He rents a room in a cheap hotel. He makes arrangements with the elevator operator to have a prostitute named Sunny visit his room, but when she arrives, he becomes uncomfortable and tells her that he just wants to talk to her. Sunny and her pimp, Maurice, demand more money and Holden gets punched in the stomach. He talks to his younger sister, Phoebe, whom he loves and regards as innocent.
He tells Phoebe that he has a fantasy of being the "catcher in the rye" who catches children when they fall off a cliff while playing.
When his parents come home, Holden leaves and travels to his former teacher Mr. Antolini's house, where he falls asleep. When he wakes up, Mr. Antolini is patting his head; Holden becomes disturbed and leaves. The next day, Holden takes Phoebe to the zoo and watches as she rides the carousel: his first true experience of happiness in the story.
The story ends with Holden stating that he got "sick" and will be starting at a new school in the fall. Holden Caulfield. Holden is sixteen years old. Intelligent, emotional, and desperately lonely, Holden is the epitome of an unreliable narrator. He is obsessed with death, especially the death of younger brother Allie. Holden strives to present himself as a cynical, smart, and worldly person. Ackley is a student at Pencey Prep. Holden claims to despise him, but there are hints that Holden views Ackley as a version of himself.
Confident, handsome, athletic, and popular, Stradlater is everything Holden wishes he could be. Phoebe Caulfield. Readers consume volumes of it, and then ask to meet the author. It has also proved to be one of the most enduring of literary emotions, since life manages to come up short pretty reliably. Each generation feels disappointed in its own way, though, and seems to require its own literature of disaffection.
Holden Caulfield is their sorrow king. In art, as in life, the rich get richer. The book keeps acquiring readers, in other words, not because kids keep discovering it but because grownups who read it when they were kids keep getting kids to read it. This seems crucial to making sense of its popularity. Salinger is imagined to have given voice to what every adolescent, or, at least, every sensitive, intelligent, middle-class adolescent, thinks but is too inhibited to say, which is that success is a sham, and that successful people are mostly phonies.
This seems to underestimate the originality of the book. It gives a content to chemistry. Holden talks like a teen-ager, and this makes it natural to assume that he thinks like a teen-ager as well. No teen-ager and very few grownups, for that matter sees through other human beings as quickly, as clearly, or as unforgivingly as he does.
Holden is a demon of verbal incision. He sums people up like a novelist:. He was always asking you to do him a big favor. She was blocking up the whole goddam traffic in the aisle. You could tell she liked to block up a lot of traffic. It was funny. Nobody did.
You had to feel sort of sorry for her, in a way. Big, big deal. He probably broke every toe in her body. He said the play itself was no masterpiece, but that the Lunts, of course, were absolute angels. For Chrissake. Holden is not intended to be a hero in the conventional sense of the word. He is a tragic victim of the crappy world in which he has no control and where no one understands him.
I imagine that in , when this was published, there were those who said "Yes! It's about time someone was honest! This book was just one sign of the impending cultural revolution. That's why it's a classic. Think of it as a brick in the foundation of the revolution to come. What is the message of this book? Why should I know all this useless information about different characters who don't have any effect on the story if I could find any special story also?
Holden simply wants to save his little sister and other kids from proces …more I think, it is about saving innocence, which is also a symbol of childhood. Holden simply wants to save his little sister and other kids from process of adolescence and future adulthood.
Hi wants to be "Catcher in the rye" - the man who saves children from falling, falling into the adulthood. In my opinion it's not about that Holden does'nt want to grow up, he know that ge is growing up right now and he sees how painful and hard it is, so he wants to protect ever little kid from what he finds so harmful.
Just a subjective opinion: less. See all questions about The Catcher in the Rye…. Lists with This Book. Community Reviews. Showing Average rating 3. Rating details. More filters. Sort order. Start your review of The Catcher in the Rye. Jul 01, mark monday rated it it was amazing Shelves: time-to-come-of-age , alpha-team , first-loves , super-private-journal , unicorn , these-fragile-lives , mind-the-gap.
FUCK, life is so full of crap. View all comments. Mar 18, Stephen rated it it was amazing Shelves: children-behaving-badly , literature , , classics-americas , classics.
