The Catcher In The Rye

Like a beautiful sunset, The Catcher In The Rye steals your attention. We all know what happens when the sun sets. The sun reaches the crest of the horizon. The sky burns deep reds and yellows, as the bright clear blue of the day disappears into the flames. It doesn’t last long. Only a few minutes before the inevitable happens. Day turns to night. Light is replaced by darkness. Silence and darkness. There is no sunrise for The Catcher in the Rye.

How ironic that the cover is bleach white with a few rainbow colored lines over the corner (at least on my edition). That is the last glimpse of light or joy before descending into darkness, alienation and despair holding Holden Caulfield’s cold hand. You don’t even feel it coming. Like an old man sliding into a hot bath, JD Salinger leads you into the mind of a major depressive.

Holden’s experience seems so distant and sinister, yet close to home. We were all teenagers once. What scares me most is that I know how he feels. I can relate to his teenage awkwardness. Even now that I’m well into my twenties. I think that there’s a part of Holden that we never really grow out of, and that his character appeals to the darkness and innocence in all of us.

Holden Caulfield sees the world through lens of corruption, infidelity and bad intentions. The only being worthy of trust is a small child, who has not yet jaded by falseness of adult life. His battle to conserve the world’s innocence is doomed to consume him in a great tragedy.

This fall I think you’re riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or, they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So, they gave up looking. They gave up before they ever really even got started. You follow me?

I don’t want to scare you. But, I can very clearly see that you’re dying nobly, one way or another, for a highly unworthy cause.

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark a mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.