Who's Your Catcher in the Rye?

Catcher in the Rye - J.D Salinger
(1951)

By the time I am writing this, it is simply the best book I have ever read. How I got to know this book was actually from a song titled "Who Wrote Holden Caufield?". It was inspired by this book. So the very next day I stopped by at Borders, picked up one copy from the shelf and headed to the register. I didn't even know that it was a very popular book at all. Let alone the fact that it was the book that inspired Chapman to kill Lennon and many other killings.

When I finished reading the book, I was left in tears. For weeks.

This is new because I don't usually cry over movies or TV series.  Let alone books. I had never cried over books.

The book is about a teenager named Holden Caulfield who was developing a nervous breakdown. Got expelled from a school, he impulsively decided to 'take a vacation' before going back to his home in New York. The book was about those few days, told from Holden's point of view, describing the activities and the minds of Holden - a confused mind of a youth who seemed to despise phonies, perverts, adult society and all - well basically he bitterly hated everything.

I found the book depressing yet entertaining at the same time. At some point Holden's sarcastic and humorous attitude made me laugh. There was just too much honesty that made Holden believable that sometimes I think of him as a real person, not just fictional. As I kept reading, I couldn't help but think of me as Holden Caulfield himself. I could relate to him on every level. It just felt like reading my own biography. Throughout the book, it was obvious to see that Holden was still struggling with the loss of his younger brother Allie, who died from leukemia.

As Holden continued heading to a helpless downward spiral, I felt incredibly depressed just to think about him. It felt like he desperately wanted to hold on to his innocence for as long as he could just as he was becoming an adult, one of the phonies that he had been loathing. Thus, he also felt responsible to protect younger children, especially his own sister named Phoebe, from the adult world where all the innocence is lost.
When Phoebe asked what he wanted to be, Holden stated his desire to catch the children falling off from the cliff into the corrupt world.

"Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be a catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy"

My favorite part of the book was Holden's visit to a museum where he reflected his own fear of any changes, as much as I do.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and their pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody'd be different. The only thing that would be different would be you."

At the end of the book, Holden refused to mention much about the present day which made me worrying about Holden to an extent that you wouldn't understand. I wonder if he would make it, I was genuinely hoping that he would be okay. There was some urge of desire to assure him that everything was going to be okay. That bothered me the most. He wanted to be a catcher in the rye to all those innocent children, but would he find his? It depressed the hell out of me.

Lately I made some discovery about the ending, in which I hope it could provide some comfort to myself.   It seemed that I had failed to see that Phoebe was after all the one who saved Holden from his deep fall and set him straight. It was when Holden watched Phoebe riding a carousel. It was just almost adorable.

"... I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. I was damn near bawling. I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth, I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could've been there".

I keep coming back to this book from time to time. I re-read the whole book or just several chapters. I am frequently amazed of how different my reaction is. I do and always will cherish this book. Well as strange as it sounds, Holden had become a part of my life.

I personally think that this book is a timeless classic. For as long as the society is as sick as it is today or even worse, Catcher in the Rye will always be relevant.  We got to admit that there are times when we all need a catcher in the rye. And as for me, I am actually blessed to have "catchers in the rye" during those sick times. Yes, I am referring to my family and beloved best friends which I can't name one by one here. I am just one hell of a lucky person to have them all :)