Admittedly, this is tougher to do with "classics" but it certainly happened in this case. I remember first reading this in school like many of us and not thinking it was anything special.
However, having first read it almost 25 years ago, I knew I had to read it again before I could feel justified in actually reviewing it. I thought maybe I could bag on the less than spectacular prose used by Salinger making myself feel really smart in the process. Or maybe I could take some jabs at the less than exciting narrative pacing and throw in a few references to "watching paint dry".
In the end, I thought my most likely avenue for attacking reviewing this anthem of teen angst was that it was utterly yawn inspiring no longer relevant today because of the GLUT of teen angst that the recent generations have been exposed to ad nauseam growing up. So what happened to all of the preconceived notions I had before I starting reading this book?
Instead, I found myself completely drawn into the rich, nuanced story of Holden Caulfield. I found myself empathizing with Caulfield almost from the beginning something I did not expect to do. His "annoying", "pseudo rebellious" and "just don't care" exterior were so obviously manufactured and so patently hiding a seriously sad and lost boy that I was transfixed on finding the real Holden Caulfield.
Despite the book being written "in Holden's own words" the reader was still able to discern that Holden's surface response to a situation was hiding a much deeper, emotional resposne. Caulfied is lazy. He is stubborn. He is immature. He is unfocused. He is untruthful. He is dangerously short-sighted and he is lost in his own world or unrealistic expectations. Sounds like that could certainly be a not unsubstantial portion of the male 16 year old population.
However, after reading this book, I learned a few other things about Holden that I though were fascinating and that are not as often discussed: 1. He is desperately lonely he even goes so far as ask his cab drivers to join him for a drink ; 2.
He is generous with his time and his things he writes an essay for his roommate despite being upset with him and even lets him borrow his jacket ; 3. He is intelligent despite being lazy and unfocused, Holden displays great insight and intelligence regarding books he has read and displays at the museum ; and 5. Here is a person so afraid of growing up and so averse to giving into the pain and sadness that he sees as the result of becoming an adult that he wants nothing more than to spend his life protecting others from losing the innocence of childhood.
View all 53 comments. Mar 25, Kathy rated it it was ok. I read the end of The Catcher in the Rye the other day and found myself wanting to take Holden Caulfield by the collar and shake him really, really hard and shout at him to grow up. I suppose I've understood for some time now that The Catcher in the Rye -- a favorite of mine when I was sixteen -- was a favorite precisely because I was sixteen. At sixteen, I found Holden Caulfield's crisis profoundly moving; I admired his searing indictment of society, his acute understanding of human nature, his I read the end of The Catcher in the Rye the other day and found myself wanting to take Holden Caulfield by the collar and shake him really, really hard and shout at him to grow up.
At sixteen, I found Holden Caulfield's crisis profoundly moving; I admired his searing indictment of society, his acute understanding of human nature, his extraordinary sensitivity I mean, come on, he had a nervous breakdown for God's sake, he had to be sensitive. At sixteen, I wanted to marry Holden Caulfield.
At forty, I want to spank him. After all, Holden's indictment of society boils down to the "insight" that everybody is a phony. That's the kind of insight a sixteen year old considers deep. A forty year old of the grown-up variety recognizes Holden's insight as superficial and banal, indulging in the cheapest kind of adolescent posturing.
It suggests a grasp of society and of human nature that's about as complex as an episode of Dawson's Creek. Holden and his adolescent peers typically behave as though the fate they have suffered disillusionment and the end of innocence is unique in human history. He can't see beyond the spectacle of his own disillusionment and neither can J.
Salinger ; for all his painful self-consciousness, Holden Caulfield is not really self-aware. He can't see that he himself is a phony. Compare Salinger's novel of arrested development, for instance, with a real bildungsroman, Great Expectations.
Holden Caulfield is an adolescent reflecting on childhood and adolescence; Pip Pirrip is an adult reflecting on childhood and adolescence. Holden Caulfield has the tunnel vision of teendom, and he depicts events with an immediacy and absorption in the experience that blocks out the broader context, the larger view.
