around the main character, Holden Caulfield, and his self-indulgent, pretentious, cynical whining. In general, readers either sympathize with Holden or hate him, and since he is the narrator, they end up judging the novel as a whole. What I want to argue here is that The Catcher in the Rye is actually a beautiful novel about a young man traumatized by his younger brother Allie’s death and a fear that the contemporary world has no room for innocence, purity, beauty, or love. Holden desires something transcendent to hold onto. Something or someone pure, someone who isn’t putting on an act. Yet he knows that he is guilty of putting on an act and being impure, so he loathes himself. The result is a lot of self-criticism and criticism of others. But all this cynicism is really a manifestation of a desire to love. And by the novel’s conclusion, Holden does realize he loves people, he can have grace for people, even though they are imperfect. But it takes an epiphany about innocence.1
The central problem that Holden faces is coping with his brother’s death, which we are not introduced to until the fifth chapter when he decides to write an essay for his roommate about Allie’s baseball glove. Holden did not process his brother’s death well. We learn that the night Allie died Holden broke all the windows in the family’s garage with his hand (which he also broke) and his parents almost had him psychoanalyzed. In particular, Holden looks back on his brother as someone “nice,” which is a Salinger way of saying “pure” or “innocent” or even “beautiful” or “holy.” The fact that leukemia took something innocent from the world seems profoundly immoral and wrong to Holden and has made him cynical.
But he still loves beautiful and innocent things. For example, when he finds out his roommate Stradlater is taking his old friend Jane Gallagher out on a date, he tells the story about how she used to play checkers with him and keep all her kings on the back row just because she liked the way they looked. While his roommate is thinking about sexual things, Holden is reminiscing about a simple, innocent, beautiful quirk of an old friend. It’s not the Holden doesn’t have sexual thoughts himself, he does. In fact, this is part of his dilemma—that he is becoming an adult who cannot be trusted to be innocent anymore. My point is that in this case he is focusing on the beauty of the innocent.
Later in the novel he buys his sister Phoebe a record called “Little Shirley Beans” because he knows it will bring her joy. The thought of giving it to her makes him tremendously happy. He deeply desires to protect her innocence as he could not protect Allie’s. He ends up breaking this record after he gets drunk, but he gives it to her anyway in an act of love, and she cherishes it. There are numerous other little moments of beauty and innocence in the novel like this. They tend to be drown out by the cynicism, but they are there.
The titular scene in the novel captures his desire to cope with the trauma of his brother’s death by saving everyone:
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.
He knows he’s not a worthy protector of children, with his drinking and swearing and smoking and sexual desires. But he doesn’t trust other adults. And not without cause. Near the end of the novel, one of his former teaches tries to molest him in his sleep. Part of the reason he doesn’t trust adults is that he is becoming an adult and he knows the kinds of desires and flaws they have, and he longs for the innocence of childhood.
In chapter 25, he goes to the school to give a note to his sister to meet him at the museum when he sees that someone has written some profanity (specifically the “F” word) on the side of the building. He fantasizes in graphic detail about catching the person and killing them. His desire for justice is inordinate, but underneath it is this longing to protect children. He doesn’t want children to learn about sex too young. He wants them to stay innocent and protected. So he scrubs off the profanity. This is his way of being a “catcher in the rye.”
Holden’s epiphany comes at the end of the novel when he meets his sister and she climbs onto a carrousel.
She ran and bought her ticket and got back on the —dam carrousel just in time. Then she walked all the way around it till she got her own horse back. Then she got on it. She waved to me and I waved back. . . . 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 so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all.
A key to this passage is Phoebe’s independence. She buys the ticket herself, finds the horse herself, and waves to her brother from a distance. In this moment, although he does not consciously realize it, Holden comes to accept that he does not have to be the catcher in the rye. He can let go and allow her to go around and around on her own. And she will be beauty and “nice” on her own. Something transcendent happens to him in this moment. He recognizes his finitude and accepts it.
But he’s not “cured,” not in the eyes of the authorities or his parents at least, since they send him to be hospitalized after this episode. I don’t think that takes away from what he has objectively learned from his epiphany. I think it just means that the adults still don’t understand.
So why read this novel? The more I read this novel, the more compassion I have for Holden and for all those who suffer trauma from childhood experiences and from the realities of adults who abuse their power. But I also appreciate the depiction of the awkward transition from childhood to adulthood, how the rise of sexual desire in a hyper-sexualized contemporary world can smother the innocence of childhood. This hasn’t changed since 1951. With the massive expansion of pornography, it has only grown worse. As a Christian, I appreciate the desire for some transcendent source of love and purity and security that can ground Holden. It’s a basic human desire we all share. While Holden does not ultimately find it in God, I do. His conclusion is correct. We can’t be catchers in the rye. As noble of a goal as it is, as much as we want to protect all the children in the world from harm, it’s not our responsibility to protect everyone. We can’t do it. God has to be the one. He has to. And we have to let kids grow up and take risks. Finally, I, personally, love the voice of Holden. I think Salinger perfectly captured the voice of someone who knows he is depraved and pathetic and lost, but longs for love and security.
If you read this and reread The Catcher in the Rye and still don’t like it, that’s fine. But I hope I’ve given you something to consider. And at least now you know why I love to use italics.
There’s nothing novel in this reading of Salinger, but it might help some readers.
The funny thing is that even though I was a literature major and love books, because I didn't go through the normal school system, I've actually never read Catcher despite having nothing really against the idea of it. I have a lot of these weird blind spots (I haven't actually read Gatsby either). Actually it may just be that my blind spot is 20th-century American novels, I skewed so heavily into 19th century and British-French-Russian novels. I only finally got around to reading Huck Finn because I was teaching it to a class of high schoolers.
Interesting. I had been told not to read this book because it’s “bad”— so I never did. Your analysis is insightful and, maybe I should attempt to read? I can tell you that I also know I’m not nearly as smart and well read as you are to pick up on all its deeper meaning/implications. Thank you for sharing.