The Catcher in the Rye Book Review

For those of us who have ever wanted a vacation from the “phonies” of this world, J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is the perfect book. Originally published in 1951 by Little, Brown and Company, the fictional novel is narrated by Holden Caulfield. He is a teenager who has just escaped from his boarding school, Pencey Prep. As he travels home, he undergoes self-discovery in an ever-changing way. Some of the themes, in fact, are self-awareness and the thin line between sanity and insanity. In my opinion, Salinger wrote a phenomenal book for those who can understand the caustic humor.

Holden is a self-admitted atheist, madman, and liar. Throughout the book, he tries to connect with several people, some of whom he is not particularly fond of, and fails. He reflects multiple times on people he has known, such as his siblings, people he had known from Pencey and elsewhere, and especially a girl named Jane Gallagher, who he had once been friends with. He decides he wants to find his sister Phoebe, who he considers among his favorite people. One of the trips he takes himself on is to a museum he had heard she recently visited. He notes that although he has not been to the museum in years, it has stayed the same, seemingly frozen in time. However, he sees that he has changed, and not for the better. Upon his return home, he speaks with his sister, then leaves and continues to drift until he falls ill, which brings him to the rest home where he has been telling his story from the start.

The Catcher in the Rye is more multifaceted than many people give it credit for. Holden’s ramblings on many subjects are not simply random rants, but instead they are the wavering thoughts of a youth trying to keep his head together. Whenever he tries to connect with someone, he loses a piece of sanity in his failure, even if it was not a person of great interest. Among these people are Stradlater, Sally Hayes, and Carl Luce. After each encounter, Holden’s desperation for a personal connection increases, and he falls closer and closer to the point of insanity. When I first started reading the book, I was astonished at what meaning can truly be drawn from the musings of a sixteen-year-old. Many books make teenagers out to be single-minded beings with little to no heart or valid thought. Because of, and not in spite of, the rambling and seemingly unwise and irrational decisions Salinger’s character makes, his book is incredibly memorable and unquestionably a classic. Some points he makes through Holden are that maybe everyone is crazy, and that when one truly looks inside oneself, one may not quite recognize what he or she finds, and will need to introspect very deeply to understand what he or she has run into. Otherwise, people end up drifting through life, holding onto memories for sanity. I agree with this argument, and other authors such as Jodi Picoult and Lois Lowry have used similar themes in their novels. The larger issue at hand comes down to self awareness, and if we really know who we are. In reading Salinger’s novel, I was both delighted and saddened, but always interested in what would happen next, and the ambiguous conclusion to it leaves readers to their own interpretations of what will become of Holden.