Cacther In The Rye Essay -- essays research papers

JD Salinger, also known as Jerome David Salinger, is an American novelist and short story writer. Critics and readers alike recognize Salinger as one of the most popular and influential writers. His only novel, The Catcher in the Rye, drew such great attention during the fifties and sixties that those years have been called the age of Holden Caulfield (Contemporary Literary Critiscm, Vol. 12). Salinger is a master of contemporary dialect and idiomatic expression. He created in Holden Caulfield a character who became the prototype of alienated adolescence for an entire generation of Americans. The Catcher in the Rye has been banned even recently from a few libraries, schools, and bookstores for the starkness of its language and attitudes and the realism of some of its settings.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Although Salinger has fallen out of critical favor because of his sentimentality, it is generally agreed that Catcher has yet to be surpassed in its portrayal of the pains and pleasures of a youth searching for love and direction. In all his work Salinger draws upon the experience of his own life. For instance, his parents shared the same backgrounds as do those of his fictive Glass family. An undistinguished student, Salinger flunked out of private high school. His family sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy, the model the Catcher’s Pencey Prep (Contemporary Literary Criticism Vol. 3).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  The protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, is one of these American heroes, but with a significant difference. He seems to be engaged in both sorts of quests at once; he needs to go home and he needs to leave it. Unlike the other American knight errants, Holden seeks Virtue second to love. He wants to be good. When the little children are playing in the rye-field on the clifftop, Holden wants to be the one who catches them before they fall off the cliff. Like these American heroes, Holden is a wanderer, for in order to be good he has to be more of a bad boy than the puritanical Huck could have imagined. Holden has had enough of both Hannibal, Missouri, and the Mississippi; and his tragedy is that when he starts back up the river, he has no place to go- save, of course, a California psychiatrist’s couch (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 12).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Holden’s quest takes him outside socie... ...oment always becoming a segment of the past. Holden views his life as being in a state of continual change. Since a developed intellect is needed to realize immutable conceptions, and since Holden’s â€Å"thinking† is limited to his sense of the mutability of life, Holden remains trapped within time, unable to recognize anything permanent in human existence (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 5).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  One might conclude by stressing that Holden is talking, not to an analyst, but to you, the reader. Holden is talking directly to anyone who might be as â€Å"troubled morally and spiritually† as Holden was about the nature of this world in which everyone exists. He offers his narration of The Catcher in the Rye as a record of his troubles for anyone who might wish to learn from his experiences. As Mr. Antolini says, â€Å"It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.† (Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 12)   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Work cited Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 3 Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 8 Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 12 Contemporary Literary Criticism, Vol. 5