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Esra Kaya
Ins. Burak Yigit
Philosophy & Literature II
24 March 2020
A Teenage Wasteland: Catcher in the Rye
Our thoughts about war often formed by literary works and surely no other writer could
be associated with war more than Ernest Hemingway. He visited many battlefronts during in his
lifetime, and he was even wounded by an Austrian mortar shell. (Waldhorn). His experience of
war along with his dedication to realism played a fundamental role for most of his works. He held
his experience of war so close to his heart that it became a lifetime concern. He dealt with what
happens to the soul after going through war and how one can cope with it. Of course, he was nei-
ther the first nor the last author who experienced the cruelty of war. In fact, Hemingway be-
friended another author during the war, the famous J. D. Salinger. (Hoban) Salinger’s experience
of the war was as firsthand as Hemingway’s, and one could say his battle scars ran even deeper
than his comrade; he was one of the first American soldiers to ever witness Nazi concentration
camps where he saw numerous burned victims of hate and tyranny. (Hoban) Yet his works does
not carry the traces of war as explicit as Hemingway does. There are no battlefields, no guns, no
concentration camps, no soldiers, and nothing related to war whatsoever. In his famous work,
Catcher in the Rye, we are only presented with a teenage boy, Holden Caulfield and his wander-
ings around the New York City.
Characterized partially by his untimely grey hair and skinny appearance, Holden
Caulfield is both the narrator and protagonist of the novel, and tells his story after being expelled
from his school mainly because academic failure. His voice carries an adolescent attitude in
which one can feel his alienation among society; a stranger that can neither fit in nor met with the

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expectations of people around him. During his journey back home to New York City, he encoun-
ters various kinds of people such as his friends, his teachers, a prostitute, a nun, and cab drivers.
(Galens) He makes frequent attempts to get somebody to listen to him but these attempts merely
make him more desperate in this “phony” world because none of them are willing to listen to
him, and often incapable of understanding him. This incommunicability is undoubtedly one of the
most important key elements because nothing dramatic happens throughout the book as in the
movies. He even says “If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies,” (p. 2) and J. D. Salinger puts it
this way:
“Catcher in the Rye is very novelistic novel. There are readymade “scenes”—only a fool
would deny that—but, for me, the weight of the book is in the narrator’s voice, the non-stop pecu-
liarities of it, his personal, extremely discriminating attitude to his reader-listener, his asides
about gasoline rainbows in street puddles, his philosophy or way of looking at cowhide suitcases
and empty toothpaste cartons—in a word, his thoughts. He can’t legitimately be separated from
his own first-person technique.[sic]” (Salinger)
This first-person technique is intertwined with distinctive vulgar language of Holden
Caulfield, which represents his cynical approach towards the society and holds the key for transi-
tory stage of his life. The society he loathes pestered with his language through repetition and
constant cursing, therefore reveals a realistic tone of an ordinary adolescent. For instance, Holden
frequently says: “I do, I really do.” or “if you want to hear about it.” (p. 1) In this way, he suc-
cessfully authenticates his remarks. This expressive power of speech stands out in complex issue
of Holden’s identity, and his teenage angst. The phrase “sort of” is often used throughout the
book and it merely signifies the fact that “Holden knows there is more that could be said about
the issue at hand, but he is not going to bother going into it.” (Costello). J.D. Salinger also often
uses passive and active voice in order to show Holden’s alienation and his efforts in distancing

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himself from specific incidents. For instance, when Holden talks about his dead brother Allie, he
says, “He’s dead now.” instead of saying “He died.” (p. 40) This expression strongly shows itself
as a defense mechanism and one can understand that he struggles to cope with the loss of his
brother. (Costello)
He always feels like “giving somebody a buzz” (p. 114) but most of the time he calls no
one. He asks many important questions to cab drivers but gets no answer. He pays a prostitute not
to have sex but to talk. He even wakes up to his former professor Mr. Antolini touching his head.
He feels utterly lost in this phony world and the security he seeks only comes with his red hunt-
ing hat. “I pulled the peak around to the back again, and relaxed” (p. 23), he says after pretending
that he is a blind person. It also provides him a confidence because it is the only way of defining
his rebellious self-identity. “I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back,
the way I liked it, and then I yelled… ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’”. (pp. 55-6) This is how he shouts
to the entire dorm when he is about to leave for New York. It provides him the confidence he
needs, but also being seen by others while wearing it scares him. Right before getting on a train
he says, “All I did was take off my hunting hat and put it in my pocket.” (p. 58) or another exam-
ple would be “That hat I bough has earlaps in it and I put them on - I didn’t give a damn how I
looked. Nobody was around anyway.” (p. 57) Being completely alone is the only way he can ex-
press himself. He is afraid of being judged in the adult world, and most significantly he is afraid
of losing his innocence by turning into a phony like everybody else. Red hunting hat is there to
remind him that he is not one. Thereby, the hat becomes the manifestation of his alienation, his
uniqueness, and his efforts in being a single individual. Only by wearing it, he feels secure.
He also feels the utmost relaxation when he is with his sister, Phoebe. Phoebe is neither an
adult nor a teenager like Holden. She is just a child, but emotionally more mature than Holden.
And he finds easier to communicate with her than any other person. Holden says, “She always

