The Catcher in the Rye in Boxall's 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die

Nov 08, 2010 M rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library, read-in-2010, favorites

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Prior to reading this book I had heard it was polarizing. Either you love it, mainly because you are a teenager and fully identify with Holden Caulfield or you hate because you are older and would like to shake Holden by his shoulders and shout at him. The only thing I knew it was about a teenager in a red hunting hat.
Well, after reading it I cannot say I belong to any of the two groups. I really liked Catcher, but I am far from my teenage years and I am not in love with Holden Caulfield. I have Prior to reading this book I had heard it was polarizing. Either you love it, mainly because you are a teenager and fully identify with Holden Caulfield or you hate because you are older and would like to shake Holden by his shoulders and shout at him. The only thing I knew it was about a teenager in a red hunting hat.
Well, after reading it I cannot say I belong to any of the two groups. I really liked Catcher, but I am far from my teenage years and I am not in love with Holden Caulfield. I have been reading some reviews at Goodreads to see what was that love or hate thing and I think most of them are childish rants made by people who oversimplify this book or fanboy stuff by youngsters who also oversimplify it, but in the other direction.
I lack the background for this novel to fully hit on me, but I honestly believe this is not a teenage manifesto - I don't think this could ever be representative of teenagers around the world. Nor do I think it romanticizes teenage angst.
I suppose everyone knows this, but this is my review: it all starts when Holden Caulfield, a 16 yo, starts telling you how he spent a couple of days after he was expelled from his school. At first, he seems to be the typical careless son of a more-or-less-rich family, that studies at an expensive private school but doesn't have any concerns about his education or future. I've known quite a few of those types in my short life, and I can understand how one would be angry at this character and consider it whiny. However, as the story advances, Holden unwraps his problems and you see him spiral down to a depression and burning out that ends with him in hospital.
Of course you have a lot of teenage angst in the book and vacuous (even offensive!) conversation, most of it dealing with sex. And I think the language is appropriate. Holden is a teenager, and as such he is on the verge of adulthood and sexual awakening - so in a way he is mourning the loss of innocence through (what would be to some readers) some meaningless episodes. Like that involving the prostitute and the pimp at the hotel, for example. He wants to be older, so he agrees to have this girl sent to his room, then he realizes that is not what he really wants, and then, when he is alone after being beaten, he starts 'horsing around', faking he has been shot. Holden always intertwines approaches to adulthood with childish behavior. In his own words, he would like to stick some things in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.
But Holden is oversensitive to these things, he overreacts. Because the fact is that this is not a regular teenager, Holden is dysfunctional. He has not got over the death of his brother Allie and he has not found anybody to talk to about him. He, then, feels out of place at home and in society, and he cannot focus on anything deemed important by other, because the important thing to him is his brother is dead. That is his real loss of innocence. I think that is why he wants to be the catcher in the rye (although I didn't fully understand the symbolism or the connection with the actual poem by Burns). I also think that incomprehension about his choice of Allie's mitten as a subject for composition is what really triggers the crisis, mixed with regular jealousy.
At the end of the book, Holden is still in hospital. He has not got over everything yet, but you can see some hope. He let his younger sister grow (when he doesn't do anything about his fears of Phoebe falling off the carousel) and he thinks he will apply when he goes back to school.

I think Salinger wrote a masterpiece. ...more

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Oct 11, 2008 Cynthia Paschen rated it liked it

Shelves: the-list

I don't know how many times I read this in middle school. It seemed very poignant at the time. Re-reading it as an adult, I still like it but it's not the same. This is by definition a young adult novel, from before the day that term was used. ...more

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