Final Paper

My journey with this book started because it is my dad’s favorite. My name was going to be Catcher, and although that didn’t end up being the case, my love for this book got deeper and deeper every page I read. The Catcher in the Rye has so many real moments with a boy who feels deep emotions, and its author is one who changed literature as the world knew it. My argument is that the main character, Holden Caulfield, is a mirror of the author, J.D. Salinger’s, outlook on society, and that leads the character to have a deeper emotional pull on readers that sets it apart from every other book. 

First, to understand a book, I have learned that the author’s background can be vital to the understanding of the plot. I never thought about that until I took this class. I thought authors just come up with stuff to write about, but through this class, I have discovered the importance of an author’s life experience because it is often reflected in the book, and we certainly can see that with J.D. Salinger. His background was complicated, and he had so many experiences that shaped who he was. He is the son of a Scotch-Irish mother and a Jewish father named Miriam and Sol Salinger. With all of his success, it is unfathomable to me that he failed out of school. “After failing out of McBurney, Salinger’s parents sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. He later uses the school as something of a model for Pencey Prep, Holden Caulfield’s alma mater in “The Catcher in the Rye” (pbs.org). I truly do think that this had a huge effect not just on him but in his writing. While attending the military academy, he was the literary editor of the Class of ’36 yearbook and aspired to be a writer. He enrolled in a class at Columbia and had Whit Burnett as his professor, the editor of Story magazine. This led him to get an article later published in the New Yorker, “Slight Rebellion Off Madison.” Right when things started to take off for him, he got drafted to serve in World War II. 

After Salinger served in the war, he continued his writing, and The Catcher in the Rye was published in 1951. It is his only novel that he ever published. “Holden searches for truth and rails against the “phoniness” of the adult world.” (Britannica) The book focuses on the loss of innocence in a young man. “Holden’s name is also significant: Holden can be read as “hold on,” and Caulfield can be separated into caul and field. Holden desires to “hold on” to the protective covering (the caul) that encloses the field of innocence (the same field he wishes to keep the children from leaving).”(Britannica) The words written in the book took the world by storm and out of all the quotes, this one stuck out to me the most “What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” This alludes to what would happen later in his career, he just didn’t know it yet. Salinger wanted his books to stand alone. He didn’t want people to put his name with the book, and he didn’t want fame. When it did come, he fled. His disappearance is a mystery to everyone, and hundreds of reporters, book lovers, and fans have tried to get him to take interviews or talk about his run from fame, but it hardly ever was able to occur after publishing. For over fifty years, this man wanted to be secluded. I can’t even go one day myself. It is rumored that he has more writings that people have been trying to get their hands on for years. People have dedicated their lives to figuring out what happened to him and why his writings are so secret. I have thought a lot throughout this book about whether I would want these writings to be released because he kept them from the public for a reason. This book was hard to read and recognises some of the emotions that we never face. When he brought attention to it, it was revolutionary, and there were points I had to stop reading because I could feel the heaviness of him in the book. It brought me to tears that he was masking his feelings through a character, and when people did read it, they pushed and pushed for more. If I were him, I wouldn’t have released another novel either. 

To this day, over 65 million copies have been sold. After his passing in 2010 at age 91, “The Salinger family released a final statement from Salinger that read: I am in this world but not of it.”(pbs.org) Reflecting on the author and his story at the beginning of this book opened my eyes to the deeper meaning within this story. This book is deeper than any book I have ever read, and I knew it would be a challenge, but I am up for it. 

This book tells the story of a sixteen-year-old boy named Holden Caulfield and his journey getting expelled from Pencey Prep and going through New York City. He lies to so many people on his journey, about who he is, like the mother who had a son that he went to school with on the train, the woman he danced with in the lavender room, and almost everyone he came into contact with. He goes to bars and hotels searching for a connection with anyone, but he feels more isolated by the end of the night. Many characters are mentioned in the book, like the teacher he had, nuns, his friends at Pency, the prostitute, and Jane Gallagher. But none of them provided the connection that he longed for. His mental state declined throughout the book. He held on to memories of him and his sister Phoebe and how she brought comfort to him through her honesty and innocence, which he wished he could hold on to. Overall, this book has so many things you have to read between the lines to understand and put yourself in his shoes. 

I did a close reading on chapter four of this book because it pulled me in so much I read it about twenty times. I have never been so pulled into a book and crave an understanding of what Sallinger was trying to get across. I did a deep dive into some of the actions he does that make up his character, the repetition of words, the author’s peculiar choice of words, and the deep attention to detail in his thoughts with imagery to encapsulate just how much different he is, but how much alike this main character is to us. By using examples from the text, I hope to portray these distinct points and give more context for my argument. 

