Gina's Book #16: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Okay, so a quick summary of this book: It is told through the memory of the 16-year-old protagonist Holden Caulifield as he is at a mental hospital. He is recounting to us a span of several days the previous December. During that period of time he knows he is being kicked out of the prestigious school where he resides (this is not the first, or even the second school, that has asked him to leave due to poor grades) and he is trying to decide what to do the last few days before he will have to return home and face his parents.  After getting into a fight with his roommate over a girl who he has some sort of deep confusing feelings for, he packs up his things and heads to New York, where he figures he will waste time until he must go home.

Most of the remainder of the book is his experience in New York. As he recalls for us the events that take place, he also is going into great detail on what his thoughts and feelings were at the time. He is clearly struggling with the death of his younger brother, who he loved very much and who he feels was a wonderful human being. Holden struggles with accepting his brother's death when he feels most of the people he comes across on a daily basis are idiots or "phonies".  To me, he can't seem to understand why someone as good as his brother should have to die, when everyone else goes on living their lives.

In my opinion the death of his brother was the catalyst for his eventual break down (the reason he is in the hospital as he shares the story with the reader). On top of dealing with the trials and tribulations of being a teenager and growing up, he is trying to work through his feelings about his brother. He feels sad, lonely, different, and unsure of the future. He doesn't want to participate in the the cookie cutter pattern of kids going to school so that they can get jobs they hate in the future, just so they can earn a lot of money. He sees the kids around him at school as fake, or selfish, or disgusting, and he can't seem to make any meaningful connections with them. He longs for someone who can have intelligent conversation with him, but everyone is too caught up in something else.

I won't go into the rest in case anyone wants to read it. I enjoyed The Catcher int he Rye very much. It is a book where you really get to know a character, and in an honest way.

Some of my favorite parts:

Holden on books: "What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish that the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it."

Holden on the death of his brother: "I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn't do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I'll admit it, but I hardly didn't even know I was doing it, and you didn't know Allie.

Holden on girls: "That's the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they're not much to look at, or even if they're sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can".

Holden on being fed up with school and life in general: "You ought to go to a boys' school sometime. Try it sometime. Its full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart and buy a goddam Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making believe you give a damn if the football team loses, and all you do is talk about girls and liquor and sex all day, and everybody sticks together, the Catholics stick together, the goddam intellectuals stick together, the guys that play bridge stick together. Even the guys that belong to the goddam Book-of-the-Month club stick together.  If you try to have a little intelligent-"
  "Now, listen," old Sally said, "Lots of boys get more out of school than that."
   "I agree! I agree, they do, some of them! But that's all I get out of it. See? That's my point. That's exactly my goddam point.  I hardly get anything. I'm in bad shape. I'm in lousy shape."

One of Holden's old teachers on why he should care about school: "Once you get past all the Mr. Vinsons, you're going to start getting closer and closer--that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it--to the kind of information that will be very very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll even be excited and stimulated to know.  Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them have kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them--if you want to."