The Catcher in the Rye

 

 

 

STUDY GUIDES

 

 The Catcher in the Rye Cliffs Notes

The Catcher in the Rye Spark Notes

 

 

 

The Catcher in the Rye – Important Scenes to think about re reading

Ch 2        p 6 onwards Spencer’s advice

Ch 6        p 35 Stradlater Fight re Jane

Ch 9        Faith Cavendish (High class escort)

                 Hotel – strange sexual behaviour

 

Ch 11      Jane

 

Ch 12      The ducks

Ch 13      Sunny

 

Ch 14      Maurice

 

Ch 16      Sally Phony

    First time he talks about Catcher

    Museum of Natural History

 

Ch 17      Ultimate chapter on Phoniness p119 at the bottom

 

Ch 21      Phoebe

 

Ch 22      Important – James Castle – Catcher

 

Ch 24      Antolini 

 

P 180 on – ‘Fuck You’ written on the wall

 

P 189 – 190 – Phoebe and the Carousel

 

 

QUICK CHAPTER SUMMARY

1. introduction, standing on that stupid hill

2. conversation with Spencer

3. Ossenburger, conversation with Ackley

4. conversation with Stradlater about Jane

5. Saturday night with Ackley and Mal Brossard; thoughts about Allie

6. fight with Stradlater

7. conversation with Ackley

8. conversation with Mrs Morrow on the train to NYC

9. NY cab driver; Edmont Hotel, phoning Faith Cavendish

10.  thinking about Phoebe, the 3 girls from Seattle

11.  Jane Gallagher

12.  Horwitz and the ducks, at Ernie's, talking with Lillian Simmons

13.  thoughts about being yellow, Maurice and Sunny

14.  thoughts about Allie and Arthur Childs; Maurice and Sunny

15.  making a date with Sally, the two nuns

16.  the kid singing the song, thoughts about acting, the Museum of

Natural History

17.  date with Sally

18.  show at Radio City, thinking about Allie

19.  date with Carl Luce

20.  getting drunk, the lagoon in Central Park, thinking about Allie's grave

21.  at home talking to Phoebe

22.  talking about James Castle, the catcher in the rye

23.  dancing and talking with Phoebe

24.  Mr Antolini

25.  walking up 5th Avenue, planning to go West, the writing on the wall

at Phoebe's school and the museum, Phoebe and the carousel

26.  that's all I'm going to tell about

 

 Interesting Analysis of Holden

 

Holden Caulfield is teen angst bull-crap with a pickaxe. He's sarcastic, nasty, and completely unlikeable. He also doesn't give a crap. He is every teenager caught between the crappy little games of high school ("you're supposed to kill yourself if the football team loses or something") and the fear of adulthood ("going to get an office job and make a lot of money like the rest of the phonies"). The greatness in Holden Caulfield is that what he has to say is better than a million Celestine Prophecies or anything said by Jonathan Livingston Seagull (save for the squawks after you shoot him) or Jesus (save for the apocryphal "hey Peter I can see your house from here"). Holden Caulfield says that life sucks, everyone is a phony, and you'll be inevitably disappointed by everyone that you hold in awe. If you think that this sounds awful, ask yourself one question. When was the last time you found any joy in watching Barney or the Care Bears? It isn't just what he says but the way he says it. He goes through life making dead-on observations that completely shoot the kneecaps out from under the terminally self-righteous. When a successful mortician tells the school to follow his example and pray when things go bad, it is Holden Caulfield who points out that the guy is praying for more people to die. He's depressed by nuns and annoyed by shallow girlfriends, while in love with his platonic friend. Even more interesting is the fact that Caulfield's general pissed off attitude and his hormones are inextricably linked. He practically wants to kill his roommate, Stradlater, because Stradlater might have screwed a girl he desires. He guiltily admits to making out with phonies, and in a major confession he confesses to being a virgin. He gets the crap beat out of him by a disgruntled pimp after deciding that he doesn't want a to have sex with a prostitute for the silliest of reasons.(he just found it disconcerting to see her take her clothes off without fanfare.)The fact that his little brother has just died and that he's being kicked out of yet another school takes second place to the whole sex question. In other words, Holden Caulfield is a guy; stereotype away. What is also interesting is how closely Caulfield captures the attitude and culture of adolescence. There is the caste system in which Caulfield hates and wishes to be his roommate Stradlater. Meanwhile zit-encrusted Ackley, whom he maybe should feel sympathy for, is an annoying guy that Holden can't wait to get out of his room. He's sympathetic to the principle's daughter, saying that it's not her fault what kind of a bastard her old man is, and without missing a beat remarks on the fact that she pads her bra. Cruelty and frustration are mixed, but the comedy level allows you to laugh at your own painful memories. Granted, like many of his fans, Holden Caulfield turns out to be nuts or at least residing in an insane asylum. (Sorry, if you think that those stupid surprise endings are the best reason to read Salinger.) Yet, in Caulfield's insanity, there is a transcendent theme. By being the pissed off, nasty, cynical insane bastard; Holden Caulfield suggests that it is ok to be a crap. Your criticisms of the world are not invalid and nothing you say or think is so bad that you need to repress it. Ironically, this is not only something that is essential to survival (especially if you are a teenager and desperately trying to maintain your lily-white self image) but is also the key to ultimately becoming a decent caring human being. Keep your prophets, preachers and shamans. I'll take Holden Caulfield over them any day.

