The Catcher in the Rye Review - Tray

The Catcher in the Rye is a type of book that I’ve heard about all the time. I had known that it was a well-known classic, however, I never actually knew what the book was about. At least for something like Moby Dick, I knew there was a whale in it somewhere. However, after all those years of wondering what the Catcher was and why it was in the Rye, I finally picked it up from my local library.

The book was published in 1951, written by J. D. Salinger. The summary of the book is very straightforward: Holden Caulfield, a troubled boy, was kicked out of Pencey Preparatory School and wanders around New York. That is basically it. But what else happens? Well, nothing really.

You see, The Catcher in the Rye is a strange story. Not in the sense where strange things happen, but nothing strange happens. Holden is literally going to New York and wandering about, phoning up a past girlfriend because he feels like it, then saying that he’s going to move to the West because he feels like it, and then he goes over to his house to meet with his sister because he feels like it, and then he leaves to the museum because he feels like it. It’s just a train ride of him going to one place to another and gradually revealing his backstory to you. There are paragraphs and paragraphs of tangents and little details that don’t really seem to matter, and while these details can be relatively interesting, it depends on what type of story you enjoy. This is very much a story about Holden, and anything he does is just revealing more information about him and the people around him.

In this type of story, there really aren’t any “spoilers''. Holden isn’t the hero that has to go steal a precious diamond, or rescue someone in need. In that way, comparing The Catcher in the Rye’s plot structure to a regular action book is like comparing night and day. You wouldn’t say that the that Holden had a brother named Alllie or that he went to Mr. Antollini’s house one day was a top-notch spoiler (unless you really cared about that for some reason), because compared to saying “Harry Potter killed [character]” would be a much bigger spoiler, as there is action in that series.

Holden is an interesting character. He is someone who is obsessed with hating anything “phony”. His emotions are usually straightforward, like hate, happiness, and disgust, but the rate at which these emotions appear are in strange places. He randomly feels disgust at times where a normal person wouldn’t, and due to these emotions, he contrasts a lot with the overwhelmingly normal populace around him. There are times where he acts like a child, and times where there might be a genuine truth in his words. One thing to note is that he excels in english (while failing all other subjects, of course), and Salinger probably intended for the novel to sound like he was the one who wrote it.

Many reviews online of The Catcher in the Rye seem to criticize it because they claim that it’s just a bunch of rambling from an angsty teen, and the whole thing is shallow and doesn’t mean anything. While you can certainly interpret it that way, personally, I don’t find Holden as “edgy” as some people say. He feels like a person who’s struggling on a thorny path in the middle of a forest while everyone else gets to go on the straight concrete road next to him. He feels different, but not because he’s trying to be. Overall, it was a decent story and made me think about it after I was done, but still not my type. 5/10, probably wouldn’t read again.