99 pages • 3 hours read
The Catcher in the Rye
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Themes
The Lack of Authenticity in Adult Society
Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses suicide and anti-gay prejudice, and it uses stigmatizing terms about mental illness which are reproduced only in quotations.
The worst thing a person can be to Holden Caulfield is phony, and he sees phonies everywhere he looks in New York. At his school, his classmates are concerned with grades, girls, and status, whereas Holden is more concerned with doing something more meaningful than playing the game correctly (which echoes his admiration for Jane when she would rather keep her kings in the back row than win). At bars, he meets people who are obsessed with celebrity or being at the right nightclub. In romantic relationships, Holden struggles to see how people can be sexual with one another if they are genuinely affectionate. In every area of his life, Holden sees a veneer of inauthenticity that bothers him.
This extends to people who have genuine talent; Holden often laments that actors and musicians who are talented are showing off, and he tells Phoebe that if he became a good lawyer one day, he wouldn’t be able to tell if he was doing good for its own sake or for adulation. Though he respects his brother, D. B., he clearly prefers D. B.’s writing that was less connected to Hollywood. D. B.’s success signals a move toward inauthenticity.
Of course, Holden is a phony too, as he frequently makes up lies to the people around him and only shares his real problems with a select few. It doesn’t trouble him in the moment, but he is deeply concerned about the possibility of his own fraudulence, especially as he knows that he’s moving into adulthood. This suggests that, in his contemporary culture, it is difficult to be authentic even when one is aware of the problems with inauthenticity.
The novel takes pains to point out that Caulfield’s lament isn’t that new or interesting; Mr. Antolini even outright says it to Holden. But the real tragedy, and the one that speaks to the book’s lingering success, is that phoniness is an inescapable part of American society, and those who can’t get over that are doomed to the “terrible, terrible fall” of which Antolini warns Holden (242).
Longing for Connection
Despite Holden’s hatred for inauthenticity in society, his inability to be happy isn’t rooted in other people as much as it’s rooted in his inability to connect with them. Throughout the novel, he tries every method possible of connecting with people: He makes small talk with cab drivers, he’s a voyeur, he hires a sex worker, he donates to charity, he calls up old lovers and old friends—all of these leave him feeling more alone than when he began. It’s only when he connects with his younger sister that he feels that he’s found something authentic. The difference is that she lives outside of the pretense that the adult world puts on people.
Salinger uses Holden’s failures to connect, despite his longing, to suggest that modern society prevents genuine connection. The telephone symbolizes this point. In a city full of people, a phone box is the first thing Holden reaches for when he arrives at Penn Station, suggesting that this modern invention masks actual distance with a sense of connection. Furthermore, Holden constantly calls people he doesn’t want to call, reinforcing the irony that society is more connected than ever and yet disconnected.
The setting of the city reinforces this irony. Holden spends most of the novel in New York City, which is teeming with people, and yet he struggles to build a connection with anyone. He looks through people’s windows, representing the point that he is close to others physically and yet separated from them. The streets at night are often empty, mirroring his loneliness despite being surrounded by people. The city is also one of the things he and Sally argue about since she likes it and he hates it, reinforcing the idea that modern urban living drives people apart.
The Desire to Preserve Childhood Innocence
Holden is on the precipice of adulthood, and the prospect is terrifying to him. To Holden, the adult world is full of danger and phony behavior, which is exemplified toward the end of the novel when he keeps seeing the words “fuck you” graffitied everywhere. Whenever Holden sees or interacts with a child, he notes their inner goodness, and the idea of being a “catcher in the rye” is rooted in his desire to keep those children from falling off the cliff into either the adult world or into trauma/death (225).
This attitude is highly influenced by the death of his brother, Allie, of whom Holden thinks frequently. Allie represents an almost magical innocence to Holden, particularly because his death at a young age means that he won’t grow into adulthood. It’s also influenced by his relationship with Phoebe, the only person he meets in the novel with whom he has a genuine connection. It’s a subtext of much of the early parts of the novel, particularly when he recalls Jane Gallagher, but it comes into the foreground of his mind after he sees the young boy singing, “[i]f a body catch a body coming through the rye” (150). From that point on, Holden begins interacting with the children he sees in New York and commenting on their inherent goodness.
As he interacts with children, he becomes invested in the idea that he could protect them somehow, and he tells Phoebe that protecting children is what he wants to do with his life. The next day, though, he starts to realize that’s impossible, and children need to be allowed to fall. The final image of the novel—Phoebe reaching for the brass ring—is bittersweet, as Holden realizes that she’s going to grow up, and that he must let her, but that he can still savor the moments of her youth. The novel hence suggests that adulthood corrupts innocence but that fighting the inevitability of adulthood is fruitless.
Unlock all 99 pages of this Study GuidePlus, gain access to 8,800+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Related Titles
By J. D. Salinger
