I just finished Catcher In The Rye, and I honestly think I’m missing something. I really enjoyed it, but I just don’t understand why people are so obsessed with it. It’s my best friend’s favourite book of all time and she rereads it every month, I heard a guy on reddit say he cried because of the ending? I find none of it that harrowing. Yeah, it’s a melancholy, depressing book, but why are people so fixated on it? What am I missing?
by Pigeonzombie32
43 Comments
It definitely hit differently for me as a jaded and lonely teenager compared to reading it later in life. But then, reading it later in life I also noticed things that flew over my head as a teenager. I still find it very beautiful.
I’ve never met anyone who loves a book so much they reread it every month. Every year or even a couple times a year? Sure. Every month is… a lot.
Some people just really connect with a book. I don’t think you missed anything, it just didn’t hit you the way it does some others.
I rank it as one of my all time favorite novels as well. However, if I had been an adult when I first read it, I’m sure that would not be the case. I read this book in middle school and I think that is why it resonated so much with me. It was around that age that I started to understand that adults are as flawed as children and that I wasn’t the only one with feelings of frustration and fear. I actually tried to read it again a few years ago and just set it aside only a few pages in. I just am not the same person now that I was then, but I do feel that book helped me to navigate through those uncertain adolescent years.
TLDR: Catcher in the Rye resonates more depending on when in your life you read it.
Pasting a comment I made lately about this book:
“catcher is one of those books that drastically changes depending on where you are in life. As a teen you may identify or not with holden as a moody contrarian. As an adult though all I could see was a scared, confused, traumatized boy lashing out at the world. The Catcher in the Rye is one of my favorite books of all time and it’s such a good litmus test for someone’s ability to empathize. I understand Holden is annoying, but adults who outright hate him and don’t understand why he is the way he is miss the fundamental point of the book. He’s a damaged kid who’s got nobody to help him. I mean, the people that think holden is just a selfish brat haven’t even given a thought to the name of the book and what that means”
So yeah, not entirely addressing everything you mentioned but hopefully gives some reason for the love of the book. I particularly love the ending here. Holden is a damaged, neglected, lonely child who has been deemed irredeemable by the people around him, but he dreams of catching the kids lost in the same way he was. The ending elicits strong emotions because it’s tragic that even after his trauma and abuse Holden just wants to be there for people who were unlucky enough to be caught in the same situation as him. He just wants to care and look after the innocent.
So… there are two major shibboleths to the book, and if you miss one the book just won’t hit.
First is the stream of consciousness style. You either like it or you don’t. If you’re not into the style, the book won’t really impact you. Just won’t.
Second is experience with mental health. An understanding that goes beyond just knowing the terms and jargon. The story is about a kid dealing with severe trauma on his own, right up to PTSD psychosis. And the author doesn’t use any of the language we use today to clue a reader into what’s going on. Even if you know intellectually that the book is about mental illness, you miss a ton if you aren’t familiar with how severe untreated trauma affects people.
If you’re missing either of those, it’s basically impossible to really love the book.
All that being said… don’t compare the books impact on you to your friend. A once a month reread seems kinda obsessive, and I suspect there’s more to his connection to the book than just loving it.
It’s all the cussing
It’s one of my favourite books. I had the pretty classic journey with it, first time reading it I was young and thought Holden had it figured out, reading it when I was 16 and finding him annoying and whiny, and finally reading it in my 20s and realising why he’s like that and it was very emotional. Holden is such a realised voice and character that I felt a real twinge of guilt as if I was another adult that had failed him.
Maybe your friends relate to Holden? Or they read it during a very difficult time in their lives? who knows
It’s mainly remembered because of its historical context. It has prostitutes, obscene graffiti, and a kid dealing with mental illness, and in the 1950s you simply Did Not talk about those things, much less write about them. You certainly didn’t curse in a book without censoring it as a big dash.
It’s one of my favorite books and I think it’s because of when I first read it. I was somewhat of a loner in my early teen years and went through my “edgy” teen phase ( I was super cringey now that I think about it 😂). It was somewhat controversial back in the day me it fit right in with my mentality back then. It was the first book that made me feel something and that I actually enjoyed reading. I think it’s a nostalgia thing.
One of my least favorite books. I don’t know why people love it, so you’re not alone.