 

 

 

It's about nothing much - just what it means to human.

There's a tendency for reviews of The Catcher In The Rye to speak of it as a teenagers' book, a story 'about' the problems of being a misunderstood school kid in a cold adult world. But Salinger's novel didn't become a classic by catering for the teen market. Its universal appeal stems from its universal theme. At heart we are ALL misunderstood, and it's a cold old world out there. Holden Caulfield is just a human being in very deep trouble.

Specifically, he's been sacked from yet another school, he's too distressed & frustrated to stick around to the end of term but too frightened to go home, so he spends the entire book floundering around the city looking for somebody to talk to and generally making an idiot of himself. It's the age-old theme of a troubled soul wandering in the wilderness - never mind that in this case the wilderness is the East Side of Manhattan, and Holden's wanderings include a midnight raid on his own home to talk to his own sister.

What is really going on, is that Holden is having a nervous breakdown - not provoked by some post-adolescent navel-gazing; he recently lost his kid brother to leukaemia, and none of the adults in Holden's wealthy, privileged world has bothered to wonder how he will cope with the tragedy. The answer is, he isn't coping. He is on the edge of the abyss, and its odours permeate the bitter humour of the novel.

It is wonderfully comic, and hauntingly painful. Holden Caulfield is the best and the worst, the kindest and most exasperating, the most intelligent and the least rational of people. He is the human condition, in other words. That is what immortalized the author. The publication of this book changed literature for ever. For any of us to say we don't like it, makes no more sense than saying we don't think much of 'Hamlet'. It will simply go on for ever without us and never notice.

 

 

 

 An Essay on Narrative Technique, Symbolism, Characterisation with links to alienation theme

Essay

 

Kelsi and Bridget

 

An average student in public school on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, he was reported to be a quiet, polite, somewhat solitary child. His parents enrolled him in McBurney School in Manhattan in 1932, but he did not adjust well to the private school and struggled with grades. Concerned about their son’s academic performance, his parents sent him to Valley Forge Military Academy in Pennsylvania when he was 15 years old.

 

Like most of Salinger’s central characters, the family lived in the relative comfort of the upper-middle class.

 

How is J.D Salinger like Holden?

They both were solitary and mostly kept to themselves. Both Holden and Salinger struggled with their grades and moved to different schools, which were private schools. They both had upper-middle class families. They both were uncomfortable with talking to their parents and their parents expected well of them.

Salinger fell in love with a girl who married an actor, this is possibly why he writes about Holden hating the movies and actors.

 

Write about one more theme we haven’t discussed

Death

Death is another consistent theme. It is constantly referred to and when Holden is feeling down, he talks to/thinks about Allie. He wishes that time wouldn’t change, that people and other things wouldn’t change (i.e Jane) but he is missing the point in life, that things grow and change and that’s just the way it is. Holden can’t accept this and this is why he is lonely and depressed. He fights against growing up and maturing, but he is constantly pressured by adult ways and the way he grows physically. Holden is afraid of death and this is why he can’t accept change and doesn’t want to grow up, because eventually, with growth and ageing, comes death.