 Holden is a type of character that we don’t often see in books written nowadays. The reason I noticed this is because of some of the things he does, people do, but usually not in front of people. An example is “ I got bored, sitting on that washbowl after a while, so I backed up a few feet and started doing this tap dance, just for the hell of it. I was just amusing myself. I can’t really tap dance or anything, but it was a stone floor in the can, and it was good for tap dancing. This shows us a new side to him early on in the book, that he can just be free and let go sometimes, and not have a care in the world. That action of his dancing then triggered a memory from his past about what his father would say to him. “ He wants me to go to Oxford. But it’s in my goddam blood, tap dancing.” (p.38) By having an action that seemed positive, he remembered his dreams, but also that he wouldn’t be allowed to chase them because of his father’s expectations. On just the very next page, Salinger makes a very hasty change to Holden coming at Stradlater. “All of a sudden– for no good reason, really, except that I was sort of in the mood for horsing around– I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradler in a half nelson. That’s a wrestling hold, in case you don’t know, where you get the other guy around the neck and choke him to death, if you feel like it. So I did it.” (p.39) This entire scenario gives us a deeper insight into the instincts that he preserves. When aroused, he immediately resorts to violence even at someone that he knows very well. His stating that you can choke a man to death makes me infer that later in the book, the short spat of anger shown on this page will only get stronger as time goes on. As the night goes on they talk of this date that Stradlater was going on. When Holden finds out that it is Jane Gallagher, he is filled with excitement. Before this page, I didn’t think that Holden would have a love interest in this story based on the previous chapters, but how he acted when he heard her name spoken has made me believe that she will continue to be a very important character throughout the book. “Where is she? I asked him. I go down and say hello to her something. Where is she? In the annex?” (p.40) When mentioned, all Holden wanted to do was to talk to Jane. This made him more of a relatable and soft character when I looked deeper than how he acted around the boys and towards things that they said. “I sat there for about an half hour after he left. I mean, I just sat in my chair, not doing anything. I kept thinking about Jane, and about Stadlater having a date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy.” This stuck out to me because he took the time to just sit and think. I believe that Holden does a lot of reflecting on every little thing that occurs in a day, no matter how small the detail. We found a soft spot in his heart, and I hope that his hard on the outside character doesn’t get in the way of his soft heart on the inside.

Throughout this book, you will find that there is a lot of repetition. From just one word like “goddam” to phrases, each one is placed in a special way to make up Holden’s words and thoughts. The word “goddam”  was used in this chapter 12 times! I think that it might be the main vocabulary word that Holden acquires. Then I question why. Based on his background, we can infer that he has very high stakes at home and isn’t living up to the set expectations, which I struggle with every day as well, because of society’s pressures to be perfect in every way, especially in your words. By cursing so much, he is going against the perfectionism goal and saying whatever he wants. “A royal pain in the ass,” is a phrase repeated on page 37. The use of the word “royal” in the phrases makes me think that Holden believes that Stradlater is above him in a way, and in this passage, it felt like he was giving Holden an order rather than asking for a favor. Stradlater has a reputation for getting whatever he wants, and so when he saw some pushback from Holden, I do not think he was expecting it. “Give her my regards, willya?” and “Don’t tell her I got kicked out, willya?” are both sentences that Holden says regarding Stradlatter’s date with Jane. All of the thoughts racing through his mind lead me to believe that he will continue the use of repetition of words and phrases to get his point across and put an emphasis on his emotions.

The choice of words and sentence structure in the book is much different than anything that I have read before. The author writes in a way that makes the main character’s thoughts completely clear. Though sometimes a little alarming, Holden thinks in a way I am still learning to understand. The phrases I selected were “ I hate the old movies like poison, but I get a bang imitating them.” (p.38) and “ Liberate yourself from my viselike grip” (p.39) Both of these phrases have a very meticulous word usage to describe a huge emotion with a unique thought. Within this deep detail, imagery is used to show just how much Holden focuses on every detail in society. When talking about Jane Gallagher, he made a big point about her never moving her kings when they used to play checkers. He also said, “She just liked the way they looked when they were all in the back row.” (p.41) This is not only an example of detail but also a focus on the actions of Jane. I believe that this detail is used to help the reader understand that although it was a while ago, the feelings for Jane are certainly in the present. His anger throughout this chapter only progressed toward Stradlater. When he was getting ready for his date, Holden noticed that “He never cleaned up for anything. He always looked good when he was finished fixing himself up, but he was a secret slob anyway if you knew him the way I did.” (p.36) He had a different insight into the lives of many, and by the use of imagery and word choice, the author truly conveys the mind of the main character.