I think it just captures really well the universal experiences of growing up, like loneliness, grief, simultaneously wanting to be an adult and a child, loss of innocence, betrayal of trusted adults, etc all told from a very fleshed out protagonist. On top of that, Holden’s implied to be depressed after the loss of his brother and potentially sexual abuse as a kid. I think the book resonates with anyone who has experienced those things or grappled with those kind of emotions
I need to re-read it now.
Required reading in middle school and my take away was all the symbolism. Holden Caulfield-hold in caul field. Wanting to save kids, like his sister, from growing up and seeing how screwed up the world is. Being so angry that someone wrote “fuck” on concrete at a kids park though he swears throughout his story. It just holds a special place in my long list of books-might be because we were reading a book with swears IN school, lol
JD Salinger was drafted into the army in WWII. He fought on the beaches on D-Day and in the Battle of the Bulge. He was one of the first Americans to enter a concentration camp at Dachau. He saw some of the absolute worst horrors that human history had to offer.
And when he came home he wrote about a kid bumming around New York.
It’s an exploration of trauma from the point of view of a kid with no support system to speak of. His parents are absent, his schools are useless, every adult in his life ignores or abuses him, he cannot make friends because his traumas have left him caustic.
If, as a reader, your looking for something in the story that’s enjoyable, or exciting, or even just looking for a moment where the main character has any agency in his own life you will not find it. Because that shit wouldn’t be the truth. This kid doesn’t get to have any of that in his life and you’re seeing the world from his eyes.
It’s actually a testament to how well it’s written that so many readers discard Holden as being “lazy” or “arrogant” or “hypocritical” or “detached” or “making bad choices” because that’s exactly how everyone in his life sees him. And there’s nothing he can do about it. Because he’s seen too much death and abuse at too young an age.
All the people in real life who toss him aside are treating him the same way people with trauma are treated in real life.
The book knows that it’s a struggle to relate to Holden, that’s the whole point. He’s not selfish, the biggest fantasy in his life is that he able to protect children so they can retain their innocence and their joy because he was denied that. He’s not a hypocrite, hes just struggling to make sense of a world that refuses to make sense. He’s not lazy, hes just been denied agency his entire life. Of course hes detached and acts above it all- that’s how everyone in his entire life has treated him. It’s a basic truth about trauma that it makes a person need more human connection while making it extremely hard to make those connections. And hes just a kid.
The whole point of the book is that it dares you to try to empathize with someone who’s gone through things that makes it difficult to empathize with him. While also making it very clear that he desperately needs someone- anyone- to empathize with him.
It’s an incredibly human story. And probably the best depiction of trauma in literature. It’s not meant to be an enjoyable read because that’s not the truth of the human condition.
this isn’t about OP but whenever people are like “uhh holden’s so bratty what does he have to complain about” i’m like ???? do the multiple allusions to repeated sexual abuse just slip past people or
One way to understand it is that Holden’s obsession with phonies, and how the modern world is fake and superficial, is that what seems like the words of a genuinely angsty teenager are in fact the words of a traumatized soldier who wrote that book in literal trenches during WW2.
The biography SALINGER by Salerno and Shields has some issues, but it gives a solid account of what Salinger experienced during the Battle of the Bulge, and in liberating a concentration camp shortly afterward.
“Kill John Lennon!”
Ok Butters
It’s a poignant view of a teenager’s mental health crisis. A deeply real portrait of grief, isolation, and depression seen through adolescent avoidance, projection, and denial. Very beautiful that it is his sister’s innocence and love which helps Holden break his denial and recognize that he needs to seek help. I love catcher in the rye, though it has many obvious problems.
I first read the Catcher in the Rye when I was 14 and am the daughter of an addict. And I GOT IT. I’ve never read a book since that impacted me on a visceral level like that one. I re-read it every few years. It’s not for everyone, but for the ones who it’s for, it hits different.
I read one by one three books at those time, The Catcher, then – One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and then On The Road by Kerouac. I wanted to catch the mood of the 60s and had some connection only with the second one. But I think, when taken together, they can give you a necessary effect.
Clearly you’ve never walked around streets alone, mind racing, crying in the cold, isolated because people are phonies. And it shows.
Jk its popular because people relate to it deeply, the isolation of teenage years, the weight of societal expectations, the idiosyncrasies of society, the loss of innocence amd childhood, of change
One thing that’s fascinating about it is that it’s central thesis is proven by its detractors.
The basic premise is that society (particularly adults) find people who have mental illness as a result of traumatic experience should simply be discarded and ignored when what they need is human connection.
