The Catcher in the Rye - An Undeserving Masterpiece

I just got done reading The Catcher in the Rye for my second time, and it’s safe to say I still hate it. Why then did I read it a second time? Well I had to give it another chance, considering how much praise it’s gotten. It’s been called one of the greatest American novels ever written and is considered one of the most influential.

But I’m here to debunk a few rumors about it. Now this is not “hating” on this book just to be a mere “hater,” and I’d like to point out that I don’t think J.D. Salinger, the book’s author is without talent. He’s one of the few great short story writers in our nation’s history, but I do believe his only novel is a pile of crap, more or less.

My biggest problem with this novel lies in its narration. It’s narrated by our antihero, Holden Caulfield, a confused, angry young man who uses the most obnoxious language possible. I realize this is Salinger’s way of emphasizing that Holden is not fully matured and still has things to learn from the world around him, its simplistic nature really takes me out of the story. What makes it even more annoying and improbable is that it’s written so poorly and it’s emphasized dozens of times that English is the only subject Holden is good at. Somehow this style is what has made it “speak to” the youth for over fifty years, but ironically it shows me that Salinger didn’t really understand how the youth thought, talked, or felt. When I complain about the style of Caulfield’s narration, what I mean is his repeated phrases. When he states something, he always repeats it by adding the word “really” to it. For example: “It was very ironical. It really was” in page 37. And believe me when I say it’s a hell of a lot more than that. He also describes multiple—too many things—as killing him. “Sensitive. That killed me.” – page 72. It gets very annoying and repetitive as well. He also nearly always uses the word “goddam” to describe things, or says “Chrissake” all the time. This kind of language made it controversial at the time, but it’s virtually swearing for the sake of swearing; there’s no point to it. Most of the time those words are used to describe things that he’s not even really frustrated over, making them utterly pointless. He also uses the word “old” to describe just about every character he comes across. Old Stradlatter, old Phoebe, etc. Again, it doesn’t make sense. It would make sense if it was used once to describe a person who he hadn’t seen in a long time, but he uses it to describe his sister when he’s frickin’ with her!

The next most glaring problem with this novel is the protagonist himself. Outside his simplistic narration, there really isn’t anything interesting or likable to his character. Now to write a compelling novel, you don’t need a likable protagonist, it’s true, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt. When I look at this issue I always think of probably the greatest novel ever written, James Joyce’s Ulysses. Leopold Bloom is a horribly flawed character and there are some things you grow to hate him over. And yet it works. Why? Because he feels real. He’s a realistic character and Joyce’s narrative probably delves into his character in more detail than any other character in the history of fiction. Another great example is Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. At the beginning of the novel, Ebenezer Scrooge is the most despicable person ever to live, but since the story that Dickens is telling is interesting, the character changes and you grow to care about him. So if you don’t have a likable main character, my rushed conclusion is that you need either a realistic one or an interesting story. The Catcher in the Rye has neither. Salinger also tried the unreliable narrator thing, with Caulfield using the word “phony” all the time to describe everything he didn’t like, while later showing him to participate in these “phony” activities. However, nothing forces him to do these things and nothing comes of these activities.

But it does have an interesting story, you say. It’s about a young man trying to find himself. No, it’s not. That would imply that the character changes and learns things along the way. It’s revealed in the opening sentence that Caulfield doesn’t learn shit throughout the entire novel, seeing as how he’s written it in the future and everything is just looking back. He’s just as annoying and bitter in the beginning as he is in the end, whether or not he’s with his beloved sister. On top of that, I call the sincerity of that relationship even, because he frequently uses the words “goddam” and “chrissake” when dealing with her, perhaps implying that he’s frustrated, even though we are led to believe that’s the one genuine relationship he has. Again I’ll bring up Joyce as an example of how to write about a young man finding himself. A Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man is a flawless example of this kind of story, since Stephen Dedalus goes through significant changes while remaining realistic the entire time. Is comparing Salinger to Joyce fair? Hell no, so I’ll give another example that’s a little more fair. Mark Twain wrote perhaps the signature young adult novel in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, a story that most Americans if not all are pretty familiar with. Huck Finn starts out pretty much the same as Holden Caulfield, but he changes; he’s not static at all. He changes to reflect his society. Not that Salinger didn’t try this; Holden is constantly contrasted with the society that he is a member of, with Pencey and all that jazz. It’s clear he doesn’t belong in the society that he’s been brought up in, but again, this is evident from the very beginning. We know virtually everything we need to know in this book in the first chapter.

The final chapter, which is only like a page and a half, tries to tack on some stupid message about keeping things to yourself and how that’s important, but it comes out of nowhere and has nothing to do with the previous 275 pages or whatever. He’s not in the situation he’s in because he told someone something; he’s in this situation because he doesn’t feel like trying in school because he’s more concerned about not being a phony than being smart or successful or competent. Again, maybe this is Salinger trying to get you to disagree with the unreliable narrator, but if that’s the case, what’s the point of this narrative? Nothing.

So in my conclusion I don’t just dislike this novel; I hate it. It’s easily the worst novel I’ve read that’s considered an all-time classic, worse than both Naked Lunch and Siddhartha combined. And that’s saying a lot. Naked Lunch was at least stylistically interesting, and not nearly as bland as this. And Siddhartha told an interesting story, albeit the characters weren’t realistic and the whole novel seemed like it should have been four times as long. I guess the only bright point is that this is under 300 pages. If this were the length of Ulysses or Les Miserables, I couldn’t have gotten through it once, let alone twice. That’s about it.

The Catcher in the Rye sucks. It really does.