As I have read this book, I have learned to see the world around me through the same lens as Holden. He feels abandoned and alone in a society and school surrounded by people, and he feels like he has no other choice but to leave. His actions, repeated use of words, strange word choices, and attention to detail are all things that stood out to me when reading Chapter 4. At the end of the day, he is a human just like us, and I can not wait to see all of the things he does, says, and thinks next. The thing I want to know most, though, is what will happen with him and the lovely Jane Gallagher. 

Though those were my inferences of what I got from reading the book, I got to research what other people have written about this book and gained new perspectives. Going off of reading this book intensely, I wanted to know more about the researched reasons why the language in this book is the way it is. Even for my data visualization assignment, I thought that the language was the main thing from the book that needed to be portrayed. I did a word cloud in the shape of his hunting hat, which is mentioned numerous times throughout the book. An article by Clinton W. Trowbridge focuses on the significance of symbolism in The Catcher in the Rye and argues that the symbols used throughout the novel reflect the internal struggles of the main character. He highlights several key images, such as the red hunting hat, the title of the book, and the museum that is featured in Chapter 16. “Holden, the adult world is dominated by categories, so much so that it can only be fled from. It is this vision that leads Holden to value the child over the adult (the child has not yet learned to experience the world in terms of categories).” The author allures us to see that the “catcher” is him trying to preserve his innocence and catch it as it is slipping away. All of these symbols are essential to the book’s message and overall understanding of Holden and how he has been shaped by the objects around him. The place that caught my eye the most while reading the book was the natural history museum. He had such a fascination with all the objects being in cases and never changing. This helps me detect that he wants to be in a world that doesn’t change, and his innocence stays forever. Having a hunting hat is a symbol of his defiance, but also an object that gives him a sense of safety. The overall analysis used in this article is to look deeper into the symbolism used to detect the vast emotions of characters and navigate feelings of loss of innocence, identity, and longing. It feels like you are in a therapy session with him and he is telling you a story, but along the way, you realize that you are relating to so much that he is saying, and a therapy session turns into a conversation.

 In an article, Donald P. Costello deeply analyzes the language in the book created by J.D. Salinger. He focuses on the distinctive narrative of Holden, the main character, and how his words are deeply tied to his emotions. Throughout this article, he looks into the use of repetition, curse words, and metaphors used throughout the book to describe the teenage language used. One example from the article is, “He almost never uses for Chrissake in an unemotional situation. Goddam is Holden’s favorite adjective. This word is used with no relationship to its original meaning, or to Holden’s attitude toward the word to which it is attached. It simply expresses an emotional feeling toward the object: either favorable, as in ‘goddam hunting cap’; or unfavorable, as in ‘ya goddam moron’; or indifferent, as in ‘coming in the goddam windows.’ Damm is used interchangeably with goddam; no differentiation in its meaning is detectable.” All of these examples show the author’s intricacy in word choice. He argues that the success of the book didn’t come from just the storyline but from the language that grabs readers and makes them want to learn more about the character. The negative phrases and words that Holden uses reflect his innermost conflict and thoughts. 

Now that you understand the language of the book, the hot topic is whether this book should be banned. As an Elementary Education major, I can tell you that this book is so important, and I think everyone should read it. It has components that are missing from the literature today. We make up fantasies to escape our reality that we live in, but this book brings attention to the realness of our world and faces it head-on. In an article by June Edwards, we catch a glimpse of why this book is censored in American schools and how most perceive it all, while it is a book that has valuable lessons about emotions and the struggles of a teenager. She argues that this novel teaches so many useful moral lessons and is the utmost opposite of corruptive. So many people just want to point out the sexual references and profanity, but his novel is designed to relate to the youth and sympathize with the uncertainty of the future. The point that caught my eye the most is how this article relates the book to Christianity and calls out critics of how they see this book as one that goes against the Bible’s teachings. “The disciples, however, are another matter. They were all right after Jesus died, he says, but while he was alive, “they were as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting him down.” Loyalty is a very strong value for Holden. His predicament stems from the belief that he is letting down his family and is thus unworthy of their love.” This is just one example of many that she provides about how this book points out things I never even thought about. Overall, she reframes the idea that this book is inappropriate and should be taken off the shelves, and gives points used throughout the book to show the moral lessons that the critics overlooked because they saw some curse words. This article blew me away and is a perfect depiction of the overall lesson that is deeper than the first impression. 

We can’t just keep being afraid of what people might learn from reading these books. This book taught me that it is okay to be real, and I am so much more like Holden than I would have ever imagined when I read that first page. As a kid, I felt so lost growing up. I always tried to fit into the mold that my peers put me in. Coming from a well-known family, I could relate to all of the heavy feelings of comparison that he goes through. I also have a somewhat of a Jane Gallagher. Someone I notice the little things about, someone that I truly admire. What stops me is that I thought I had too much baggage from a divorce, broken home, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, where I always fall short, comparison to other girls, comparison to the girl that I used to be, and the fear that I would lose the friendship that I adore. There will always be those people whom I want to feel included by. I think Holden learned a lot on his journey, and I know some people think this book is crazy, but I find such comfort in knowing that even though he is just a character, we understand each other. When I was finished with that book, I wondered what the rest of his story held, but I then realized it ended at the perfect time, and just those few days of a character in a book roaming the streets of New York became the best story I had ever read.