 

 

 Vanessa

 

How is JD Salinger like Holden?

 

If you look at text that JD Salinger has written himself, he talks quite a

lot like Holden does. The style of the writing and word choice are

similar. Also some of the themes that he talks about are very closely

linked to the experiences that he had himself. Because he was a part of

the army in the second world war he believes very strongly that innocence

is easily stolen from the young. Many young boys were forced to become

soldiers and their youth was stolen from them. Both Holden and JD Salinger

agree that society also does this to children.

 

Write about one more theme we haven’t discussed.

 

Our relationships change the way that we see life/our outlook on life

 

Holden struggles to make and keep healthy relationships. He is not very

social and so spends a lot of his time alone. This makes him see life in a

negative light. We can see that he wants to have many healthy

relationships in his attempts to go out to clubs etc… and on dates. He

fails, and usually ends up sitting alone. He has no close friends or

family to trust and to help him get through all the grief that he is

dealing with. If he could make some good relationships with his teachers

then maybe he would not have quit school and would be getting better

grades.

 

Rochelle

 

 

How is JD Salinger like Holden?

• In ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ Holden Caulfield was sent to several boarding schools as a teenager this, like many other things in the text is a parallel with the life of JD Salinger.
• Both Salinger and Holden grew up in New York City and came from a wealthy family.
• Salinger has mirrored his skills and love of writing through Holden.
• In a 1953 interview with a high-school newspaper, Salinger admitted that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical, and explained how "My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book...it was a great relief telling people about it.”
• In 1952 Salinger joined a religion that promoted celibacy and was against sex before marriage, this is similar to Holden in the way that he thinks that sex takes away a persons innocence.
• Salinger also insisted that his wife drop out of school, only four months shy of graduation, and live with him, which she did. This attitude toward school is similar to the way that Holden feels about school.

 

Theme

Holden’s constant criticism of himself results in self-loathing and detachment from society. Holden doesn’t appear to be bothered by this and seems to be quite content with his alienation. He still doesn’t appear to like himself and can’t seem to tell the truth about himself. This shows us that he is not comfortable with the person he truly is.

 

JD Salinger on ‘THE CATCHER IN THE RYE’

"My boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book...it was a great relief telling people about it.”

 

 

Jodie and Ashley D.

 How is J.D Salinger like Holden?

• J.D Salinger is from a rich family, like Holden
• He attened several boarding schools
• He lived in New York
• The Catcher in the Rye was semi-autobiographical.
• Holden and J.D Salinger both alienated themselves from people in one way or another -  "when he was finished with a person, he was through with them"  
• Salinger admitted that the novel was "sort of" autobiographical, explaining that "my boyhood was very much the same as that of the boy in the book...it was a great relief telling peopl about it"
• J.D Salinger started to alienate himself from the world. Almost becoming a recluse. He shunned the outside world.

 

Write about one more theme we haven't discussed.

 

Throughout the "Catcher in the Rye" Holden constantly feels betrayed. He felt betrayed by his family - people he should be close to. He felt some betrayed from Allie because he died and left him.. His parents betrayed him in his eyes - he's unable to trust them. This maybe why he alienates himself from others because he finds it hard to trust people.

 

Interesting facts

• Mark David Chapman, who shot and killed John Lennon was carrying the book when he was arrested immediately after the murder and referred to it in his statement to police
• John Hinchley Jnr who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Regan in 1981, was also reported to have been obsessed with the book.

 

 

Carley

 

How is J.D. Salinger like Holden?

Salinger, like Holden was enrolled in a private school and his parents expected him to do well. He did not get good grades because of this pressure. He was however good at English, as is Holden. In his later years Salinger began to isolate himself. He moved to the country, married and had two children. In the novel this is what Holden dreams about. Salinger was also divorced twice which shows he was bad with relationships like Holden.

Salinger and Holden also like children a lot. Salinger once said “Some of my best friends are children, in fact all of my best friends are children.” This shows through in the character of Holden because he wants to protect all the children and all of his good memories are about children and his childhood.

 

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