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"The Catcher in the Rye" By J. D. Salinger

Jerome David Salinger spent most of his childhood trying different schools and different jobs. He was born in Manhattan, New York on New Year's Day, January 1, 1919. His mother, Marie Jillich, was Irish and Scottish, while his father, Sol Salinger, was Polish.When his mother married his father, she changed her name to Miriam and conformed to Judaism, considering her new husband was Jewish. His sister, Doris, was born in 1911. He attended many different schools, much like his main character in Catcher in the Rye. He attended public schools in Western Manhattan. In ninth and tenth grade, he went to McBurney School, a private school. Here, he was part of the school newspaper. Salinger was very active in plays and was good in drama. However, his father didn't like the idea of his son being an actor. Later, he enrolled at Valley Forge Millitary Academy in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Here, he wrote many stories at night in bed. In 1936, Salinger was a freshman at New York University. He first wanted to try to go into the field of special education, but dropped out in the spring. His father urged him in the fall to go into the meat-importing business, sending him to a company in Vienna, Austria. He left in March, 1938 and went to Collegeville, Pennsylvania to attend Ursinus College for only a semester. In 1939, he went to a Columbia University evening writing class. It was here that he found his job as a writer. The teacher, Whit Burnett, liked his stories and even put one in his magazine, //Story//. He was Salinger's mentor for several years.
 * __The Author__**

World War II had a huge impact on his life. In 1941, he fell in love with Oona O'Neill, the daughter of a playwrite. He dated her until she fell in love with and married Charles Chaplin in 1943. In the same year, J. D. Salinger began sending in short stories to the magazine //The New Yorker//. The magazine rejected seven of his works, but accepted one of his works in December called "Slight Rebellion of Manhattan." It was a story about a teenage boy named Holden Caulfield, who is anxious about war. However, it wasn't published until five years later, because of the attack on Pearl Harbor that occurred that month and the war that followed. Salinger was drafted into World War II in the spring of 1942. The war was hard on him, affecting him emotionally after the win over Germany. He spent a short time in the hospital for battle fatigue. Its affect had also shown through his work. For instance, one of his stories, "For Esm'e with Love and Squalor" was told by a traumatized soldier. After World War II, Salinger signed up to help "de-Nazifi" Germany for six months. While in Germany, he met and fell in love with Sylvia. Sylvia married Salinger in 1945 and moved back to the states with him. After eight months, they lost their love and Sylvia moved back to Germany. On July 16, 1951, J. D. Salinger published "The Catcher in the Rye," a story about the same main character in his short story, "Slight Rebellion of Manhattan." It became one of his most famous novels. On the other hand, this book was also controversial in its profanity, religous slurs, and casual discussion of sex. This caused him to move to Cornish, New Hampshire in 1953. He originally was very social, especially with students. However, after an interview he had with a student for the high school section of the city newspaper appeared on the editorial section, he stopped contacting the students and stayed in his house mostly. He only regularly saw Learned Hand, a close friend of his.

J. D. Salinger married Claire Douglas in June of 1955. He had convinced her to drop out of college four months before her graduation. They had a daughter Margaret in 1955 and a son Matt in 1960. Salinger very much cared for his first child, Margaret, who was very sick. In fact, Claire became so jealous of her husband's love for their daughter, that in winter of 1957, she planned on murdering Margaret and committing suicide short after. Claire was going to do it while the family was on a trip in New York City, but instead took the child and ran away from the hotel they were staying at. Within a few months, Salinger persuaded her to come back home. Throughout his life, Mr. Salinger tried many different religions, including Judaism, Hinduism, and Kriya yoga. He was also known to work on finishing stories, and end up destroying them or never publishing. For the manuscripts he never published, he'd either mark red, meaning he wanted them published as is after he died, or blue, meaning he wanted them edited before being published after he died. Both of these habits annoyed Claire very much. In September of 1961, //Time// magazine had J. D. Salinger on their front cover. It contained an article about his life of staying private. Around this time, he forced Claire to stop seeing her friends and relatives. This cause her to run away from him in 1966 and divorce with him a year later.