So every person who says “I hate this book because Holden is an annoying bitch” absolutely prove the book is correct.
The book will continue to be relevant and will continue to resonate with people so long as there are people who hate the main character.
It’s a fascinating dichotomy.
Overt sexual assault, childhood trauma, isolation and parental neglect all mixed up into an unreliable narrator who—with painful naivety—cannot express his emotions as a result of the former trauma. The result is a novel that’s subtle and, quite frankly, is full of half truths and symbolic turns. Most readers who love the novel have loosened the knots of Salinger’s abstractions and Holden’s cloaked stream of consciousness to find the truth in Holden’s character.
Since I’m a big brother that instinct to protect my sister is such a part of my core the message of the book always spoke to me. I don’t even particularly like Holden as much as the average fan but I think that he’s still a very human character and that’s what people respond to. Particularly when many protagonists are very cliché and boring
I read it for the first time last year and I enjoyed it, but I don’t understand the adoration and I don’t understand why it’s genuinely despised by many. I didn’t find it offensive in any way.
Whenever something like this happens to me, I just chalk it up to ‘this book isn’t for me’. Some books speak to people very strongly, but that doesn’t mean they speak to *every* reader the same way.
That sounds like Harry Potter fanboy behaviour lol
I read it too, thought it’s well-written as someone ranting on like it’s a genuine asshat writing in a diary, but other than that, it’s not that remarkable.
I loved reading catcher, but I feel the age you read it matters. I was 16 when I first read it and if I had been any older I doubt I would have liked it as much.
I also think that since this book is entirely centered around Holden, if you don’t connect with him and/or like him it makes it harder to enjoy. Holden’s emotions were very similar to my own which made me connect with him as a character more.
I agree, felt the same way.
I love it but it’s kind of just overly popular among edge lords for being counter culture material.
The book is appealing to a LOT of people – especially teenagers – because of its wide range of topics, that most of teens can identify with. Angst and alienation, critique of superficiality in society, innocence, identity, belonging, loss, connection, sex, depression, you name it. The main hero, Holden, has basically become an icon of teen rebellion.
But it’s totally okay if you don’ t like the book, we are different and therefore different things appeal to us. And the beauty of literature is that there’s enough variety so that everyone can find a story that speaks to them 🙂
>It’s my best friend’s favourite book of all time and she rereads it every month
your FBI guy having read this post is scrambling through your phonebook rn
Huh. I feel like I see so many more people who really vehemently hate it and almost take its existence and cultural prominence as a personal insult.
I’ve never cared for the book, but seeing these discussions and having more life under my belt, I might give it another try.
Of course, when I did that with Austen’s Emma, I still found it insufferable. But here’s hoping. 🤞
Watching someone struggling so mightily to save others (I.e., trying to be the catcher) when he is so messed up and is the one who needs saving – its really profound.
I read it as a teen in 79 or 80; before mental illness discussion was normal. I never heard of anybody in high school with a diagnosis. That said, my 9th grade teacher thought Holden was insane. I disagreed as I saw behavior I thought a lot of teens understood. I reread it as an adult (maybe in my 30s) and thought she might be right. “Insane” isn’t the term that would be used now, but it was in the 70s.
I loved it as a young man, but if you consider who wrote it, a WWII veteran who saw some absolute atrocities (Salinger was one of the soldiers who liberated concentration camps), the angst suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. Absolute masterpiece, even though I prefer his short stories as a whole.
Hated it as a younger adult. Not a fan at all.
I read it when I was older and I loved it.
I’ve just never read a book that almost immediately put me back in the headspace I was in when I was a teenager. I was impressed with how it was written and the accuracy of Holden’s internal dialogue. Overall I believe if you view it as a coming of age story it has an incredible ability to put you into the mind of the young and disturbed teen many of us once were
I don’t get why Holden is so disliked tbh. I’m 24 so I’m not a teen anymore but my thinking was so similar to his in HS. I was also a super depressed and lonely teen who thought like Holden until I was able to get help for myself.
IMO Holden was much more depressed than me and we seemed to have gone through a lot of trauma. He clearly loved his little sister and wanted his life to be better but he was trapped. I feel for him.
I hated it as a kid, despised Holden. Read it again in my thirties , turns out I basically was Holden.
I liked it when I was an angsty teenager, and I identified with his… Disdain for people and their phoniness.
I tried rereading it a while ago, as an adult, and I thought Holden was pretty whiny. I might give it another go, it’s been years since I read it last.