No spoilers here….
This time around I read The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Sallinger (254 pages)
I don’t really know why but I thought this was a cool article and thought I should include it.
It’s immaterial to me,” she said. “Hey—how old are you, anyhow?”
That annoyed me, for some reason. “Oh, Christ. Don’t spoil it,” I said. “I’m twelve, for Chrissake. I’m big for my age.”
I chose this quote because it voices the struggle of many kids to be mature or seem older than they are because they want to be cool or accepted in a different light. Holden, the main character in the book struggles with this throughout the entire book.
It is set in 1950, so times were a lot different back then. Some of the things i didn’t quite understand but then I remembered the setting.
Holden is apparently undergoing treatment for some type of mental health issue or has been put in the loony bin for some reason he does not disclose. The majority of the book is him telling us this story. It begins with him in school and its almost the end of the semester. Holden is… a ….lets say… a troubled kid lol. He’s been to like 4 different schools and is basically failing all of his classes at his new school.
The book goes on telling of Holden’s attempts a what he believes to be a mature grown up life. He ends up with a hooker in his room at one point, drinks until he cant drink anymore at the bar that he can drink at. But we also hear about his “great” sister Phoebe who Holden really seems to have love for.
It ends with him back in the facility and for me thats when everything made sense.
He regrets telling us the story because he has so much love for the people in his past and misses them a lot.
The story itself is one of the many examples of teenage angst and the internal struggles they deal with. This one may have been a more extreme case but it made for a good book.
Overall i really liked this book. Even though I have never gone through some of the stuff he has I felt like I could still relate to Holden and that’s what made reading this book that much easier.
(377 words)
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