The majority of the novel takes place in December 1949. The story commences with Holden Caulfield describing encounters he has had with students and faculty of Pencey Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. He criticizes them for being superficial, or, as he would say, "phony." After being expelled from the school for his poor academic performance, Holden packs up and leaves the school in the middle of the night after a physical altercation with his roommate. He takes a train to New York but does not want to return to his family and instead checks into the dilapidated Edmont Hotel. There, he spends an evening dancing with three tourist girls and has a clumsy encounter with a young prostitute named Sunny. His attitude toward the prostitute changes the minute she enters the room, because she seems to be about the same age as Holden. Holden becomes uncomfortable with the situation, and when he tells her that all he wants to do is talk, she becomes annoyed with him and leaves. However, he still pays her for her time. Sunny and Maurice, her pimp, later return to Holden's hotel room and demand more money than was originally agreed upon. Despite the fact that Sunny takes five dollars from Holden's wallet, Maurice punches Holden in the stomach.
Holden calls up his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, to invite her to see a musical. Sally very excitedly agrees, and they meet for the play. After the play Holden and Sally go skating, and while drinking coffee Holden impulsively invites Sally to run away with him, but she declines. Her response deflates Holden's mood, which prompts a remark: "You give me a royal pain in the ass, if you want to know the truth" , he tells her, regretting it immediately. Sally storms off as Holden follows, pleading with her to accept his apology. Finally, Holden gives up and leaves her there. Holden spends a total of three days in the city, and this time is characterized largely by drunkenness and loneliness. At one point he ends up at a museum, where he contrasts his life with the statues of Eskimos on display. For as long as he can remember, the statues have been unchanging. These concerns may have stemmed largely from the death of his brother, Allie. Eventually, he sneaks into his parents' apartment while they are away, to visit his younger sister, Phoebe, who is nearly the only person with whom he seems to be able to communicate. Phoebe views Holden as a hero, and she is naively unaware that Holden's view of her is virtually identical. Holden shares a fantasy he has been thinking about (based on a mishearing of Robert Burns' Comin' Through the Rye): he pictures himself as the sole guardian of numerous children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if they wander close to the brink - to be a "catcher in the rye." Because of this misinterpretation, Holden believes that to be a "catcher in the rye" means to save children from losing their innocence.
After leaving his parents' apartment, Holden drops by to see a former and much admired English teacher, Mr. Antolini, in the middle of the night, and is offered advice on life and a place to sleep. Mr. Antolini tells Holden that it is the mark of the mature man to live humbly for a cause, rather than die nobly for it. This is at odds with Holden's ideas of becoming a "catcher in the rye," a heroic figure who symbolically saves children from "falling off a crazy cliff" and being exposed to the evils of adulthood. During the speech on life, Mr. Antolini has a number of "highballs," referring to a cocktail served in a highball glass. Holden is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr. Antolini patting his head in a way that he perceives as "flitty." There is much speculation on whether Mr. Antolini was making a sexual advance on Holden, and it is left up to the reader to decide. Holden leaves and spends his last afternoon wandering the city. He later wonders if his interpretation of Mr. Antolini's actions was actually correct.
Holden makes the decision that he will head out west, and when he mentions these plans to his little sister, she decides she wants to go with him. Holden declines her offer and refuses to have her accompany him. This upsets Phoebe, so Holden does her a favor and decides not to leave after all. Holden tries to reverse her saddened mood by taking her to the Central Park Zoo. He realizes his mistake as she rides the carousel that lies within the zoo. While watching Phoebe, Holden realizes that he can’t be the “Catcher in the Rye" and that he is in need of help. At the conclusion of the novel, Holden decides not to mention much about the present day, finding it inconsequential. He alludes to "getting sick" and living in a mental hospital, and mentions that he'll be attending another school in September. Holden says that he has surprisingly found himself missing two of his former classmates, Stradlater and Ackley, and even Maurice, the elevator operator/pimp. The last words of the novel are, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
Writing style.
The Catcher in the Rye is written in a subjective style from the point of view of its protagonist, Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought processes. There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes - for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences. Critical reviews agree that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time.