His life after has not been very eventful, seeing as he tried to stay to himself. Later, he fell in love with Joyce Maynard. She was eighteen years old and he was fifty-three years old. She dropped out of Yale University after her freshman year to live with him. However, their love only lasted a year. J. D. Salinger told his daughter it was because Joyce wanted children and he felt that he was too old for that. Maynard wrote a memoir of her life in 1999 titled "At Home in the World: A Memoir." It talked about her relationship with J. D. Salinger. In 2000, Margaret wrote her own memoir, "Dream Catcher: A Memoir." Her memoir talked about her father's contol over her birth mother, Claire. She also denied lies told by Ian Hamilton, who wrote a book on J. D. Salinger, stating that his post traumatic stress disorder left him psychologically damaged. Today, he still lives in New Hampshire and is eighty-nine years old. He hasn't been interviewed since 1980. His last piece of work was "Hapworth 16, 1924" which was published in //The New Yorker// in 1965.

This story takes place in New York City through the eyes of a sixteen year old boy named Holden Caulfield. He recollects an event that happened in his life less than a year ago. He had been kicked out of many schools already and was having trouble in school with his grades. Because of his constant flunking, he is kicked out of Prencey Prep. He goes to visit his favorite teacher, Mr. Spencer. He tells Holden that he better change his attitude and focus on doing well in school. However, he pays little attention to his teacher's advice. "I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to //help// you, if I can" (Salinger 14). His roommate, Ward Stradlater dates one of his childhood friends, Jane Gallagher, which makes Holden rather sore. Holden worries whether Stradlater had sex with her or not, but Stradlater refused to tell. Because of his stubbornness, Caulfield gets in a fight with him. After the fight, he decides to leave Prencey Prep three days before he would leave for Christmas break and leave the school for good. Instead, he goes out in New York City with a bundle of cash he got from selling his typewriter. Holden goes to hotels and nightclubs, trying to get women. He tries to be an adult by smoking, drinking underage, swearing, and discussing sex.
 * __Plot Synopsis__**

This starts Holden Caulfield's struggle with himself and his life. While out on his own, Holden describes phonies that he sees and digresses about people from his past. He sees a play with his friend Sally and explains to her his idea. He thinks they should spend the rest of their lives living in cabins in Massachusetts and Vermont in cabin camps. Once they'd run out of money, he'd get a job. Sally refuses the idea and Holden gets mad at her. As he runs out of cash, Holden gets drunk and feels like dying. He decides that the only one who would care if he died was his little sister, Pheobe. She's the only one he feels that he can talk to, seeing that his brother, D. B., is a prostitute in Hollywood, his other brother, Allie, died of leukemia, and he didn't want his parents to know that he got kicked out yet. Holden decided to go sneak into his family's apartment and visit her. He talks with her and she finds out that he was kicked out of school. Pheobe got very mad at him and tried to convince him to do something with his life. "Then all of a sudden, she said, 'Oh why did you do it?' She meant why did I get the ax again. It made me sort of sad, the way she said it" (Salinger 167). He explains his idea of moving west and getting a job on a ranch. She refuses it and claims that he's too negative. Holden then calls up one of his favorite teachers, Mr. Antolini. Pheobe gave him her Christmas spending money to Holden before he left to get him by until Christmas break. Then, he'd come back home and explain to his parents how he got kicked out of school. He goes to his house and Mr. Antolini tells him to get the best out of school as well, in order to do something good with his life. After leaving Mr. Antolini's house, Holden seems to not have changed. He decides to say goodbye to Pheobe and give her her money back before he goes West, never to return home. He would pretend to be a deaf-mute and fill gas at a gas station all his life. After all his friends, family, and teachers tell him to go to school instead of becoming a bum, it's up to Holden to make the right decision with his life.

code Coming thro' the Rye Coming thro' the rye, poor body, Coming thro' the rye, She draiglet a' her petticoatie Coming thro' the rye.

