"The Catcher in the Rye" ("Kuristik rukkis") Salinger - Book report/review (0)

BOOK REPORT
Title of the book: The Catcher in the Rye
Author : Jerome David Salinger ( January 1, 1919 – January 27, 2010) was an American writer who died at the age of 91. He was married three times and has two children .
Some of his most notable works are The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories and Franny and Zooey . The Catcher in the Rye is by far the most famous and most critiqued book of his, selling over 250,000 copies every year . In total the book has sold over 65 million copies worldwide . The success of The Catcher in the Rye led to public attention: Salinger became reclusive, publishing new work less frequently.
Analysis of the book

Setting
The story starts in the year 1950 when the novel ’s protagonist and narrator Holden starts telling a story from a hospital about the events of last year’s winter. Most of the story takes place in winter of 1949 just over a couple of days in Pennsylvania and New York .

Characters

• Holden Caulfield – The main character of the book. He has been expelled from many schools due to his failure in fixing his grades and is expelled from his current school, Pencey Prep, right in the beginning of the story. Although he is intelligent, he fails almost every class , all except for English . He feels alone and sad, trying to find his place in the world, only finding support from his little sister Phoebe who he thinks is smarter than most of the adults.
  
• Stradlater – Shares a room with Holden at Pencey Prep’s dorm . He is described as handsome and popular but secretly very untidy .
  
• Ackely – Holden’s next door neighbor in the dorm. Holden thinks he is of him as a weirdo loner. He isn’t very smart and he often barges into Holden’s room without asking , not noticing the obvious hints about leaving from Holden.
  
• Jane – Although she never appears in the story and doesn’t have any lines, she is very important to Holden. She went to the same school with him and the main character has had a crush on him for a long time.
  
• Phoebe – Holden’s 10-year-old sister who is the most important person to him. Phoebe is intelligent and, despite her age, mature. She understands Holden better than anyone else.
  
• D. B. – Holden’s older brother who is a writer and now works in Hollywood by writing movie scripts. Holden doesn’t like it, saying that they don’t leave anything for the writer’s imagination in Hollywood.
  
• Allie – Holden’s deceased younger brother, who died of leukemia years before Holden tells the story. Holden feels depressed and even guilty of his brother’s death. He carries Allie’s baseball glove around with him.
  

Main problem/conflict
Holden is expelled from another school, Pencey Prep in Pennsylvania this time. He has been expelled from many school before. The school sent his parents a letter about their son dropping out from the school but since it would have taken a couple of days for the letter to reach his parents, Holden decided not to go home before they got the letter.
After his roommate Stradlater goes on a date with Jane, Holden becomes jealous, although first trying to hide it, and starts asking questions about their date. He gets impatient with Stradlater and they have a fight which results in Stradlater easily overpowering him. After the fight Holden decides to leave the school early and go to New York to spend a couple of days before going home. He doesn’t see it as a problem since he has more than enough money to spend, mostly of which he got from his grandparents.
He checks into a rundown hotel and spends the evening in the hotel lounge, dancing with a couple of tourist women who are easily distracted and can’t seem to hold a conversation , which Holden finds extremely annoying.
Over the next couple of days he visits several more places like a nightclub, a café, a theater , and the Central Park. Soon enough he finds himself to be completely broke and goes home. To his surprise , his parents are out and he goes to talk to his sister. Phoebe asks him if he has any dreams and who he wants to become. Holden doesn’t have an answer right away since he doesn’t know his place in the world but then responds that he wants to be a catcher of kids in a field of rye on the edge of a cliff, keeping them from falling down. He gets that idea by misinterpreting a part of the poem to mean "if a body catch a body“, rather than "if a body meet a body“.
In the end of the book, Holden decides to run away from home to somewhere far away from it. When he confronts his sister with his plans , she wants to go with him but Holden refuses, deciding not to go anyway in the end. Instead, Holden takes his sister to the zoo and watches her ride a carousel.
The book ends with words “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody ,” which is, in my opinion, also very thought provoking.

Language (list of words or expressions frequently used by the author):
The novel is filled with slang of the time the book takes place in.

• Crumby – disappointing, inadequate
  
• Phony – very hypocritical
  
• That killed me – a phrase used often in the book to display something Holden found hilarious.
  
• […], I really did – something Holden said a lot to emphasize certain things.
  
• You would have liked him/her – Holden said this when he was describing someone.
  
• Swell – something cool or nice
  

Character analysis:
Name: Holden Caulfield
Appearance and personality: Holden was tall – about 6’2” and skinny. He is very judgmental about everything and everyone. He feels lonely and depressed much because of his failure in his studies but also because of his brother’s death and the suicide of one of his schoolmates. He finds comfort from his little sister Phoebe who always listens to him. He is a bit scared of his parents and tries to avoid them when in trouble, which is pretty typical for a teenager. He lies a lot even though he tries not to. Once he starts, he can’t stop. Holden also likes to drink and smoke .
Compare yourself to this character (bring out similarities and differences ): I think everyone has felt depressed or had a very sad period at some point of their teenage years and this is why I think it is very easy to draw parallels with myself and Holden. Another similarity is that I don’t do as well in other classes as I do in English, although the differences aren’t that drastic.
One of the differences is that I usually tell my parents about my problems because I know they can help me with everything.
Did you like this character? Why/why not?
I definitely like the character because he seems to be different than others, like a drop of ink in a glass of water. I don’t like the character because of his bad habits like drinking and smoking , although I guess they add to his character.

Did you like the book? Would you recommend it to your classmates? Why/why not?
I liked this book a lot because it’s very thought provoking in many different aspects. The language that the book is written in is very simple and really connects with young people, even though the book is over 60 years old. The story and the characters can be easily familiarized with. Also, I think that it is kind of cool that this book was found on the shooter of John Lennon and the different interpretations people can have of the book. I would definitely recommend this book to all my classmates.