The Catcher in the Rye
Despite being one of the most banned classics for its profanity, sexual content, substance abuse and violence (it even played a role in the murder of John Lennon and attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan), The Catcher in the Rye remains a remarkable coming-of-age novel, full of rebellion and teenage angst.
The title itself is a poetic reference to the Scottish Robert Burn’s “Comin’ Thro the Rye”, which the protagonist remembers instead as “If a body catch a body coming through the rye”, substituting “catch” for “meet”. His (mis-)interpretation has him fantasising about himself as a guard to prevent children from running off the cliff when playing in the rye fields, metaphorically describing the loss of innocence when children become corrupted and his instinctual desire to protect children for as long as possible.
Written from the perspective of a confused teenager, the narrative is primarily immature and whiney. The protagonist constantly wanders around meeting new characters — yet remains painfully disdainful everywhere he goes.
“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”
One of the reasons the book is so powerful is perhaps because the protagonist is a shadow of Salinger himself and his PTSD from D-Day and WWII, from wanting to live in seclusion (Salinger actually did so) to the struggles of confronting and coming to terms with reality.
The book reminds us how our perception can change drastically throughout adolescence as the sudden self-awareness and frantic grapple with relationships often lead to confusion. The same feelings we may have started to normalise as we entered adulthood and eventually forgot about. At worst, it’s a prompt to examine your pride and hypocrisy.
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