The novel Catcher in the Rye was written by American author J. D. Salinger and published in 1951. It has been standard high school fare since, with a million books still sold each year and a place on the top 100 books of the century. But it is not without controversy, as it has been one of the most censored books in America from 1962-1982 and critic Jonathan Yardley called it one of the worst popular books in American literature (and because of its poor writing!). I think we can find better stories for our youth, especially for a generation paralyzed by an apocalyptic imagination already. I have three teens in my house right now, and I want them to live into stories that show how suffering, sacrifice and solidarity can lead to redemption and transformation. That’s not this infamous book.
This book Catcher in the Rye has a long history already, and some might consider it a “classic” of sorts–transcribing the subversive poet’s sense of alienation at a system perceived to have gone berserk. “Holden Caulfield is an icon of teenage rebellion,” says Wikipedia. Others have said it is an apt description of New York City or really about the trauma of the recent world war. I read it through with my 13 year old son four years ago, and while he was mildly amused at times, the novel was rather sad overall. It really is, to use a catchy phrase of Holden’s. I understand that Holden Caulfield represents a generation that imagined everyone over 30 was a phony, and that his sense of being an outsider has been embraced as a modern virtue: to stand outside tradition, “the system” and toss around the label of “phony.”
Holden wanders through the book, alone for the most part, without a sense of purpose for his life. There doesn’t seem to be a bigger story within which his story takes place.
This is not a book for millennials. They do not live in the war-time trauma that Sallinger did. Our planet is choking and sputtering and we need to tell better stories to the next generation. We can’t afford the luxury of cynicism and opting out of constructive social change. We are fraying socially, culturally, and environmentally already.
“The guy I like best in the Bible, next to Jesus, was that lunatic and all, that lived in the tombs and kept cutting himself with stones. I like him ten times as much as the disciples.”
– Holden Caulfield
Let me be blunt. I just don’t think this novel is a great story. Very little of consequence happens as Holden wanders from his boarding school and through New York City. He gets progressively more depressed as he goes, and so do readers like me. There was a cynical tone to the novel, as most of the characters seemed unlikeable, including his roommates, and especially the supposedly hospitable old teacher who is drunk and tries to hit on him. Holden seems really old and tired for a teenager, not to mention narcissistic. I would venture that the story is too bleak for a 14 year-old reader, developmentally speaking.
Alienation is Part of the Human Condition
Holden, as judgmental as he is about everyone, had some compassion for certain people, and he wanted to save his little sister Phoebe from the world of adults. He talks of wanting to catch people who are falling off cliffs–a catcher in the rye. He was genuinely lonely and unattached, and sorely missed his dead brother Allie, and maybe that is where we are invited to sympathize with him. I do sympathize with these pieces of the story–the loneliness, sadness, and angst of many teenagers’ lives is captured well. His parents seem absent, which is utterly tragic. This montage of images illustrating the novel by Kelly Wu captures that sense of alienation well.
This artwork by Kelly Wu on Behance captures the feelings of the novel quite well.
But alienation is not the iron law of adolescence. It is not a model or a requirement. It is a feeling, to be sure.
I have a thoroughly ambivalent understanding of the legacy of the 1960s that championed the book, and so the idea of being a critical outsider who contributes little beyond their criticism has negligible virtue for me (and I’m Generation X!). Being a “free thinking” individualist and “free spirit” counter-cultural creative just seems lonely and alienating to me, and counter-productive. Not heroic, not ethical, and truly not freeing, except in a negative way.
“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behaviour. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.
– Mr. Antolini to Holden in The Catcher in the Rye
I know Holden is the mouthpiece of an idealistic post-War generation rebelling against the rigid and often oppressive dictates of establishment culture. I get it. There is idealism behind the cynicism. Sometimes to be disillusioned is to be freed from illusions and that is a good thing. But to me it’s the privileged voice of deconstruction without much to offer besides a lethargic despair. I suspect it is the voice of the upper middle-class New York boarding school crowd and definitely not the poor immigrant family trying to establish a life in a new country. Here is my concern: I hope my kids and so many other teens I don’t know but care deeply about don’t embrace such a worldview for their life, as it doesn’t seem to lead to constructive service for the common good and a healthy spiritual identity.
You see, you can’t make a healthy community from Holdens, or from those who champion his ornery perspective. Authenticity, which would be the word used today, gets old fast in a world where well-run institutions, long-term commitments, collective routines, and forgiveness are the necessary elements of human flourishing. We are trapped in a nihilistic world focused on being expressive of feelings but doesn’t believe that nihilism is not the real world beyond social life. As a religious person, I’m convinced there is more to the world than just the world.
Furthermore, popular stories become formative for our life and culture. Life imitates art. I completely realize Holden is not held up as a model, but he is used to critique systems, institutions, and traditions—the scaffolds necessary for a community pursuing the common good. Yes, all institutions need reformation. They always do. So get involved and make a difference rather than toss rocks from your luxury vehicle!
“I can be quite sarcastic when I’m in the mood.”
– Holden Caulfield
Besides, and this is the key insight which I have hinted at already: Holden comes from a wealthy family that lives in New York City and sends their (neglected) children to prep schools where the students have room and board and loads of surplus cash to toss around. Dropping out is a luxury of the rich, as is rebellion, angst and nihilism. See James Smith’s On the Road with Augustine to read how living life perpetually “on the road” as beat hero Jack Kerouac did is not an option for true refugees. The road would certainly not be a refugee’s image of a desired future. It offers no home.