Pip Pirrip has the wonderful double vision of a sensitive adult recollecting the sensitive child he used to be; he conveys at the same time the child's compelling perspective and the adult's thoughtful revision of events. While Holden Caulfield litters his narrative with indignant exposes of phonies and frauds, Pip Pirrip skillfully concentrates on "the spurious coin of his own make" -- that is, without letting the child Pip and the adolescent Pip in on the joke, he exposes himself as a phony.
Pip Pirrip grows up. Holden Caulfield has a nervous breakdown. I suppose the only reason I begrudge him his breakdown is that so many in our culture -- many more, unfortunately, than just the legitimate adolescents among us -- seem fixated on Holden as a symbol of honesty and socially-liberating rebellion. We view nervous collapse and dysfunction as a badge of honor, a sign -- to put it in Caulfieldian terms -- that we are discerning enough to see through all the crap.
Equally self-accusing and self-aggrandizing, it captures the adolescent at the precise moment when his own disillusionment becomes the object of his grandiose and self-dramatizing vision. Salinger cannot see through. The Barney beating of several years ago is another symptom of our arrested adolescence, our inability to ride the wave of disillusion into the relatively calm harbor of adulthood -- as though flailing around in the storm and raging at the wind were in themselves marks of distinction and a superior sensibility.
I remember a news story about a woman in a Barney costume being seriously injured when a rabid and probably drunken anti-Barney fanatic attacked the big purple dinosaur at some public event. At the dawn of adolescence, when Barney begins to appear cloying and false, it seems natural to want to beat up on him, as though it was Barney himself who pulled one over on us instead of our own poignant and necessary misapprehension of the nature of things. View all 91 comments. I was worried as hell about reading this book again.
The last time I read it was about a thousand years ago when I was just a kid. I was lousy with angst just like good old Holden back then. I really was. Every time I reread a corny book that I really liked when I was a kid it makes me want to give the writer a buzz and ask what the hell is g I was worried as hell about reading this book again.
Every time I reread a corny book that I really liked when I was a kid it makes me want to give the writer a buzz and ask what the hell is going on. You would just end up talking to his butler or some snobbish person like that and asking if they would give the writer your message.
The thing with guys like that is that they will never give writers your messages. Turns out this is still a damn good book. Salinger kid is a great writer. He really is. The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything.
It really is. They really are. Dec 26, Shana rated it did not like it. I read this book for the first time in the 8th grade. I had to get my mom to sign a permission slip because of the cursing. Before I began reading, I had so many expectations. Back then, I read Seventeen Magazine , and back then, Seventeen Magazine ran brainy features about books and poetry. There was one feature where they asked people what book changed their lives, and something like more than half said Catcher in the Rye.
I think there might have been some celebrity comments in there, too. At I read this book for the first time in the 8th grade. At any rate, it was a ringing endorsement. So you can imagine my disappointment when I hated it. Not only did I hate Holden, but I hated everything about the novel.
There was nothing I enjoyed. I did my book report where I confessed my hatred which led my teacher to confess that she did, too , but I couldn't let it go. I honestly felt that my loathing of a novel that so many others found "life-changing" indicated some deep and horrible flaw. I felt like hating Catcher in the Rye was my dirty little secret. Time passed, and my self-loathing mellowed. I began to think that perhaps I'd come at it too young, so after my first year of college, I decided to re-read it, go at it with fresh eyes, and see if my opinion had changed.
Here's the thing: it hasn't. I get it. I get that Holden is supposed to be loathsome. I get that he is the hypocrite he hates. I get that almost all teenagers go through the kind of thinking he experiences. I just don't like it. Oh, and I'm not ashamed anymore. Aug 04, Cheyenne rated it did not like it. Edit: stop liking and commenting on this review. It's And the book is still shit. If I could give this book a zero, I would.
I absolutely hated it. Generally, I don't hate books, either. Usually it's a very strong dislike, and generally, I give them a second chance. But no, I will never be reading this book again. In my opinion, Holden is the worst character in the English language. Salinger tried just too damn hard to make him 'universal', to the point where he becomes unrealistic. His trai Edit: stop liking and commenting on this review. His train of thought is annoying and repetitive, and God, those catchphrases of his.
