The Catcher in the Rye question

After two readings thirty years apart and a great deal of study and analysis, here are my insights into the book.

The teenage years are when we reject our parents and look for answers outside the family/extended family circle of comfort and trust. They've lied to us about Santa Claus and the Boogey Man; what else have they been lying about? We've begun noticing their flaws and started looking elsewhere for answers. We want to be prepared for life, for making our own decisions. The hypocrisy (phoniness) within our formerly godlike inner circle of family has discredited them. Who can we trust? Where are the answers? And so today we pick up books like Dianetics and Atlas Shrugged and Hunger Games.

What I've not seen replicated elsewhere in literature is the concentrated depth and breadth of the book's socio-cultural footprint. Through the protagonist/narrator's interactions with a host of minor characters we are treated to slice after relentless slice of the world of an upper middle-class New York City teenager's life during the early 1950s.

Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES and Homer's THE ODYSSEY do something similar, but they're not as intense because they cover much more real estate. CATCHER's only 220 pages. Instead of the usual linear plot line, all three of these books treat us to the adventures of a journey. It's the trip that's important, not the destination or goal.

Salinger throws us scene after scene of Holden's urban life in a near kaleidoscopic array of snapshots--current and former teachers, current and former classmates, his sister, flashbacks to his brothers and parents, cab drivers, girlfriends and former girlfriends, a teenage prostitute, doormen, chance meetings with tourists, nuns and some kids at the museum. With each engagement we learn something about Holden and we learn something about his urban life. We go to movies, a play, the park, the museum and a carnival. We ride a bus, a train, then a series of cabs with him. And we end up in a "rest home" with him.

Due to the limitations of first-person point of view there's a sparseness of literary tools such as simile, metaphor, lyricism, etc., but I bought so heavily into the character so quickly that it didn't matter. Were Scott Fitzgerald the author, we'd be treated to brilliant descriptions of the glittering city lights and rhythms of the street, but Holden was in too much of a panic to notice much beyond his immediate vicinity.

Holden's the kind of guy that, if you met him on a bus you'd wonder what's wrong with him. Some people would move away, but I'd sit next to him and engage him in conversation. I'd be curious what's wrong.

I reread the book last fall and discovered that Holden seemed to be suffering from PTSD stemming from the death of his brother and from witnessing the suicide of a schoolmate who bailed out of a dorm window wearing the sweater Holden loaned him. I began noticing the symptoms of PTSD: depression, poor concentration, attention deficit, crying, rage, lack of motivation, self-isolation, sleeplessness, hyper-vigilance, etc. I'm intimately familiar with these symptoms because my own diagnosis stemming from childhood trauma. I live with that same feeling that I need to save kids from danger. I had to watch boys get horrific beatings in the orphanage where I grew up. It's this compulsion to protect children that drives my writing.

To me CATCHER is less about teenaged coming-of-age angst and more about a kid struggling against the downward spiral of mental illness. Without professional help he was doomed to submerge and did, ending up in a "rest home."

Holden was barely "holdin' on."

There's a lot of cultural and psychological meat in there: a) how boys interact with each other when living in close quarters, b) particularly when two have or are dating the same girl and one feels protective of her (Jane Gallagher), c) how a sensitive boy might behave because of a deep emotional wound (e.g., PTSD from the trauma of losing a younger brother and from witnessing the suicide of a classmate (James Castle) and d) how that boy might become neurotically protective toward his younger sister and toward children in general because of c).

Most teenagers aren't mature enough to comprehend the psychological ramifications of what I've just described unless they've been prepared for it by a mature adult who does comprehend. And there are many adults who couldn't.

Indeed, most adults have psychological defenses that don't allow even them to comprehend what I've just described. It's either too abstract, too complicated or too scary. I suspect this is the main reason the book is so controversial. Most people don't get it because they can't, unless someone points the way or they experience PTSD first-hand.

Until you've been stung by a bee "bee sting" is an abstract notion.

A greater sense of Holden Caufield through JD Salinger can be found in the film FINDING FORESTER, which is purported to be based on Salinger's life. We're led to conclude that Forster's reclusiveness is rooted in the trauma of losing his beloved brother in a car crash. Salinger was among the first Allied visitors to a German concentration camp and was hospitalized for "battle fatigue"; he understood the long term effects of trauma.

In a 1953 interview with a high-school newspaper, Salinger said that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical: "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book ...it was a great relief telling people about it."

When writing CATCHER, JD wouldn't have had a clue about PTSD, as it wasn't even in the diagnostic manual (DSM) for psychologists until decades later. He was just writing what he felt, blasting his feelings onto paper and letting the chips fall.