Since Holden is narrating his own story, the style of the novel is the same as the style of his own language, which is colloquial and distinctive. He talks directly to you, as in "You'd have liked [Allie]." He uses italics to make the words read with the same emphasis as spoken word ("He's my brother and all"). You'll hear him describe places and people all the time as "corny" or "phony." He'll tell us he's never waited anywhere so long in his "goddamn life. [He] swear[s]" (24. 97), or that he's sweating "like a bastard" (24.100).
The Catcher in the Rye, like Adventures of Huckleberry Finn before it, is one of few books to feature this language in the narration itself, not just in dialogue. At the time, this was both unusual and important – not just as a new literary style, but also as a way to study the vernacular of a particular time period. Which reminds us – the language doesn't seem all that offensive to us (PG, maybe), but at the time (1951) it raised a few more eyebrows.
Reception.
The Catcher in the Rye has been listed as one of the best novels of the 20th century. Shortly after its publication, writing for The New York Times, Nash K. Burger called it "an unusually brilliant novel," while James Stern wrote an admiring review of the book in a voice imitating Holden's. 41st United States president George H. W. Bush called it "a marvelous book," listing it among the books that have inspired him. In June 2009, the BBC's Finlo Rohrer wrote that, 58 years since publication, the book is still regarded "as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager. Holden is at various times disaffected, disgruntled, alienated, isolated, directionless, and sarcastic." Adam Gopnik considers it one of the "three perfect books" in American literature, along with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Great Gatsby, and believes that "no book has ever captured a city better than Catcher in the Rye captured New York in the fifties." Not all reception has been positive, however; the book has had its share of critics. Rohrer writes, "Many of these readers are disappointed that the novel fails to meet the expectations generated by the mystique it is shrouded in. J. D. Salinger has done his part to enhance this mystique. That is to say, he has done nothing." Rohrer assessed the reasons behind both the popularity and criticism of the book, saying that it "captures existential teenage angst" and has a "complex central character" and "accessible conversational style"; while at the same time some readers may dislike the "use of 1940s New York vernacular," "self-obsessed central character," and "too much whining."
Controversy.
In 1960 a teacher was fired for assigning the novel in class; he was later reinstated. Between 1961 and 1982, The Catcher in the Rye was the most censored book in high schools and libraries in the United States. In 1981 it was both the most censored book and the second most taught book in public schools in the United States. According to the American Library Association, The Catcher in the Rye was the tenth most frequently challenged book from 1990–1999. It was one of the ten most challenged books of 2005 and although it had been off the list for three years, it reappeared in the list of most challenged books of 2009. The challenges generally begin with Holden's frequent use of vulgar language, with other reasons including sexual references, blasphemy, undermining of family values and moral codes, Holden's being a poor role model, encouragement of rebellion, and promotion of drinking, smoking, lying, and promiscuity. Often the challengers have been unfamiliar with the plot itself. Shelley Keller-Gage, a high school teacher who faced objections after assigning the novel in her class, noted that the challengers "are being just like Holden... They are trying to be catchers in the rye." A reverse effect has been that this incident caused people to put themselves on the waiting list to borrow the novel, when there were none before. Mark David Chapman's shooting of John Lennon (Chapman was arrested with his worn copy of the book, and inside, he had scribbled a note: This is my statement, From Holden Caulfield.), Robert John Bardo's shooting of Rebecca Schaeffer, and John Hinckley, Jr.'s assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan have also been associated with the novel.
In 2009 Salinger successfully sued to stop the U.S. publication of a novel that presents Holden Caulfield as an old man. The novel's author, Fredrik Colting, commented, "call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books." The issue is complicated by the nature of Colting's book, 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, which has been compared to fan fiction. Although commonly not authorized by writers, no legal action is usually taken against fan fiction since it is rarely published commercially and thus involves no profit. Colting, however, has published his book commercially. Unauthorized fan fiction on The Catcher in the Rye existed on the Internet for years without any legal action taken by Salinger before his death.
Attempted adaptations.
Early in his career, J. D. Salinger expressed a willingness to have his work adapted for the screen. However, in 1949, a critically panned film version of his short story "Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" was released; renamed My Foolish Heart and taking great liberties with Salinger's plot, the film is widely considered to be among the reasons that Salinger refused to allow any subsequent movie adaptations of his work. The enduring popularity of The Catcher in the Rye, however, has resulted in repeated attempts to secure the novel's screen rights.
