J. D. Salinger’s novel, The Catcher in the Rye , was published in 1951. The novel is narrated by Holden Caulfield, a seventeen year-old boy who has just been kicked out of his fourth school, Pencey Prep School. The novel starts with Holden attending classes at Pencey, but he becomes increasingly anxious and decides to drop out of school after struggling to sit through an entire day’s lessons. He runs away from acad emy without permission or packing any bags, so people assume he committed suicide after running away.
Having no other alternative plans, Holden decides to spend the next few days alone in Manhattan while also getting drunk on whiskey throughout the night and roaming around for hours without purpose. During these nights, he watches children playing in a nearby park and criticizes them for their childishness. He also goes to bars with fellow drinkers, where he is free from the pressure of having to make small-talk with strangers since these people are already drunk.
While roaming around New York City, Holden meets a couple of teenagers named Carl Luce and Mr. Antolini. Carl invites Holden back to his apartment while Antolini offers him money to stay at his place for the night because Holden tells him about how miserable he is living by himself in an unhygienic hotel room. While both men only want the best for Holden, they do not realize that he does not care about other people’s good intentions and rejects their well-wishes.
Another person Holden meets is a prostitute who goes by the name Sunny. Upon meeting her, he tries to have sex with her but fails due to his inexperience and awkwardness. However, they become friends afterwards, as Sunny seems to understand Holden’s personality more than others because she has been taught how to deal with those types of people from her job as a prostitute. One night after drinking together, Sunny gets so drunk that she vomits on herself and falls asleep without cleaning herself up first. This grosses out Holden and reminds him about death – an aspect that becomes increasingly present in the novel.
The Catcher in the Rye tells the story of Holden Caulfield through a series of flashbacks as he reflects on his childhood experiences and how they’ve gotten him into this situation where he is now an inmate at a school called Pencey Prep. J. D. Salinger uses a mix of first and third person point of view to tell the story which I found highly effective for numerous reasons…
The entire book is wrapped up in symbolism, most notably that child catcher that Holden sees at the Central Park carousel just before he leaves Pencey Prep. The symbol is so important to J. D. Salinger’s work because it relates to Holden himself and his situation with his brother Allie who died when they were young from leukemia…
In this day and age, J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye isn’t discussed all too often but back in its time it was a best seller and it continues to be taught in high school classrooms across America today as a piece of classic American literature…
The novel was originally under a title ” The Young Folks” but J. D. Salinger later changed it to The Catcher in the Rye .
When J.D Salinger began writing The Catcher In The Rye , he originally wanted Holden Caulfield’s age to be 16, but revised his decision and changed his age to 17 years old since he didn’t want Holden Caufield to seem too young for what happened to him in the story.
J.D Salinger claimed that he wrote The Catcher In The Rye after being released from a mental institution, where he felt people misunderstood him considered him crazy because of his knowledge of many different topics. J. D Salinger believes that his mental breakdown was the reason why he refused to do interviews or tours for The Catcher In The Rye.
J.D Salinger is an American writer and poet and is most famous for writing The Catcher in the Rye , which has been translated into almost all of the world’s major languages and has sold over sixty million copies. J.D Salinger born on January 1, 1919 in New York City and died at age 91, surrounded by family on Wednesday January 27, 2010 at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire after a lengthy illness.
J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is a novel with a very controversial history and many critiques written about it, but what does this novel mean to us as individuals? Many people read J.D. Salinger’s novel The Catcher in the Rye in high school or college, and most feel some sort of connection with Holden Caulfield, the main character of J.D. Salinger’s classic book, The Catcher in the Rye.
In my own experience reading this book for AP English Literature senior year of high school, I loved it from page one all the way through to its last sentence on the last page – that famous ending that J.D. Salinger leaves us readers hanging off to the end of time. J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye has given me a different outlook on life, an appreciation for literature, and an insight to J.D. Salinger as a writer that I didn’t expect when I first opened up the novel itself back in high school.
The Catcher in the Rye is J.D Salinger’s best known work, written under his given name Jerome David Salinger. J.D.’s book was instantly popular amongst young adults across America after its publication by Little Brown and Company on July 16, 1951, even though J. D.’s book had critics against it with its detailed vulgar language and J. D’s infamous main character Holden Caulfield. J. D.’s novel was received with negative reviews by The New Yorker, Saturday Review of Literature , and Time Magazine. J.D’s book had many supporters as well, however; J.D.’s book was on the bestseller list for twenty-one consecutive weeks (Cash 35).
J.D.’s novel is about a young man named Holden Caulfield who has just been expelled from his school Pencey Preparatory in Pennsylvania for poor grades and lack of effort put forth in class (Stray 66). J.D.’s main character Holden takes us through an intimate journey of himself throughout his days before he leaves Pencey to come home to Manhattan.
Shortly after J.D.’s protagonist arrives in Manhattan , he gets a job at the fictional The Edmond Hotel and has many adventures throughout J.D.’s novel while attempting to tell his younger sister Phoebe what he’s been up to in the midst of running away from Pencey (Stray 76). J. D.’s character Holden eventually leaves Manhattan and travels back up North to Andover in hopes that J.D.’s protagonist can go back to school there one day, but J.D.’s protagonist isn’t able to return since he misses too much class (Stray 94).
J. D.’s protagonist then goes on a train ride through Pennsylvania and explains how people across America live their lives with no direction whatsoever, just like they’re doing nothing more than just “catching” a train ride (Stray 104). J. D.’s protagonist continues his journey and eventually gets picked up by an old man in a red Hunting hat who takes J.D.’s character to J.D.’s refuge The Edmond Hotel once more where J.D’s main character plans to spend his days until J.D.’s protagonist realizes he should go home and apologize to J. D.’s parents for everything, even though J.D.’s protagonist knows what will happen if he goes back home (Stray 109).