Many people see Salinger as a sort of literary genius because he sold 70 million copies of one book. I'm not saying he wasn't talented and educated; he had plenty of both going for him. I'm saying he leveraged his talent on top of some inner need to get this desperate crisis part of his life onto paper and kept going until it was done.

A great segment of the literary world has understandably attributed Holden's PTSD symptoms to teenage angst, but this is a gross oversimplification. It's his masterfully presented array of symptoms that's largely responsible for the success of the book. It's too complicated or too sensitive for English teachers to talk about mental illness; so they focus on the simple and more obvious interpretation. These teachers are missing a phenomenal opportunity to reach kids who are in crisis or know someone who is.

Bearing in mind that we're talking about a character, not a real person, I can't diagnose Holden because I'm not licensed, but I have plenty of experience with the condition. I can spot symptoms in an instant. For example, a hyper-vigilant person likes to sit where he can see the door and with his back to a wall. He glances around constantly instead of holding a steady gaze while in conversation. In the mental health field I would qualify as a peer counselor.

I went through the book and itemized instances of the symptoms. Give it a shot and see if you don't reach a similar conclusion.

There are two triggering events for Holden's PTSD: Witnessing the death of his younger brother Allie and the suicide of James Castle.

Victims of PTSD tend to become highly sensitized to trauma and are therefore more vulnerable to subsequent triggering events. There's a compounding effect. The death of his brother, to which he reacted violently by breaking every window in the garage and breaking his hand, set him up for the death of James Castle to be even more traumatizing. (Growing up in Texas we'd have called this the "double-whammy.") PTSD from serial events (such as during combat) is much more severe than a single event because of the compounding effect.

Labels like "teenage angst" and "PTSD" can be dismissive and do not relieve readers from the duty to probe for meaning. Whatever the cause, Holden is a highly sensitive lad who's suffering and searching for relief.

At the end of his searching is his devoted little sister, Phoebe, who offers him love without conditions. He doesn't have to perform for her as he does for his teachers and his parents. She just loves him. And he doesn't have to run anymore.

No matter how hard an author tries to imbue his or her work with what to him or her is a very important and obvious message about the human condition, the author may fail simply because a reader lacks the capacity to comprehend it or misconstrues the story's basic truths. The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, was (and still is) attacked by wealthy corporate agricultural interests in California who refuse to accept it. I've heard one actually say that Steinbeck exaggerated the plight of the workers in order to sell books. It's human nature to believe what you need to believe and to hell with facts.

CTR obviously meant something unusual to those two young men who had copies of the book when one killed John Lennon and the other shot President Reagan. Perhaps this meant they were looking for answers. Their value systems were running amok, and Holden's angst resonated with their sense of being lost and unable to cope with the phoniness of life.

In Atlas Shrugged we are given a simple solution to all decisions, do only what is in your self interest. But that's in direct conflict what we are taught by most religions in the Judeo-Christian world, to do unto others as you would have done unto you. People who haven't yet learned to reconcile self interest with the common good can be thrown into mental conflict and feel angst. Maybe this is why some people don't like Holden/CITR; it doesn't offer answers. It just describes how it feels to be lost. It reminds them too much of themselves.

All that said, if you can enjoy Holden just as he is, without analyzing "every grey hair" (as someone put it) then by all means do so. But in case you want to go deeper, well here it is.

Update-The Green Youtube Videos:
Green is good, but he tends to regurgitate what they teach in academia, and academia is brimming with group-think. Go straight to the book and listen to how it speaks to you. Wait a few years, then reread it. You'll be amazed at how the book seems to change, but it hasn't. You have.

For example, I don't agree that Holden was resisting adulthood. He embraced it. He liked to do adult things like drinking and going to nightclubs and theater performances. He lied about his age and seems proud that he has a streak of grey hair and can pass for an adult. Seeking the company of a prostitute is adult behavior. He sought out adult company and conversation on the train and at the nightclub and with the nuns. He joked with the kids at the museum. He was comfortable and confident with children and adults. He was just going through some stuff internally that spoiled everything, everything but his time with Phoebe.

Green misinterprets Holden's comment about the museum and liking it that some things should never change. He was talking about that deja vu feeling you get when you go to some familiar place after being away a long time. It's like when you go away to college and come back home to familiar sights and sounds, like the drive-in where you used to cruise. Or you visit the neighborhood you grew up in.

That diorama with the bare breasted squaw was a landmark for him. It's like in Breakfast at Tiffany's when Holly Golightly goes to hang out in front of Tiffany's in the wee hours of the morning to cure "the mean reds." It was a place that made her feel secure.

We all have our favorite familiar landmarks. That's what Holden was getting at. And yet Green and the academics cite it as evidence that Holden was resisting maturity. Holden wanted a cabin in the woods, the one where Salinger died.