Catcher in the Rye

Rating:
Summary: The book that changed Uschi's life
Review: In our opinion, The Catcher in The Rye is the most important book for young people ever written. It changes your life, but if you get it right, to a better way.

Rating:
Summary: Salinger Starts to Fade
Review: In reaction to other reader's comments I must comment how amazing it is that someone can read a book and not understand it. What Salinger does with "Catcher" is create a teen-ager who is in a state in his life where he doesn't understand what's going on around him and that he loves people so much, he hates them. How hard is it to understand people? Well, I guess the reactions people have to this novel is a great way to find-out what their insights are on others.... Take "Catcher in the Rye" with a grain of salt and take Salinger with some bourbon. Forget about the freaky old man and listen to what he has to say. There was a lot of insight in his head. A LOT of it.

Rating:
Summary: holden speaks to me
Review: in spite of the things that others have said about this book, I believe it is the best book I have ever read. Holden seems sad to think that what has happened to him will happen to other children. when I say "what has happened to him,"I mean losing that childlike essence in all of us, forever. I particularly like that after dropping out of prep school he faces his parent's wrath to go see his little sister Phoebe. it is a cool book and a must read for anybody who liked white oleander. if you liked this book, you should also read white oleander.

Rating:
Summary: Holden Caulfield and How Salinger Portrays Him
Review: In The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger employs repetition and irony to portray the picture of an adolescent boy attempting to find himself in an adult world and grow into a man. Salinger continuously inserts the same small phrases throughout his novel in order to illustrate the uphill battle Holden Caulfield faces in order to prove and understand himself. After every statement, thought, or personal anecdote, Holden always declares to the reader, or to the character he is speaking with, that he is telling the truth. Over and over again, Holden exerts the phrases "I really am" (98), "They really are" (118), "I really do" (9), "We really did" (8), and "I really didn't" (10). With the recurrence of these simple, three word phrases, which begin by stating who is doing it, followed by the word "really", and closing with an affirming verb, Salinger paints the portrait of a boy struggling to convince himself that he can actually be correct and gain confidence in himself. Another key phrase Salinger employs through Holden is "That killed me" (160). Whenever something "kills" Holden he finds the event amusing and comical. When Holden is looking through his kid sister's diary, he discovers the name she had printed in it was different from her real name. Holden loves children's jokes and expresses his attitude toward her private joke by saying that it "killed him" (160). By stating that "it killed" him repeatedly, Salinger eclipses Holden's peculiar, adolescent sense of humor with the fact that he has such a huge sense of humor. In this way, Salinger covers the evidence of Holden's unsophisticated mind. As well as repetition, Salinger utilizes irony to display to the reader that Holden seeks manhood and himself. On his way to Ernie's, Holden strikes up a conversation with the cab driver named Horwitz. After conversing for a couple of minutes with him, Holden concludes that Horwitz is "a touchy guy, it wasn't any pleasure discussing anything with him" (83). Ironically, the very next sentence Holden extends an invitation to Horwitz to join him for a drink. In this instance, Holden shows he wishes to spend time with anyone willing to listen to his ideas, even if they disagree wholeheartedly with them. This characteristic of Holden strengthens the fact that he is morphing from an adolescent to an adult. Adolescents close their minds to outside ideas and opinions, while adults share their ideas with everyone. As we all know, realizing your problem is a big step to solving your problem. Phoebe, Holden's little sister, correctly points out Holden's problem to him that "you don't like anything that's happening" (169). Instead of taking her advice Holden breaks out into an all out defense declaring "that's where you're wrong - that's exactly where you're wrong!" (169). Immediately following his defensive, Holden thinks to himself that she "was...depressing me" (169), thus fortifying Phoebe's position. Instead of taking the mature route and listening to others opinions, Holden shuts his sisters beliefs out as "wrong" and continues to believe that he does not have a problem. The Catcher in the Rye delivers the inspiring story of a boy struggling to break the bonds of adolescence and bloom into adulthood. With the use of his skillful repetitions and ironies, J.D. Salinger "really did" masterfully create this American classic.

Rating:
Summary: Shane Hess
Review: In this book The Catcher in the Rye, the main character Holden is very wierd. He is pretty much a trouble maker. The story starts off with him telling you who is family is and he's telling you about them. Next, he tells you that he goes to a private school in northern Pennsylvania which is called Pency High. When Holden is at Pency, he visits his old professor that he had at some other school he droped out of. His name was Mr. Spencer. I think Mr. Spencer gives Holden a lot of advice for the near future. He has a roomate in one of the dorms that he hates. I have no clue why he hates him because his roomate acts like a real nice guy. His roomates name is Ackley. Finally Holden tells you that he is tired of school so he drops out of Pency High. After he drops out, he moves to upstate New York by himself and he stays in New York for a while. When he goes to New York, he visits his sister Phoebe where she tells him that they miss him and they want him to come home. Holden tells her that he wants to move out west away from everyboday and that he never wants to see them again. What will Holden do? Will he visit his family, or will he move out west?

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant novel about the coming of age.
Review: In this charming story we meet a young boy who refuses to become a young man. He is faced with the struggles of life as he overcomes his fear of growing up. I recommend this book to any teen who has encountered reality and has no other option but to grow up, or to any adult with a nostalgic desire to look back on those difficult years.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting tale of adolescence at its worst.
Review: In what may be a truly unqiue viewpoint among this plethora of reviews for J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye," I am a fifteen year-old who loved the book precisely because of how much I hated Holden Caulfield. The only thing I could possible hate more are the critics who present Holden as the perfect epitomy of the adolescent experience. Holden is everything we detest about the maturation process of teenagers -- the fear, the frustration, and the angst. Yet he shows few of the "decent" qualities of any teenager that would allow him to be the rule of adolescence rather than the exception, as so many critics (mostly baby boomers) would have you believe. Certainly this is evidenced by the fact that both his fictional and real-life peers, at least most of them, do not flunk prep school, solicit whores, wander the New York bar scence, and dance with forty year-olds in a dank hotel. Yet of course, I can identify with Holden, precisely because his depression and anger (what else is it?) occupies us all at one time or another. But Holden is the extereme. His ceaseless ravings against "phonies" (the word occurs about every 10 sentences through the book) drove me absolutly nuts! So many times I pleaded with Holden to simply chill out, if that is the right phrase. His endless frustration with almost everything in the world is obviously a looming aspect of any kid's adolescence, but it is by no means ubiquitous in our lives! To me, Holden is simply out of touch with the world -- a world, ironically, that he despreatly hopes will accept him. Of course, read the book. Of course, triumph at how well Salinger captured teenage angst. But please, don't suggest Holden's beliefs are the indelible stamp inevitably paralleling all of our lives from ages 13 through 20

Rating:
Summary: You will never look at the world the same way again...
Review: Incredible book, the best I've ever read. I have read it 3 times already, and I plan on reading it again. Be warned, however, this book has forever changed my view of the world, and if you can get the true meaning out of it, it just might do the same to you.

Rating:
Summary: over-rated and no big deal
Review: interesting but way too overblow

Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: It amazes me how many people who do not like this book fail to recognize the book's strength. The book is not about phony hero types (go to Danielle Steele for those). Hero books are a dime a dozen. Its about feeling alienated, alone, confused and many other adolescent experiences. Most of all, its about a boy's search for meaning in his life. The reason this book sells so well is that it represents more realistic experiences of an adolescent boy's life rather than idealistic ones.