O, Jenny's a' wat, poor body; Jenny's seldom dry; She draiglet a' her petticoatie Coming thro' the rye.

Gin a body meet a body Coming thro' the rye, Gin a body kiss a body - Need a body cry?

Gin a body meet a body Coming thro' the glen, Gin a body kiss a body - Need the warld ken? -Robert Burns code

__**Criticism**__ The Catcher in the Rye had its strengths and weaknesses. The book was very good at describing characteristics of a troublesome teenage boy, including their thoughts and feelings towards adultery, their use of language, their thoughts towards the usefulness of education, their quick judgement of other people, and their wish to drink and smoke. As the character digressed about people in his past, you learned a lot about his likes and dislikes. Holden's dislikes were also discerned from his talk of "phonies" or people that irked him. By doing this, J. D. Salinger gave insight towards Holden's morals and attitude. He caused the reader to almost dislike the main character, hoping that he makes good decisions instead of continuing his foolish ways. At the same time, however, you believe that he's a good kid and shows some common sense once in a while. He creates a dissapproval of the character, but still allows the reader to trust him. This is very hard to do, considering that Holden is the only protagonist in the story and might go against many of the reader's morals. The reader's uncertainty of Holden's morals also contributes to the suspense of the climax. They question what Holden is most likely to do with his life.

On the other hand, there were a few downfalls with the Catcher in the Rye. Holden Caulfield's use of language and loose talk about sex turned off many readers at the start. Readers who made it the middle of the book may have been bored with Holden's wandering of New York. There didn't seem to be much importance or use of him going to all of these nightclubs or calling random friends from his past. The main character's digressions may have also seemed irrelevant. Many a times, Holden would talk about a person for a page and a half, just because they were on his mind at the time.

This book was a favorite to some readers and a waste of time for others. It depends how you feel towards the character and your patience with Holden's recollection of his life. The author did a great job on creating the story, but the audience may not have fully accepted it.

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The Catcher in the Rye was a wonderful book and deserves to be on the list of "Outstanding Books for the College Bound." This realistic fiction novel attracts older readers, but catches the attention of many young adults as well. J. D. Salinger wrote the book from the perspective of a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield, whom with teenage readers could relate to. Readers who share the same problem of flunking out of school or having uncertainty about what to do with their lives were drawn into this book right away. This book informs the reader about the struggles many teenagers face with finding out who they are and who they want to be. Salinger had a way of controlling the readers' feelings to his advantage. For instance, he causes the reader to feel hope, yet frustration towards the main character as he struggles to discover the importance of education. Whenever he gave hints to Holden about the moral through his friends or family, the reader had to keep reading to see what affect it had on him; to see if it finally changed his views. Throughout the story, Salinger describes Holden Caulfield's attitude through his thoughts and his recollection of his life. By doing this, he adds on to the reader's opinion of the main character. This continued up to the climax, at which point it seems as though all hope is lost for Holden, but somehow, you continue to have faith in him.
 * __Why this is an Outstanding Book__**

The title, "The Catcher in the Rye" ties in with the story in a smart way. Holden says the only thing he wants to do with his life is become the catcher in the rye. He remembers it from a poem (which he mistakes for a song) in which kids come running out of the rye right in front of a cliff. He wants to be the one who catches them before they run out of the rye and fall off of the cliff. "You know what I'd like to be? You know that song 'If a body catch a body comin' through the rye? I'd like--Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, andnobody's around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy" (Salinger 173). Since the main purpose of the story is based around Holden figuring out how to live his life, this is a short phrase that summarizes the whole book. I would personally reccommend this book to my friends. Thanks to the genious of J. D. Salinger, "The Catcher in the Rye" is nothing less than outstanding.

Genre: Bildungsroman Point of View: First Person--through the eyes of Holden Caulfield Style: Slow, pondering, wondering, often notes the main character's opinions of others to find himself.
 * __Literary Information__**

[|Source of Information] [|Other Books Suggested] [|Prequel Story] Salinger, J. D. __The Catcher in the Rye Boston__, Massachussetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1945. [|Link to Book]
 * __Links__**