Revisiting J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye

My daughter is reading The Catcher in the Rye in 10th grade English this year, so I thought I’d pick it up again— the years have dulled my memory, and I wanted to revisit this classic, a book which some have labeled the first ever Young Adult novel.

Published in 1951, the troubled adolescent voice of Holden Caulfield still rings true all these years later. Sure, the teenage vernacular has changed and changed again in the intervening years, but Holden still has a resoundingly authentic voice that surely must be one of the secrets to the novel’s seemingly eternal relevance and longevity.

In spite of his impatience and immaturity, it’s Holden’s interactions with people—Ackley, Spencer, the nuns at the lunch counter, old Sally, even Mr. Antolini, that lend his character further depth and humanity. But it is his relationship with his little sister Phoebe that is so real and so touching that I don’t think the novel would have been nearly so powerful without her. The image of her dragging a suitcase to the steps of the Natural History Museum, ready to follow her brother on his western adventure, is a poignant scene that certainly must count as the emotional cornerstone of the book.

Why has The Catcher in the Rye become the cultural icon that it is today? Consider the quote below, in which Holden describes the familiar but unchanging nature of the displays in the Natural History Museum:

The best thing [...] 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, with their pretty antlers and their pretty skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. 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. pp157-158

Rereading this novel all these years later, it strikes me that The Catcher in the Rye is as totemic as the exhibits in the museum. It is ageless. It is universal. The appreciation and interpretation of the novel, however, like the exhibits, depends on experiences, shifting perspectives, one’s stage of life. Revisit The Catcher in the Rye. The only thing that’s different is you.

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