When The Catcher in the Rye was first released, many offers were made to adapt it for the screen; among them was Sam Goldwyn, producer of My Foolish Heart. In a letter written in the early fifties, J. D. Salinger spoke of mounting a play in which he would play the role of Holden Caulfield opposite Margaret O'Brien, and, if he couldn’t play the part himself, to “forget about it." Almost fifty years later, the writer Joyce Maynard definitively concluded, "The only person who might ever have played Holden Caulfield would have been J. D. Salinger."
J. D. Salinger told Maynard in the seventies that Jerry Lewis "tried for years to get his hands on the part of Holden," despite Lewis not having read the novel until he was in his thirties. Celebrities ranging from Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson to Tobey Maguire and Leonardo DiCaprio have since made efforts to make a film adaptation. In an interview with Premiere magazine, John Cusack commented that his one regret about turning twenty-one was that he had become too old to play Holden Caulfield. Writer-director Billy Wilder recounted his abortive attempts to snare the novel's rights:
Of course I read The Catcher in the Rye....Wonderful book. I loved it. I pursued it. I wanted to make a picture out of it. And then one day a young man came to the office of Leland Hayward, my agent, in New York, and said, 'Please tell Mr. Leland Hayward to lay off. He’s very, very insensitive.' And he walked out. That was the entire speech. I never saw him. That was J. D. Salinger and that was Catcher in the Rye.
In 1961 J. D. Salinger denied Elia Kazan permission to direct a stage adaptation of Catcher for Broadway. More recently, Salinger's agents received bids for the Catcher movie rights from Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg, neither of which was even passed on to J.D. Salinger for consideration.
In 2003 the BBC television program The Big Read featured The Catcher in the Rye, intercutting discussions of the novel with "a series of short films that featured an actor playing J. D. Salinger's adolescent antihero, Holden Caulfield." The show defended its unlicensed adaptation of the novel by claiming to be a "literary review", and no major charges were filed.
According to a speculative article in The Guardian in May 2006, there were rumors that director Terrence Malick has been linked to a possible screen adaptation of the novel.
After J. D. Salinger's death in 2010, Phyllis Westberg, who was Salinger's agent at Harold Ober Associates, stated that nothing has changed in terms of licensing movie, television, or stage rights of his works. A letter written by Salinger in 1957 revealed that he was open to an adaptation of The Catcher in the Rye released after his death. He wrote: "Firstly, it is possible that one day the rights will be sold. Since there's an ever-looming possibility that I won't die rich, I toy very seriously with the idea of leaving the unsold rights to my wife and daughter as a kind of insurance policy. It pleasures me no end, though, I might quickly add, to know that I won't have to see the results of the transaction."
Interesting Facts.
1. Salinger worked on the product of more than 9 years.
2. Book of John Hinckley was obsessed ml. - The person who committed a 1981 assault on the 40 th U.S. President Ronald Reagan.
3.Robert John Bardo Maniac (b. 1970) pursued three years, and then in 1989, actress Rebecca Schaeffer killed. At the time of shooting an actress at Bardot was from a book by Jerome Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye."
4. John Lennon's killer, Mark Chapman, after five rounds into an idol, waiting for the police, sitting under a street lamp, he began to read this book. Chapman told the police that the encrypted orders to kill Lennon, he found in the pages of "The Catcher in the Rye." But the killer was found sane.
5. The famous English writer John Fowles often turns to face the heroes of his works to the book "The Catcher in the Rye."
6. In the movie "Conspiracy Theory" book, "The Catcher in the Rye" acts as a link between a group of trained killers who do not know their victims.
7. Character "Laughing Man" animated series "Ghost in the Shell", associated with Holden, the protagonist of "The Catcher in the Rye."
8. "The Catcher in the Rye" was also found during the search of one of the main characters of the book Jody Pikolt "Nineteen Minutes" - seventeen teen Peter Houghton shot 10 students in their own school.
