Catcher in the Rye

I cannot help but be eternally thankful that this book has run into my life once again. I am beyond sad that when I first encounter this book I wasn’t able to grasp and appreciate the masterpiece that it was (I was only 14 and I read it in Spanish…)

I loved the fact that Holden felt so real… I found myself constantly underlining and highlighting stuff throughout the entire book. Things like: “I am always saying "Glad to've met you" to somebody I'm not at all glad I met. If you want to stay alive, you have to say that stuff, though”. Or “And I have one of those very loud, stupid laughs. I mean if I ever sat behind myself in a movie or something, I'd probably lean over and tell myself to please shut up.”  I loved how J.D. Salinger was able to give a voice to an entire generation, the way he captured the way young people talk, the issues that afflicted them… now I can truly understand why it is considered a generation-defining and life-changing book.

For me this book was a 10/10. But I know (and it makes me sad) that you either love it or hate it.

While going to through the reviews at Goodreads, seeing all those people bashing the book and Holden, I noticed how most of the bad reviews refer to Holden as basically a whiny, pretentious rich angsty white boy, who the only thing he is good at is complain. And I feel that the main reason this occurs is because people fail to look at the big picture.

As we discussed in class, this is a book that tackles 2 issues that, from my point of view, most people are scared of. First, it tackles the humanity that we are losing and it also deals with dualities and contradictions.

JIMMY: “Why don’t we have a little game? Let’s pretend we’re human beings, and that we’re actually alive. Just for a while. What do you say? Let’s pretend we’re human.”

I was constantly remembering this scene from Look Back in Anger (John Osborne) while reading The Catcher in The Rye. I feel that Holden was crying out for help due to partly fear of not truly living, he was scared of growing up and life passing by him. His desperation to fight time, to keep the innocence and beauty of being a child in order to avoid the “phoniness” that characterizes this society, the fakeness that invaded every human being, which do not allow us to actually live. A song by Arcade Fire says: “But now that I’m older, my heart’s colder, [...] Children, wake up. Hold your mistake up, before they turn the summer into dust.” Basically: stay true to who you are, don’t let the world destroy you, don’t become a phony.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zdNdjF-htY

Contradiction is a key word to describe Holden Caulfield. Throughout the entire book we deal with an unreliable narrator, which shares with us his story in a subjective way, and as we discussed, we see two moments of Holden: the moment in which everything is happening and when he has some distance from the incidents. We are witnesses of a character that is filled with dualities, just as the every single one of us.

While reading stuff on internet, I came across with a very interesting concept: “A sense of internal pluralism” which was explained  as:

The mental landscape of the human mind is not a singular thing, it can be best described as a debate by an inconsistent committee of contradictory opinions. I dare say that most people don’t realize that they have more than one internal voice (...)

This internal pluralism, invites us to embrace our contradictions, they are normal. We are all filled with dualities and contradictions, we should not be afraid of them. And this also invites us to do an introspection, to really get to know ourselves. It would be nice if we all went through a process of self-discovery such as Holden’s, if we could escape from our reality a bit, it would put everything in perspective, just as this book did (at least for me).

Overall, I would like to point out one of my favorite quotes from this book:

“Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to.”

In this particular moment (although it may sound a bit dramatic) I felt that something had changed, this particular quote gave me hope. It felt as if J.D Salinger himself had approach me and told me: hey, it’s okay if you feel this way, you’re not alone, everything will be better... As if Holden’s cry for help had finally been answered.