1. society

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"Salinger" Documentary Trailer
Why are so many people fascinated with J.D Salinger's character, Holden Caulfield? Apr 29­11:17 AM
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Themes in Apr 29­11:19 AM
Relationships
One of the central causes of Holden’s
breakdown at the end of the novel is his feeling
of social isolation and dislocation, Holden
repeatedly tells us that he feels lonely. Holden
tries to counteract his loneliness by befriending
other people; however he is constantly
confronted by his own awkwardness when
such moments arise. Eventually, Holden is
caught in a paradoxical cycle of wanting to
be known while always finding safety from
rejection in his own solitude.
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Alienation as a form of Self­Protection:
Throughout the novel, Holden seems to be excluded from and victimized by the world around him. As he says to Mr. Spencer, he feels trapped on “the other side” of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in a world in which he feels he doesn’t belong.
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Holden’s alienation is a way of protecting himself.
Just as he wears the hunting hat to advertise his uniqueness, he uses isolation as proof that he is better than everyone else around him and therefore above interacting with them.
The truth is that interactions with other people usually confuse and overwhelm him, and his cynical sense of superiority serves as a type of self‐protection.
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"Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game. […] I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on top of Thomsen Hill. […] You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. […] You could hear them all yelling" (Sallinger 3).
Holden clues us in right away: while everyone else is off at the game, he's isolated, aloof, and watching people instead of connecting with them. What a party animal, right?
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The Individual and Society
America in the 1950s was the first modern
‘consumer society’ in which some sections of the
population had considerable wealth and opportunity.
One of the key elements of Salinger’s narrative is
concerned with how Holden rejects the society that
he sees around him. Some of Holden’s most cynical
and nihilistic ideas are witnessed when he is
commenting on the society to which he belongs.
Holden attacks 1950s American society with charges
of superficiality and an unhealthy obsession with
financial reward and material possessions.
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"At the end of the first act we went out with all the other jerks for a cigarette. What a deal that was. You never saw so many phonies in all your life, everybody smoking their ears off and talking about the play so that everybody could hear and know how sharp they were. Some dopey movie actor was standing near us, having a cigarette. […] He was with some gorgeous blonde, and the two of them were trying to be very blasé and all, like as if he didn't even know people were looking at him. Modest as hell. I got a big bang out of it" (114)
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The Effects of the Environment
Holden experiences three distinct environments
throughout the novel: Pencey Prep., New York City
and his family home. Each one has a direct impact on
Holden and he tries to escape from each one at different
points. This is another of Holden’s many paradoxes, he
constantly claustrophobic – places where he one
desired to be, soon become suffocating, and he leaves
them before he can become consumed by them.
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• He tries to escape from each at some point
• One of Holden’s paradoxes
• He desires to be somewhere, but quickly becomes claustrophobic and has to leave
• Holden cannot escape from himself
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Paradox
a statement or proposition that, despite sound (or apparently sound) reasoning from acceptable premises, leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self­contradictory.
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Pencey Prep and Elkton Hills are examples of institutions that serve as symbols. For Holden, the schools represent the phony, cruel world of those who run them. Even the advertisements for Pencey Prep are misleading. They feature "some hot shot guy on a horse" performing equestrian feats. Holden says he has never even seen a horse at Pencey. The school's motto is equally repulsive to Holden: "Since 1888 we have been molding boys into splendid, clear­
thinking young men." Holden can think of perhaps two boys who fit that description, and they probably came to Pencey that way. For Holden, a more typical example of the Pencey preppie is his roommate, Ward Stradlater, a boorish womanizer who gets by on superficial good looks and fake charm. Holden is being expelled for poor academic performance, but Stradlater wants to cheat by having Holden do his English theme for him since Holden does write well.
Even more serious is the cruelty that Holden has seen at prep schools. As he tells Phoebe, "You never saw so many mean guys in your life." Holden dislikes the exclusivity and the prejudice against those who are neither attractive nor hip. He is ashamed of himself for going along with the crowd and joining a secret fraternity. Although James Castle's brutally forced suicide took place at Elkton Hills, we get the idea that it could have happened at Pencey Prep just as easily. For Holden, the two schools are emblematic of a corrupt system designed by privileged adults and catering to boys who want to join their ranks. Part of Holden's dilemma is that he struggles so hard against a system into which he was born.
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The New York City setting allows Holden to fully experience alienation: he is unable to relate to the people he meets, alone in the busiest city in the world. However, he recognises that connecting with people is the only way to overcome this loneliness, and the city provides a constant stream of people for him to attempt this.
Holden has particular feelings about specific places within the city. He hates Broadway because he hates it when he sees 'millions of people....waiting with this terrific patience for seats and all'. Typically for Holden his feelings are all mixed up: he admires people's patience but he says he hates the shows they're waiting for (although he loves acting out scenes from gangster films and musicals!).
There are places in the city which he loves, for example the Museum of Natural History. Holden describes many of the exhibits and then notes, 'The best thing..in that museum was that everything stayed right where it was'. Holden doesn't like change and this is one feature of this vibrant, ever changing city which is a constant. It is also associated with cherished childhood, and Holden did after all spend his in New York.
In conclusion, bustling New York is not the easiest place for the troubled Holden to be; his feelings about it are confused, and he finds it difficult to make sense of the mix of positive and negative ideas he has about the place and its people.
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His parents and younger sister, Phoebe, live in an apartment in New York, while his older brother, D.B., lives in Hollywood. Holden also mentions he had a younger brother named Allie who died of leukemia some years before the book begins. This seems to be very traumatic for Holden, as the night of his brother's death, he breaks all the windows in the garage with his bare hands, "just for the hell of it." Then, he tried to break the car windows, but his hand was already dislocated so he was not able to(Salinger 50) . As the book progresses Holden repeatedly shares with the reader things that he hates and cannot stand. During one conversation with his sister, she says that Holden hates everything, and then challenges him to name one thing he likes. When the only thing he can come up with is his dead brother, Allie, she believes she proved her point (220­222).
Apr 29­12:05 PM
Innocence and Childhood
The principle project of Salinger’s novel is to explore
the transition between adolescence and adulthood.
Salinger subverts the conventions of the
‘bildungsroman’ genre because there is no definite
affirmation of Holden’s maturity by the end of the
novel. Instead, we are left to interpret the final ending
as we choose. However, it is clear that at the end of the
novel, Holden has, at least, regained his faith in
childhood innocence, which might be taken to imply
a salvation of sorts.
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• The Catcher in the Rye is a novel about a young character’s growth into maturity. While it is appropriate to discuss the novel in such terms, Holden Caulfield is an unusual protagonist for a because his central goal is to resist the process of maturity itself. Apr 29­11:13 AM
"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole […]. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat on this time. Or that kid that was your partner in line last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way – I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it" (Sallinger 197).
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