9. In 2009, Swedish writer Fredrik Kolting published under the pseudonym John David California novel "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye». He is a kind of sequel to Salinger's hero Koltinga, the 76-year-old man, Mr. K., escaped from a nursing home, wandering the streets of New York and remembers his youth. 10. June 1, 2009 Salinger sued for intellectual property protection in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, accusing Koltinga of plagiarism. July 1, 2009 the court forbade the publication of the novel Koltinga in the U.S.. Book Koltinga banned for
publication in the U.S. and Canada, and then only until the expiration of copyright on the original. Some of it has already been published in Sweden and the UK, and after a positive court decision allowing the publication in other countries, the creation Koltinga interested publishers.
11. Favorite book of actress Winona Ryder, as well as the lead singer of My Chemical Romance Gerard Hemingway.
Interpretations.
Writer Bruce Brooks held that Holden's attitude remains unchanged at story's end, implying no maturation, thus differentiating the novel from young adult fiction. In contrast, writer and academic Louis Menand thought that teachers assign the novel because of the optimistic ending, to teach adolescent readers that "alienation is just a phase." While Brooks maintained that Holden acts his age, Menand claimed that Holden thinks as an adult, given his ability to accurately perceive people and their motives such as when Phoebe states that she will go out west with Holden, and he immediately rejects this idea as ridiculous, much to Phoebe's disappointment. Others highlight the dilemma of Holden's state, in between adolescence and adulthood. While Holden views himself to be smarter than and as mature as adults, he is quick to become emotional. "I felt sorry as hell for..." is a phrase he often uses.
Each Caulfield child has literary talent: D. B. writes screenplays in Hollywood; Holden also reveres D. B. for his writing skill (Holden's own best subject), but he also despises Hollywood industry-based movies, considering them the ultimate in "phony" as the writer has no space for his own imagination, and describes D. B.'s move to Hollywood to write for films as "prostituting himself"; Allie wrote poetry on his baseball glove; and Phoebe is a diarist. This "catcher in the rye" is an analogy for Holden, who admires in kids attributes what he struggles to find in adults, like innocence, kindness, spontaneity, and generosity. Falling off the cliff could be a progression into the adult world that surrounds him and that he strongly criticizes. Later, Phoebe and Holden exchange roles as the "catcher" and the "fallen"; he gives her his hunting hat, the catcher's symbol, and becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher.
In Popular Culture.
References to The Catcher in the Rye in media and popular culture are numerous. Works inspired by the novel have been said to form their own genre. Dr. Sarah Graham assessed works influenced by The Catcher in the Rye to include the novels Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis, The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, and Ordinary People by Judith Guest.
It has been mentioned in the films Six Degrees of Separation, its association with famous assassins was employed in the film Conspiracy Theory, and its assignment to the main characters on the TV series South Park was the basis for the 2010 episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs". References to the novel form a major plot point in the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. In the novel "Shoeless Joe" the main character must reach out to JD Salinger through baseball. The film version of the novel, Field of Dreams features a fictional author named Terence Mann, portrayed by James Earl Jones, who was loosely based on Salinger, and his controversial novel The Boat Rocker, which echoes of The Catcher in the Rye.
The title was also mentioned in the song "6 Minutes" by the Jonas Brothers.
The Good Girl, the 2002 film starring Jennifer Aniston, was based on the life of a discount store clerk having an affair with a stock boy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, who considers himself the incarnation of Holden Caulfield.
In the decade following its publication, there were more than 70 essays on the novel printed in American and British magazines.
The book has also inspired many songs, such as "Catcher in the Rye" by Guns N' Roses , "Catcher in the Rye" by Datarock , "Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?" by Green Day and Streetlight Manifesto's "Here's to Life," which includes the lyrics "Holden Caulfield was a friend of mine." It's also mentioned in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire".
Uk Metalcore band Bring Me The Horizon quote the book in the title and lyrics of their song 'Who Wants Flowers When You're Dead? Nobody.' which is taken from Chapter 20 in the book.
My Chemical Romance's New Jersey based rhythm guitarist Frank Iero formed and fronted the band Pencey Prep in 1998, which was named after the main school Holden Caulfield was expelled from.
A chalkboard in the first movie spin-off of the Eden of the East-which is also from the Stand-Alone Complex director-celebrates the 60th anniversary of the book, because the film's setting is two years after the film came out.
The book was an inspiration to the 2006 video game Bully. Also the protagonist of the game, Jimmy Hopkins, uses Holden`s favorite derogatory term "phony" to describe his new stepfather.
