The Catcher in the Rye/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • I admit this might be because I read a translated edition, but how did Colden mishear "Coming Thru The Rye" to have that "Catcher In The Rye" delusion? Or, more specifically (if possible), what exactly could he think the lyrics said?
    • He didn't mishear it, he just didn't remember it accurately.
    • It's symbolic of his views of the world. He remembers it in a way that matches his desire to "save" children from the corruption of the world. The real way, which he doesn't remember, is about meeting and interacting with people (which he has difficulty doing).
      • Misremembering the lyrics to match his view of the world... yes, makes sense. Pretty "Holdenish", indeed.
  • I am not saying that the book is bad or anything like that, I actually rather enjoyed this book, but I just don't understand why people hold it up to this standard as being a dark and edgy book ahead of its time and as being this groundbreaking book about a young intellectual going against the fallacies of the world around him. Not really, all the book is about is a teenager going through the normal struggles that a teenager goes through, and that is basically all there is to it, sure Holden is a little rebellious but every child goes through a phase like that with their parents and other assorted authority figures. It is basically a commentary on the struggles of a high school student with all the drama in their academic, professional, and personal circles of life, Holden is an interesting character but hardly anything about his story is groundbreaking.
    • My guess is that it was the first to actually write about it that well.
    • I'm gonna take my time here... I think most of the value of this book is in how Salinger writes his narrator so well it actually comes across as a believable teenager. Myself, I thought I'd have loved the book if I was five years younger (namely, near the narrator's age), but now I see Holden is, indeed, a teenager with his inflated ego and the illusion that he knows much more than he actually does about the world and other people. So, it is groundbreaking because it did give us a narrator that sounded as believable as one could be, and of course by now this concept was repeated and perfected, so it doesn't seem as groundbreaking and intriguing as it was at the time. Also, I think most of the fame of "edgy and dark" the book has is from the chapters near the start(Holden's first night in NY) and the deliberate(and subversive, in the good sense) of the work "FUCK", that rendered it as "edgy" without even using it in a context that would regard it as so. So... it is an awesome book, it has its value, but in the end you're right: it is a book about a teenager going through stuff as a teenager does.
      • Holden's multiple choices of Alternate Character Interpretation are a big reason the book is such a case of Your Mileage May Vary, and why so many high school students hate it. I completely loathed it in senior English because I couldn't get past what I saw as Holden just being a whiny little bitch that I wanted to slap upside the head. It wasn't until I re-read it as an adult that I could appreciate the other aspects of the story, even if I still wanted to smack Holden senseless. By the time I hit adolescence, disaffected teenage characters were so much the norm that I had a hard time sympathizing with him, because I'd already read so many stories about troubled teenagers. For me it was definitely a case of Seinfeld Is Unfunny, and Holden's pseudo-intellectualism started to really grate after the first chapter.
    • Of course, all the YMMV surrounding the book is at least partially rooted in the fact that it was written in another time; It was probably better back when it was first published.
    • You're right. Holden is just a teenager going through what all teenagers go through, and that's why the book has such universal appeal. In my opinion, at least, the book captures that voice better than most stories about "disaffected youth", and that's why it's held up as a great novel. Also, it's wonderfully written.
  • A lot of people I've encountered seem to think that Mr. Antolini really is a Covert Pervert and that Holden was right to interpret his petting his head while he slept as a sexual act, or at least that it's supposed to be ambiguous. It seemed obvious to me when I read it that Holden had gotten it wrong -- it's a perfect illustration of how he tends to think the worst of adults and is so sure that he's the only one feeling the way he does, etc., that he doesn't recognize that Mr. Antolini is a guy who not only sympathizes with his crisis, but understands it, has probably been through something similar, and got past it and grew up and is petting the sleeping Holden out of a poor-kid-I-wish-there-was-something-I-could-do-besides-let-him-sleep-on-my-couch-and-try-to-talk-to-him-about-learning-and-the-nature-of-heroism feeling. And Holden is so far from knowing a Psychologist Teacher/Big Brother Mentor figure when he sees one that he mistakes him for a sexual predator. Am I too assured about this? Did I miss something?
    • No, you have it exactly right. In addition, because Holden is afraid/distrustful of intimacy, when he says "this kind of stuff has happened to me about 20 times since I was a kid" he isn't to be taken seriously either.
    • Or maybe it did happen about 20 times, only they were all equally inoffensive. Holden is the kind of person to overreact, after all.
    • I'm not so sure. Maybe it was different back then but I can't see any adult male thinking that it's a good idea to stroke a boy's hair while he sleeps. In our society, it's not very normal. IIRC, wasn't he also alluding to other things before that incident?
      • Holden was sick, or seemed so at the time. Antolini was taking his temperature.
    • It's his response to holden asking about it that makes it seem off. His phrasing has a somewhat creepy vibe going.
    • I think that something "perverty" did happen to Holden in the past, which causes him to overreact to things like with Mr. Antolini. If you think about it, that really would explain a lot about how Holden reacts to intimacy.
  • Is it just me, or does the book have a Heteronormative Crusader tone to it? For example, the world of "perverts" seems to be pretty much anyone having any kind of fetishes whatsoever-it's symbolized by the couple splashing water on each other in a sexual way, and a man in woman's clothing. And Holden, of course, feels that this is wrong.
    • It's not exactly out-of-character for him.
    • It was written in 1951.
  • "Crummy" looks wrong when it's spelled "crumby". The word doesn't come from "crumb".
    • Maybe it was Salinger's pet word. According to our "Wanton Cruelty to the Common Comma" article, Lewis Carroll insisted that the proper contraction of "can not" was "ca'n't", and spelled it thusly in everything he wrote. This was patently absurd, but people just get on crusades sometimes.
  • Why does everyone say that Holden is a jerk and that he's "manipulative"? Sure, he uses bad words and lies about his age so that he can get drunk, but he seems like a pretty nice guy beyond that. He always has something sympathetic to say even if he doesn't initially like a person, and to me he's more of a Cloud Coo Coo Lander (thinking about random things, in his own little world, the "where do the ducks go in the winter when they can't use the pond" thing) than any of that. I heard about the book and expected him to be like Malcolm (a sociopath almost) from Malcolm in the Middle, but he seems to just be a disoriented guy who doesn't know what he's talking about and always wavers between oppinions. Holden really does.
    • They say it because Your Mileage May Vary. Most people agree that the nine Character Alignments exist, f'ex, but not everybody agrees on who falls into which alignment because they (the classifiers, not the classified) have differing criteria for "good", "chaotic", "neutral" and etc. It doesn't help that Holden (like a real person) falls into differing alignments at different times, as he is willing to break or follow rules, be a jerk or a nice guy, according to the situation he is in at the time. In the end, it stops depending on who Holden is and starts being about who the observer is. Do they fixate on nice people or mean people? Because Holden is both.


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