Misanthropy In J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye
Salinger’s Catcher is one of those very few books that grip my attention.Whenever I read some of its pages, the feeling that I get is consistent—it’s in some ways like the story of my life.
The story is told in first person by Holden Caulfield, a sixteen-year-old kicked-out student from Pency Prep in Agerstown, Pennsylvania.There’s a lot of profanity in his narration, but this pales in comparison to the phoniness of the rotten society which he hates and distrusts.He tells us of a world that is full of hypocrisy, lies, deceit—all these he sums up in one word: phoniness.All the people around him, his classmates, teachers, friends, mankind in general—he calls them phonies.He can’t find in them the intelligence he expects, even among intellectuals or writers, and he looks down on athletes as all muscles and no brains.
As might be expected of a young intellectual, Holden loves to read.
His only favorites, though, are his writing brother D.B.and Ring Lardner, a writer of funny stories.“What I like best is a book that’s at least funny once in a while,” Holden tells his reader.But when his brother decides to go to Hollywood, he calls him a prostitute.He believes that a talented writer has no business going to Hollywood, for this place would only corrupt his talent.
After his being kicked out, Holden doesn’t go home at once.He decides to spend a couple of days in a hotel in New York.He calls and talks to some of his female friends but finds them boring.He is fond of saying, “That killed me.” He just cannot find the right person whom he can have a real intellectual conversation.
He, drunk and depressed, decides to go home, which is not too far from the park he is hanging around.He misses her pretty little sister Phoebe very much.Not that he is a pervert but he sees in children the purity, honesty and beauty of creatures not yet corrupted by the phony, mediocre, modern adult world he abhors.He pictures himself as the catcher in the field of rye mentioned in Robert Burn’s poem, where thousand of kids are playing and if some of them come near the cliff, he’s always there to save them from going over—all these he tells to his sister Phoebe.
Later on, he thinks of going away for good.He would go somewhere to the West where no one would recognize him.He would live alone in a little cabin, pretending to be deaf-mute so as to avoid useless conversations with other people.We find him, in the end, back to the fold, in their multi-story apartment building in New York, sheltered but somewhat mentally unsound as he suggests in the last chapter of his narration.
J.D.Salinger, whose persona is Holden, is considered to be the most private writer in the world, safely ensconced and enjoying hermitage in his ninety-acre estate in Cornish, New Hampshire (he died recently).After the publication of his last story “Hapworth 16, 1924” in 1965, he started avoiding the limelight.Hundreds of opportunistic people wanted to interview him and write stories about him but only few succeeded.One of them was Ian Hamilton, who wrote In Search of Salinger, a biography that is considered unfriendly and hostile to Salinger.Salinger sued in an attempt to restrain publication of the book but the judge ruled in favor of the biographer.But on January 29, 1987, the United States Court of Appeals for the second circuit reversed the earlier decision.
Salinger’s The Catcher is one of the most influential books of this century.In his book Broadsides, the Canadian Mencken Mordecai Richler writes, “The Catcher in the Rye, which first appeared in 1951, was declared in 1968 to be one of America’s twenty-five leading best-sellers ...and still sells like a quarter of a million copies annually worldwide.” Does the immense popularity of his novel have something to do with his being a recluse or misanthrope? Can we safely say that, in refusing to be famous, he has become more famous? He was born rich and supposing he was born poor, would you expect him to write exaggeratedly on his childhood poverty? Would he go into “all that David Copperfield kind of crap”? Still, probably he would not.
I know, because I was born poor and suffered a lot of insults and humiliations from stupid, moronic people who can go to hell anytime.I never exaggerate about it in any conversations with my wife and kids.To do so would be opening a Pandora’s Box and that would be very pathetic.
I have read somewhere that a genius is one who alters our perception of reality, even a little bit.The Catcher, no doubt a work of genius, does not change my view of the world.It reaffirms it.
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