When I started this book, I had no idea the journey it was going to send me on, but boy am I grateful that it did. A constant rollercoaster on every page, waiting to see what he would feel next in his journey to find the connection that he always longed for. Although I didn’t know J.D. Salinger personally, he was found throughout this entire book. His background intertwined with every motion and feeling in Holden’s character. We will never know what happened to Holden, but what we do know is that after this book was released, J. D didn’t want to be known; he wanted Holden to be famous, and that he is. So thank you, J.D. Salinger, for sharing this story with the world, and who knows, might name my child Catcher someday.   

Works Cited

Lohnes, Kate. “The Catcher in the Rye.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 4 Jan. 2025, www.britannica.com/topic/The-Catcher-in-the-Rye.

“JD Salinger ~ Timeline of Major Events.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 

14. Jan. 2014, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/jd-salinger-salinger-timeline/2838/

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1951.

Trowbridge, Clinton W. “The Symbolic Structure of ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’” The Sewanee Review, vol. 74, no. 3, 1966, pp. 681–93. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27541452. Accessed 9 May 2025.

Costello, Donald P. “The Language of ‘The Catcher in the Rye.’” American Speech, vol. 34, no. 3, 1959, pp. 172–81. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/454038. Accessed 7 May 2025.

Edwards, June. “Censorship in the Schools: What’s Moral about ‘TCastronovo, David. “Holden Caulfield’s Legacy.” New England Review (1990-), vol. 22, no. 2, 2001, pp. 180–86. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40243971. Accessed 9 May 2025.The Catcher in the Rye?” The English Journal, vol. 72, no. 4, 1983, pp. 39–42. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/817066. Accessed 9 May 2025.

Final Reflection

In this class, I learned a lot about myself and what a college class could look like. I am very grateful for the friendships that I made and the material that I learned. In picking my book, I wanted to choose something that would mean a lot to me. This book, being my dad’s favorite, has pushed me to look forward and push myself from an academic standpoint. Before this class, I never wrote this many pages or thought so deeply about what my book was trying to tell me. At the beginning of the book, I thought that Holden was this weird character, but as I got deeper, I saw how much I could relate to him. He feels things deeply but tries to hide his emotions from the people on the outside. He pays attention to detail put likes to keep things in his life simple. I like having a simple wardrobe and keeping things in routine, like wearing a colored shirt and black shorts or, during winter, a sweater and jeans. He cares deeply about a girl and protects her even when she isn’t there. I also care about protecting people, and he says that even when playing checkers, he notices she always keeps her kings in the back row. Sometimes I wish that someone would know things like that about me. The people who did not know the little things that most don’t notice are now not in my life anymore. Yes, it is sad, but the Lord knows me and that will always be better than good enough.

What I learned

We can’t just keep being afraid of what people might learn from reading these books. This book taught me that it is okay to be real, and I am so much more like Holden than I would have ever imagined when I read that first page. As a kid, I felt so lost growing up. I always tried to fit into the mold that my peers put me in. Coming from a well-known family, I could relate to all of the heavy feelings of comparison that he goes through. I also have a somewhat of a Jane Gallagher. Someone I notice the little things about, someone that I truly admire. What stops me is that I thought I had too much baggage from a divorce, broken home, anxiety, depression, perfectionism, where I always fall short, comparison to other girls, comparison to the girl that I used to be, and the fear that I would lose the friendship that I adore. There will always be those people whom I want to feel included by. I think Holden learned a lot on his journey, and I know some people think this book is crazy, but I find such comfort in knowing that even though he is just a character, we understand each other. When I was finished with that book, I wondered what the rest of his story held, but I then realized it ended at the perfect time, and just those few days of a character in a book roaming the streets of New York became the best story I had ever read.

The End.

When I started this book, I had no idea the journey it was going to send me on, but boy am I grateful that it did. A constant rollercoaster on every page, waiting to see what he would feel next in his journey to find the connection that he always longed for. Although I didn’t know J.D. Salinger personally, he was found throughout this entire book. His background intertwined with every motion and feeling in Holden’s character. We will never know what happened to Holden, but what we do know is that after this book was released, J. D didn’t want to be known; he wanted Holden to be famous, and that he is. So thank you, J.D. Salinger, for sharing this story with the world, and who knows, might name my child Catcher someday.