Holden may be a part of Salinger, but the first-person narrator should not be confused with the author. Writers often use personal experience as background.
Although similarities to Salinger's life occasionally occur throughout The Catcher in the Rye, as readers we should be careful about biographical interpretations. In addition, scholars often compare Pencey Prep to Valley Forge Military Academy, which Salinger attended from the ages of 15 to 17. Salinger himself was once enrolled in McBurney School in Manhattan, the intended site of the novel's canceled fencing meet. Perhaps readers appreciate Holden more because he is not a perfect "hero." Certainly we are attracted to him because he has a heart.
Even though he failed history with an abysmal performance, Holden does not blame the instructor. Holden has been expelled for academic failure and is not to return after Christmas break, which begins the following Wednesday. Spencer, indicating that he does care about people. Second, Holden is on his way to bid farewell to his history teacher, Mr. The team has returned to the school much earlier than it had planned. As manager of the fencing team, he left the equipment on the subway en route to a meet that morning with McBurney School in New York City. First, Holden is careless and sometimes irresponsible. Holden is not attending the football game for two reasons, both of which reveal a good deal about his character. After all, one of the students has stolen his winter coat and fur-lined gloves. The school's motto, concerned with molding boys into "splendid" young men, is "for the birds," according to Holden. Magazine ads for the school, featuring horsemanship, are misleading because, Holden claims, he has never seen a horse anywhere near Pencey. Although he oddly respects the academic standards of Pencey, he sees it as phony, if not evil. The setting for the early chapters in the flashback is Pencey Prep, a "terrible" school whose atmosphere seems as cold as the December air on Thomsen Hill. story, "The Secret Goldfish" (about a child who buys a goldfish and does not allow anyone to look at it, because he has paid for it with his own money) foreshadows Holden's consistent passion for the innocence and authenticity of childhood. The literary point of view is first-person singular, unique to Holden but easily accessible to the rebels, romantics, innocents, and dreamers of any generation.Īfter stating that he will just tell us about the "madman stuff" that happened the previous December, Holden typically digresses to describe his brother, D.B., who was a "terrific" short story writer until he sold out and went to Hollywood. Holden speaks in the vernacular of a teenager of his day (the late 1940s). He eschews details about his birth, his parents, and "all that David Copperfield kind of crap" (referring to Charles Dickens' novel by the same name). From the beginning, we, the readers, realize that Holden is not a traditional narrator.
The first paragraph of the novel is often compared to the opening lines of Mark Twain's novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). In one of the best-known openings in American fiction, Salinger sets the tone for Holden's personality and narrative style. Spencer's house and is let in by his teacher's wife.
At the end of the chapter, Holden arrives at Mr. He has been expelled and is on his way to say good-bye to Mr. Holden, a junior at Pencey, can see the field from where he stands, high atop Thomsen Hill. on a Saturday in December, the day of the traditional season-ending football match between his old school, Pencey Prep (in Agerstown, Pennsylvania) and rival Saxon Hall. Holden's story, in the form of a long flashback, begins around 3 p.m. First, however, he mentions his older brother, D.B., a writer who now works in nearby Hollywood and visits Holden nearly every weekend. He says that he will tell us (the readers) of events occurring around Christmastime of the previous year. As the novel opens, the narrator, Holden Caulfield, speaks directly to the reader from a mental hospital or sanitarium in southern California.
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