J. D. Salinger And The Catcher in the Rye

Jerome David Salinger
Born - January 1, 1919 - Manhattan, NY
Parents were wealthy
Didn’t have a great
relationship with his dad
Went to prep schools,
military school, Europe,
and college in NY

Salinger’s Early Love Life
Salinger fell in love with Oona O’Neill -->
But she left him for Charlie Chaplin -->
He was much older than she was!

Experiences in War
Drafted into the Infantry in WWII
Involved in the invasion of Normandy
Involved in a useless battle at Hürtgenwald
Witnessed atrocities of war
Suffered from PTSS (post-traumatic stress syndrome), a.k.a. “shell shock”

Other Relationships
Sylvia - 1945 - divorced
Claire Douglas - 1955 - divorced in 1967
Two children, Margaret and Matt
Joyce Maynard - 1970s - girlfriend (broke up because she was much younger and wanted children; he thought he was too old)
Colleen O’Neill - late 1980s (married) - she was 40 years younger than Salinger

Publications
Early short stories - published in magazines
Story
Saturday Evening Post
Esquire
The New Yorker
Stories eventually published in collections
Franny and Zooey
Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters
Nine Stories

Publications
The Catcher in the Rye
Salinger’s only novel
Published in 1951
Immediate success - quickly reached #4 on the New York Times Bestseller List
Book-of-the-Month Club selection
Never out of print - still sells 250,000 copies annually

Catcher Controversy
One of the most censored books of the 20th century (#13 on the ALA list of most frequently challenged books of 1990-2000)
Language
Sexual themes
Alcohol
Blasphemy
Undermining family values
Holden being a poor role model
At one point, Catcher was the most censored and second most taught book in the USA

Where is He Now?
Salinger hasn’t published anything in over 40 years (he’s 89!)
Lives as a recluse in New Hampshire
In his last interview, he said that he loves to write, but he writes for himself only

Interesting Tidbit
In Margaret Salinger’s memoir, she revealed that J.D. Salinger drank his own urine.
He did this for medicinal purposes

Catcher in the Rye
Catcher in the Rye -- J.D. Salinger

Salinger’s main character, Holden Caulfield epitomizes the growing pains of an entire generation of high school students

Setting: New York City
Holden is from a wealthy area of New York City
Holden is kicked out of Pency Prep
Story is told over a 3 day period in December in the early 1950s

The Characters:
Holden Caulfield
Phoebe Caulfield
Allie Caulfield
Ackley
Stradlater
Jane Gallagher

Holden Caulfield
The protagonist and narrator of the novel
sixteen-year-old junior who has just been expelled for academic failure
Extremely negative and judgmental
Views the adult word as “Phony”

Phoebe Caulfield
Holden's ten-year-old sister
Her childish innocence is one of Holden's only consistent sources of happiness
Phoebe seems to recognize that Holden is his own worst enemy.

Characters - Allie Caulfield
Holden's younger brother
Dies of leukemia three years before the start of the novel
Holden carries around a baseball glove on which Allie used to write poems in green ink.

Characters – Ackley
Holden's next-door neighbor in his dorm at Pencey Prep
pimply, insecure boy with terrible dental hygiene
often barges into Holden's room and acts completely oblivious to Holden's hints that he should leave

Characters - Stradlater
Holden's roommate at Pencey Prep
Stradlater is sexually active and experienced for a prep school student
Holden calls him a “sexy bastard.”

Characters – Jane Gallagher
girl with whom Holden spent a lot of time one summer
Jane never actually appears in novel
Jane is extremely important to Holden because she is one of the few girls whom he both respects and finds attractive.

Holden Caulfield, the narrator of The Catcher in the Rye, begins with the novel with an authoritative statement that he does not intend for the novel to serve as his life story. Currently in psychiatric care, this teenager recalls what happened to him last Christmas, the story which forms the narrative basis for the novel.
The Plot:

Holden returns to his dormitory
where he finds Robert Ackley
*Holden tells about how Allie died of leukemia several years before and how he broke all of the windows in his garage out of anger the night that he died.
Plot 2.

Plot 3.
Holden decides to leave Pencey to return to New York City, where he will stay in a hotel before actually going home.
While he is walking he feels depressed when he hears children singing the song "If a body catch a body coming through the rye." When Holden sees Sally immediately wants to marry her, even though he does not like Sally.

Plot 4.
He tells Phoebe, whom he known for some time that he would like to be "a catcher in the rye," and he imagines himself standing at the edge of a cliff as children play around him. He would catch them before they ran too close to the cliff.

Plot 6.
Holden spends the night at Grand Central Station, then sends a note to Phoebe at school, telling her to meet him for lunch. He becomes increasingly distraught and delusional, believing that he will die every time he crosses the street and falling unconscious after suffering from diarrhea.
When he meets Phoebe, she tells him that she wants to go with him and becomes angry when he refuses. He buys Phoebe a ticket for the carousel at the nearby zoo, and as he watches her, he begins to cry.

Plot 7.
Holden ends his story here. He refuses to tell what happened next and how he got sick, and tells how people are concerned about whether or not he will apply himself next year. He ends the story by telling that he misses Stradlater and Ackley and even Maurice.