It's a very meaningful and beautiful title about childhood and innocence.
Holden Caulfield, our protagonist, is attempting to grasp onto his childhood. He has a lot of trauma, feeling distant from his parents and older brother and being extremely sorrowful and heartbroken from the loss of his younger brother, Allie, who passed away from a disease.
There is a poem that Holden feels connected to. In it, the Catcher is like a shepherd, protecting the innocent children running and playing around in a rye field. Holden mentions this to his younger sister, Phoebe, and he says that he wants to be the Catcher in the Rye. So, in short, he values childhood and innocence greatly. It's beautiful.
I like to think that Holden has a good life. He most likely gets a career in child protective services because he feels so attached to his childhood and thinks it's the best phase of life. As a young teenager myself, it's a gorgeous book and meaning that will stick with me forever. Adulthood and the future, it's a little worrying. I just need to accept that. It's sad, in a way, but it's a part of life.
He tells Phoebe he likes to be the catcher in the rye, he wants to save children who are are close to the edge of a cliff as he is. He wants to protect them from leading a life he’s living.
he is afraid and isn't sertant of who he is. He lives in a time frame (1950s) where they tryed to create a perfect society, but there were people who didn't want to conform to that. Holden has to decide what side he wants to be on.
He hates going to school, hates his parents. All he likes is girls and going out.
He loves to say that everything is phoney. Everything he says is phoney to him.
He gets kicked out of every school he goes to.
For several reasons. One of them (and only one) is "herd mentality", such as when Holden is in the nightclub, and everyone is listening to "Ernie" play the piano. When he finishes, the crowd applauds wildly, and Holden observes "all the phonies went mad with joy". He also observes that Ernie bows "like he's this real humble guy or something". He describes the entire nighclub by saying "the place was crawling with phonies".
im not 100% sure but i believe the ducks and the lagoon was his peace and serenity as a child and hes lookin for them to get the feeling back that he once had so he funally has the deterrmination to finish school
It's not antiwar, so much as a challenge to see the world from a different perspective. The Catcher in the Rye was very unpopular when first published. Aside from the profanity, people didn't appreciate the book because it challenged the beliefs of the people who wanted to forget the past and relish the new beginning. The book took place in the late 1940s and into the 50s, right after World War II and right around the time of the Cold War. Most people in the United States during this time were very conservative. In The Catcher in the Rye: Innocence Under Pressure, Sanford Pinsker wrote that the novel is a "mixture of bright talk and brittle manners, religious quest and nervous breakdown, [which] captured not only the perennial confusions of adolescence, but also the spiritual discomforts of an entire age."
Phoebe Caulfield is Holden's little sister. She is around the age of ten and on the brink of corruption, about to become a phony. Holden is constantly trying to immortalize her purity and innocence, but is always reminded of the fact that she is slowly growing up; ex: Holden buys a record entitled "Little Shirley Beans" for Phoebe, but the record breaks. Another way in which Phoebe is slowly becoming a phony and betraying Holden is by her role as Benedict Arnold in her school's play.
Jane Gallagher is Holden's childhood friend that he may or may not have had romantic feelings for. Holden notes that she had dealt with hardships within her family, causing her to be very guarded; Ex: In checkers, Jane always kept her kings on the back row instead of moving them. Holden gets in a fight with his roommate at Pencey Prep, Stradlater, because he refuses to give Holden information about his date with Jane.
"Sunny" The Prostitute is the very young girl that Holden is provided with by Maurice, Sunny's pimp. Instead of doing "proper" business with Sunny, Holden insists that the two just talk. Sunny's green dress is very symbolic in the sense that the dress is hiding her true identity from the world; The dress gives her a youthful and innocent appearance while her true motives on the inside are quite the opposite.
Sally Hayes is a girl that Holden is know to have been dating for a long time, even though he views her as the epitome of a phony. Holden takes her out to see a show at Radio City and the two go ice skating, where he proposes that they run away together.
J. D. Salinger's family practiced Catholic Judiasm however, he did not. Salinger searched through many religions over his lifetime including Buddhism and Hinduism. Although, he is best known for his Hindu beliefs.
Salinger's father was Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan, New York, on New Year's Day, 1919. His mother, Marie (née Jillich), was born in Atlantic, Iowa, of Scottish,[3] German and Irish descent.[3][9][10] His paternal grandfather, Simon, born in Lithuania, was at one time the rabbi for the Adath Jeshurun congregation in Louisville, Kentucky.[11] His father, Sol Salinger, sold kosher cheese.[12] Salinger's mother changed her name to Miriam and passed as Jewish. Salinger did not learn his mother was actually Catholic and willingly converted to Judiasm until just after his bar mitzvah.[13]. Personally religion did not really have a huge impact on his life.