Why not use your energetic and potentially idealistic years to (re)build institutions that shelter others rather than wander aimlessly and throw stones at those trying to keep our crumbling institutional structures in serviceable shape? See my blog on imagining new worlds. There is much work to do that can make a world of difference!
I’ve read that this novel caused some uproar in many places the 1970s, including in my own Christian community’s high schools (notably Toronto District Christian High, a story covered by Christian Courier many moons ago). It uses a lot of crude language, for one thing, but nowadays such offence would be considered mild by comparison with the violent child killing at the centre of The Hunger Games industry. If Catcher in the Rye opened up the gate for crude, dark, alienating novels, I’m not sure we are better off for it. Lord of the Flies seems a more constructive exploration of human depravity if one is looking for such fare. There is a sense that the characters’ dark sensibilities are wrong, not virtuous. That civilization has some restraining value for a violent heart. Even Freud acknowledged that.
It seems now violent and depressing novels are a dime a dozen, taking the nihilistic tradition down deeper and darker tunnels with little light at the end. Again, I realize not every novel needs light at the end. But most do, as we live the stories we inhabit; stories are not just expressive of the human condition–they shape imagination and practise. It seems part of our adult responsibility to give children stories that are both realistic and hopeful.
Books That Inspire Agency
For an alternative, I’m really enjoying reading my kids the books of retired Calvin University professor Gary Schmidt like Okay for Now and The Wednesday Wars. In terms of conveying alienation, they are comparable, although Schmidt’s language is much more elevating and lyrical, and the alienation is less all-encompassing and less impenetrable. His writing is also more colourful, including funny, endearing, dramatic, and at times it will bring tears to your eyes. It also invites the reader to investigate the worlds of Shakespeare (The Wednesday Wars) or the Audubon Society (OK For Now) along the way. Finally, they include coming of age rites of passage that build character and model something morally aspiring for my kids.
“The light made the snowballs look yellow. Or at least I hoped that was the cause.”
– Holling Hoodhood in The Wednesday Wars
Most critically, the teens are mentored by caring adults (although not all adults are kind or helpful) and thus apprenticed into socially responsible lives of some sort. Holling gets involved in a Shakespeare play, joins the school cross country team, and has a passion for baseball–all normal American institutions. Coincidentally, Schmidt’s two Newberry award finalist books take place in the sixties and address issues of politics, the Vietnam War, and counter-culture just as does Catcher in the Rye (although published in 1951) but the drama happens within a context that doesn’t allow them to overwhelm the story or steal away hope.
The first in Schmidt’s trilogy… set in the sixties and suggesting teens — even if bullied and lonely– have some agency to do good…
The main character, Holling Hoodhood, navigates a neglectful father, religious difference, gender stereotypes, and a runaway sister in a way that makes you laugh and cry.
Schmidt’s main characters are middle-class at best and come with foibles and good will: public school kids with part-time jobs and sadly, deadbeat dads. It portrays something much more like the life of most teens and it’s not all sunshine and apple pie, either. The third book in the series, Just Like That, kills off the main character (Holling Hoodhood) from the first book in a random car accident. His girl friend, the main character in this last novel, is haunted by a psychological void–what Schmidt calls “The Blank”–throughout the novel. Schmidt himself has personally confronted this Blank in his own biography. The Blank is real psychological pain, and so is the violence that follows an orphaned boy through the book (named Matt), but such does not overwhelm the story or loom ominously at the end.
“When gods die, they die hard. It’s not like they fade away, or grow old, or fall asleep. They die in fire and pain, and when they come out of you, they leave your guts burned. It hurts more than anything you can talk about. And maybe worst of all is, you’re not sure if there will ever be another god to fill their place. Or if you’d ever want another god to fill their place. You don’t want the fire to go out inside you twice.”
– Holling Hoodhood after a baseball hero proves to be a jerk
The Catcher in the Rye served some purpose for a generation reacting against post-war conformity. It is a cultural artifact and a part of literary and educational history in North America for an age enthralled by notions of freedom and justice that carried some good, especially with regards to a war in Vietnam that seemed tragically absurd to many. But the American individual ethic this novel offers in return is bereft and ultimately betrays us all, as New York Times columnist David Brooks explains so eloquently in The Second Mountain. We need to re-weave the social fabric that was unravelled by the quest for autonomy that characterized the sixties. I hope Schmidt’s inspiring books outlive, outsell, and outread Salinger’s disillusioned testimony of teens gone sad and sour. Schmidt’s books have more interesting characters, more complex plots, and offer teens more creative, life-giving scripts to live by. And again: the characters actually develop some healthy relationships with adults!
Alienation is part of the human condition. We get it. Still, we can’t just diss “the system” without offering some alternative world in return. Humans have always, and will always live in systems, and need to develop a sort of second naïveté in our kids that works conscientiously and hopefully toward a better system, for a better planet.
“A comedy isn’t about being funny,” said Mrs. Baker. “A comedy is about character who dare to know that they may choose a happy ending after all. That’s how I know.”
“Suppose you can’t see it?”
“That’s the daring part,” said Mrs. Baker.”
– Holling Hoodhood in conversation with his teacher
Holden Caufield is a wealthy but broken cop out for a drop out generation, and in contrast, Holling Hoodhood stumbles through adolescence trying “drop in” to his community and its institutions. Schmidt offers something with many more layers, and one that includes trying to make a difference for good. The Catcher in the Rye is evidence of a culture turned in on itself, and needing some heroic and hopeful alternative. Schmidt’s storytelling is one antidote that covers similar territory in a more life-giving way that more teens can identify with and find a script to live by.
Sensus Divinitatis 