The Catcher in the Rye
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Anyone who has read J. D. Salinger's New Yorker stories - particularly A Perfect Day for Bananafish, Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut, The Laughing Man, and For Esme - With Love and Squalor, will not be surprised by the fact that his first novel is full of children. The hero-narrator of The Catcher in the Rye is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex for us to make any final comment about him or his story. Perhaps the safest thing we can say about Holden is that he was born in the world not just strongly attracted to beauty but, almost, hopelessly impaled on it. There are many voices in this novel: children's voices, adult voices, underground voices-but Holden's voice is the most eloquent of all. Transcending his own vernacular, yet remaining marvelously faithful to it, he issues a perfectly articulated cry of mixed pain and pleasure. However, like most lovers and clowns and poets of the higher orders, he keeps most of the pain to, and for, himself. The pleasure he gives away, or sets aside, with all his heart. It is there for the reader who can handle it to keep.
Introduction 7Biographical Sketch 9The Story Behind the Story 16List of Characters 21Summary and Analysis 25Critical Views 43Carl F. Strauch on The Complexity of Holden's Character 43Robert M. Slabey on Christian Themes and Symbols 47Jonathan Baumbach on Spirituality 50John M. Howell on T.S. Eliot's Influence 54Warren French on Holden's Search for Tranquility 60Duane Edwards on Holden as the Unreliable Narrator 64Gerald Rosen on the Relevance of Buddhism 69Edwin Haviland Miller on Mourning Allie Caulfield 74Christopher Brookeman on Cultural Codes at Pencey Prep 78Sanford Pinsker on the Protagonist-Narrator 82Paul Alexander on Inventing Holden Caulfield 86Pamela Hunt Steinle on Holden as a Version of the American Adam 89Matt Evertson on Holden Caulfield's Longing to Construct a New Home 94Yasuhiro Takeuchi on the Carnivalesque 99Works by J.D. Salinger 106Annotated Bibliography 107Contributors 117Acknowledgments 120Index 123