Can someone shut this kid up? Holden is almost the anti-Gary Stu. Nearly every thing's wrong with him. The one good thing about him being his love for his younger sister. The plot is one of the worst I've ever read. It's boring, and it, like Holden, is unbelievably and painfully repetitive. Holden calls up an old friend, has a drink. Holden calls up a girl, has a drink. Holden dances with a girl.
Then he drinks. Was there a climax to this book? I must have missed it. Maybe it was Holden nearly freezing to death um, what? No, no, maybe it was when Holden called up that hooker! Maybe not. The plot is so fuzzy and flat I couldn't tell when to peak my interest. And that's just it, it never did. So buh-bye, Holden! Your book's been gathering dust on my shelf for the past two years and it'll stay that way. Until I decide to sell it, of course. My theory as to this book's unusually polarizing nature: either you identify with Holden Caulfield or you don't.
Those who see themselves either as they were or, God help them, as they are in Holden see a misunderstood warrior-poet, fighting the good fight against a hypocritical and unfeeling world; they see in Salinger a genius because he gets it, and he gets them. Those of us who don't relate to Holden see in him a self-absorbed whiner, and in Salinger, a one-trick-pony who lucked into perform My theory as to this book's unusually polarizing nature: either you identify with Holden Caulfield or you don't.
Those of us who don't relate to Holden see in him a self-absorbed whiner, and in Salinger, a one-trick-pony who lucked into performing his trick at a time when some large fraction of America happened to be in the right collective frame of mind to perceive this boring twaddle as subversive and meaningful.
View all 90 comments. Sep 24, Madeline rated it did not like it Shelves: the-list , kids-and-young-adult , ugh. I will give it to anyone who can explain the plot of this book or why there is no plot and make me understand why the hell people think it's so amazing. View all 74 comments. Oct 23, Kat rated it it was ok. View all 64 comments. May 26, J. Sometimes truth isn't just stranger than fiction, it's also more interesting and better plotted. Salinger helped to pioneer a genre where fiction was deliberately less remarkable than reality.
His protagonist says little, does little, and thinks little, and yet Salinger doesn't string Holden up as a satire of deluded self-obsessives, he is rather the epic archetype of the boring, yet self-important depressive. I've taken the subway and had prolonged conversations on the street with prostitutes n Sometimes truth isn't just stranger than fiction, it's also more interesting and better plotted.
I've taken the subway and had prolonged conversations on the street with prostitutes not concerning business matters , and I can attest that Salinger's depiction is often accurate to what it feels like to go through an average, unremarkable day. However, reading about an average day is no more interesting than living one.
Beyond that, Salinger doesn't have the imagination to paint people as strangely as they really are. Chekhov's 'normal' little people seem more real and alive than Salinger's because Chekhov injects a little oddness, a little madness into each one.
Real people are almost never quite as boring as modernist depictions, because everyone has at least some ability to surprise you. Salinger's world is desaturated. Emotions and moments seep into one another, indistinct as the memories of a drunken party. Little importance is granted to events or thoughts, but simply pass by, each duly tallied by an author in the role of court reporter. What is interesting about this book is not that it is realistically bland, but that it is artificially bland.
Yet, as ridiculous a concept as that is, it still takes itself entirely in earnest, never acknowledging the humor of its own blase hyperbole. This allows the book to draw legions of fans from all of the ridiculously dull people who take themselves as seriously as Holden takes himself. They read it not as a parody of bland egotism but a celebration, poised to inspire all the bland egotists who have resulted from the New Egalitarianism in Art, Poetry, Music, and Academia.
Those same folks who treat rationality and intellectual fervor like a fashion to be followed, imagining that the only thing required to be brilliant is to mimic the appearance and mannerisms of the brilliant; as if black berets were the cause of poetic inspiration and not merely a symptom. One benefit of this is that one can generally sniff out pompous faux intellectuals by the sign that they hold up Holden as a sort of messianic figure.
Anyone who marks out Holden as a role-model is either a deluded teen with an inflated sense of entitlement, or is trying to relive the days when they were. But what is more interesting is that those who idolize Holden tend to be those who most misunderstand him. Eventos Disal. Trabalhe conosco. Minas Gerais. Distrito Federal. Rio Grande do Sul. Rio de Janeiro.
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