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listens when you tell her something. And the funny part of it is she knows, half the time, what the
hell you're talking about. She really does.” (p. 180) She does not judge him, but rather listens to
him. It is also a notable fact that he carries a desire to protect the ones he loves, or to keep them
“innocent.” Thus he decides on giving the red hunting hat to Phoebe and says, “Then I took my
hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her. She likes those kind of crazy hats. She didn't
want to take it, but I made her. I'll bet she slept with it on. She really likes those kind of hats.” (p.
194) This spontaneous act carries a wider meaning; he wants her to be unique, and separate from
everyone else. It is a way of preventing her from becoming a phony.
Holden Caulfield’s best-friend is not only his sister, Phoebe but also his redheaded
younger brother, Allie. He died of leukemia at the age of eleven, and his memory rests within
Holden. It is not clear whether it is a fact or he just remembers him that way, but according to
him, Allie is the smartest of Caulfield family — the perfect child, so to speak. He says, “But it
wasn't just that he was the most intelligent member in the family. He was also the nicest, in lots
of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,
but Allie never did, and he had very red hair.” (p. 40) We are first introduced to Allie when Hold-
en decides to write an essay for his roommate, Stradlater. The assignment is to write a descriptive
essay about a significant object so it can be about almost anything. Right after then, Holden de-
cides to write about Allie’s baseball gloves, which was covered with poems written with a green
ink in order to read during baseball matches. Holden only shows it to one person outside the fam-
ily: Jane Gallagher, the girl he loves. While writing about it, he recalls Allie’s death and tells us
how he responded to the news. He was thirteen when he got the news, and was hospitalized after
breaking every window in the garage. This recalling shows us that he has trouble accepting his
death and was traumatized by the loss. Thus Allie’s baseball glove becomes a relic that Holden
holds onto while also standing as a symbol of his attachment. In chapter 22, Phoebe accuses him

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for not liking anything, and challenges him to name things he actually likes. Having trouble find-
ing anything, Holden requests a bit time to think on it. Finally, he says he likes talking to Phoebe
and Allie. But Phoebe does not accept his answer, because of the mere fact that Allie is dead. For
Holden’s part, it does not actually matter because he was the nicest person he ever met. Even
though his brother’s death haunts him, his baseball glove creates a safety zone and source of
comfort for Holden along with the red hunting hat. Being unable to trust to anyone who does not
carry an image of innocence makes his survival more difficult because he has no guides: no
teachers, no nuns, and even no cab drivers are able to help him in this irrational world. He only
entrusts only to the dead and the very young — Phoebe and Allie.
The following lines clearly indicate his tendency to remain in the field of childhood and
his desire to stay as a protecter of innocence, “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids play-
ing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - no-
body 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.” (p. 186)
This state of cainotophobia – which stands for abnormal fear of newness and change – shows it-
self throughout the novel. He later says about the Natural History Museum, “the best thing,
though, in that museum, was that everything stayed right where it was.” (p. 131) This museum,
like his fantasy of becoming “a catcher in the rye”, stands for the world he desires to live in, a
world where everything remains as same, as simple, and as sensible.
The contradiction between stillness and change reveals itself more clearly in Chapter 12
where he asks the cab driver what happens to the ducks when the pond freezes to ice but he fails
getting a proper answer because the cab driver gets more and more furious, thinking it’s a ridicu-
lous thing to ask. It seems like a simple question when in fact Holden wonders about his final

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destination: Where will Holden end up in this phony world? Is he going to become a phony like
everybody else?
At the end of the novel, Holden walks on one side of the street, Phoebe following on the
other; they arrive at the carousel and Holden convinces Phoebe to ride it. He watches her with his
red hunting hat and says, “I felt so damn happy all of a sudden, the way all 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.” (p. 229) Here Holden wit-
nesses a girl, as innocent as ever, frozen in time; an animated fossil, stuck there on the peak of
childhood. She only moves a-round, not directional but cyclical. Holden may have wished for the
said peak not a point of no return, a cliff you can only roll down from once you climbed, but a
pond, maybe a limbo of cyclical nature. He might have reflected on this as he watched the
carousel, and felt the arrow of time may not only march forwards after all. As Nietzsche puts it,
“Time is a flat circle.” (Nietzsche) And a carousel could only move circular. If everything in a
carousel moves with it as it rotates, how could time escape from its inertia?
Struggle of going forward is a strong leitmotif in Catcher in the Rye. We see attempts of
Holden move forwards, build onto something, but inevitably fail as an outcome. He continually
tries to break from his world, at one point goes as far to declare to Phoebe his plans to live as a
recluse in the county. Another example would be his incredible plan to convince Sally to run
away with him – seemingly out of nowhere – and start a new life. Perhaps no such example is
more important than his unfruitful desire to call and connect back to Jane Gallagher, his idealized
loved one.
His relationship with Jane does nothing but complicates his life even more. Even though
Jane never appears in the novel, he mentions her many times throughout the book. Jane attracts

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Holden like a flame attracting the moth, and no different from a flame the attractor is transparent.
Holden looks right through and sees innocence. She would keep her kings in the back row, be-
cause she thought they looked good, she is “fond of all athletic sports”, she is “always reading,
and she read very good books”. (p. 84) These descriptions give us a certain clue as to why Hold-
en is attracted to her, but most of our thoughts about the non-destined young couple take final
form when Holden reveals to us her troubling circumstance:
“…all of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch
and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. I didn't know him too well or anything,
but he looked like the kind of guy that wouldn't talk to you much unless he wanted something off
you. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she
knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn't answer
him. She didn't even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I
asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn't even answer me, then. She made out like she
was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped
down on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares—boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it
into the board with her finger.” (p. 85)
After witnessing her innocent vulnerability, he goes next to her and starts hugging and
kissing her “all over”. Yet he fails creating a connection with her. At one point, he was her emo-
tional anchor, but now she sees Stradlater, not Holden. He tries to reach out to her when she is
downstairs by claiming that he will say hello, but he fails doing so. He tries to call her once he is
in New York, but he fails once again. His attempts to reach out to her and make a connection al-
ways go downhill. Then, what does Salinger mean Jane Gallagher to be?
A confession, which uncovered bits from J. D. Salinger’s past, came from a woman
named Jean Miller. After Salinger’s death, she broke her silence by telling how they first met. “I

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was sitting at a pool and reading Wuthering Heights, and he said ‘How’s Heathcliff?’” It was
1949. Jean Miller was 14, and J.D. Salinger was 30. For the next five years, during the time when
Salinger wrote and published Catcher in the Rye, they spent a great deal together. However, this 5
year relationship had come to an abrupt stop when they slept for the first time. Jean Miller claims
“Salinger once said to me, ‘If you ever lose track of me, just read my stories.’” (Shields and
Salerno) Could it be that Catcher in the Rye was an elegy to his dying innocence and lost youth
which he witnessed after seeing himself through Miller’s eyes? He was a middle-aged man who
saw the cruelty of adult-world in wars. His youth was taken by war. But Jean Miller was differ-
ent. She, who had still not lost her naivety, was a constant reminder of what innocence was and
an anchor for Salinger that he could still hold onto. At this point, Holden Caulfield turns into a
fossilized death mask of Salinger’s own life. A character that swings between childhood and
adulthood, unable to make sense out of this irrational world, and could not take refuge in humani-
ty.

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Bibliography
Salinger, Jerome D. The Catcher in the Rye. Reiss, Penguin Books, 2010.
Waldhorn, Arthur. A Reader’s Guide to Ernest Hemingway. 1st Syracuse University Press ed,
Syracuse University Press, 2002.
Hoban, Phoebe. “The Salinger File”. New York Magazine, 1987, p. 40.
Galens, David. Novels for Students. Cengage Gale, 2002.
Salinger, J. D. Letter to Mr. Hubert. 19 July 1957.
Costello, Donald P. ‘The Language of “The Catcher in the Rye”’. American Speech, vol. 34, no.
3, Oct. 1959, p. 172.
Nietzsche, Friedrich, and R. J. Hollingdale. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. 1974.
Shields, David, and Shane Salerno. Salinger. 2013.