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Summary: This was a very good book!!
Review: The Catcher In The Rye was a very good book. Holden Caulfield, the main character, described in detail about a couple days of his life. However, he may have openly expressed himself a little too much but the book was well written otherwise. I would recommend this book to any teenager who has not read it yet. I could relate to what Holden was saying and I'm sure everyone else can as we have days like his.
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Summary: A Reaction to The Catcher in the Rye
Review: The Catcher in the Rye was a very unique reading experience, and it presented a very realistic and straight view of life. The main character, Holden Caulfield, is an adolescent who is very rebellious and immature. His use of constant profanity enhances the books realism and the ability for identification with other teen-agers. The fact he did not wish to obey the bounds of society helped me understand I was not alone in my struggle against authority. Its ending morale is very inspiring and illustrates a change that occurs in your life when you begin to take a different perspective. I also thought the elusive title's meaning was very profound once realized and clinched my liking of the book. It has a very positive message in the end, which is able to be conveyed through the controversy the book exhibits. The book also has an outer political war it wages for the first amendment. I feel that the books paradox, the fact it is a quality piece of literature while using some vulgarity to convey the idea, strikes a blow for the freedom of speech. The overwhelming honesty and frankness of the book with its profanity, which illustrates its reality, denounce the view of those who feel their morals are being violated by freedom of speech. I do have some problems with the book and Holden's behavior and viewpoints. The book is very slow in the beginning and actually throughout its duration. Its pace is awkward because Holden is always reassuring us in small sentences like, " I really did." He also calls many people "phony", and when you begin to understand his perspective, he becomes hypocritical and "phony" himself. This makes Holden less credible in conveying ideas to you, which may be Salinger's intent. I also thought that the character of Phoebe played an important role in how one perceived the book. Phoebe was the metaphorical child by the metaphorical cliff that Holden must metaphorically catch. This was actually very significant because by Holden saving his little sister from his lifestyle, he also saved himself. This gave the most positive outlook on the book, by showing salvation was possible at any juncture of your life. I liked the idea that the unruly Holden could still have enough clarity to see what he was doing was wrong and he should not want to inflict it on one he cares about. Holden's Yang type quality gives him a seductive aspect while allowing him to teach a powerful lesson, which is why the book is so appealing to me and other adolescents.
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Summary: Inconsistant but good
Review: The Catcher in The Rye was a very well outlined book but the auther was very inconsistant with the dialogue for different characters. For example: Holden would say "goddamn" a lot in the first part of the book but then he started saying "chrissake" and "hell". Holden wouldn't say them consistantly like anyother person would have. The book didn't fall into reality enough.
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Summary: The Catcher in the Rye
Review: The Catcher in the Rye was an alright novel. It talked about a lot of real issues that face many people in the world. The novel was also very desciptive and sometimes you could get wraped up in it like you were there. Parts of it were heart-warming, like when he talks about his brothers and sister. Also when he talks about his dead brother you could tell he was a really sensitive guy. However, the novel did have a lot of cursing and most of it was about women, drinking and smokingand so on. All Holden, the main character who told the story in first person, talked about was being depressed and hating even the smallest things. It was kind of ridiculus of how many stupid things made him feel depressed and it got old after a while. If you read the book for long periods of time it could even make you depressed. He also acted very craze(mentaly) and most of his decisions were extremly childish and you would say to yourself why would a 16-17 year old do that. Besides that the book had to do with a lot of real-life problems and it could even give a little tug at you heart and that is why I gave it a rating of three stars.
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Summary: ~*~The best book I have ever read!!!~*~
Review: The Catcher in the Rye was by far the best book I have ever read!!! It is an excellent story for a teenager to read for a school project! Teenagers love this hilarious book! It makes you feel like it was made for you to enjoy personally, like J. D. Salinger made this book for your sense of humor or he knew that you would love to read this book! Holden Caulfield is truly a "madman". The only thing I didn't like about the book was that it ended too soon! I wish the author would come out with a sequel to the story!
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Summary: Absolutely amazing
Review: THe Catcher In The Rye was the first book i ever read that actually had proper swear words in it-and that was the only thing i noticed as a nine year-old. i read it again when i was 16.it was then that i saw holden not as an american spoilt brat but someone not so alien to what i believe in.in pakistan, society is portrayed as one that restricts the growth of an individual due to it's baseless, and often paradoxical, values.holden showed that all the crap on the tolerance of new york was indeed crap.i admire iconoclats immensely and the fact theat holden was looking for oe true emotion/value/feeling ---honesty ....honesty which erodes all cultural, geographical, and racal differences....so that we cannot question holden's values becausehis intentions are so simole , clear and honest. so that he is not confused and society itself seems lost.seeing holden as a good-for-nothing spoilt brat is in itself unfair....because in his non-conformity,one sees an unbelievable treasure of courage and energy ;which if channeed i nthe right direction ,can give so much to evryone.
this book definitely enriched me. in fact, no other has affected me in the way that it did.
just as no one's childhood can be complete without reading"to kill a mockingbird",no one's adolescence can be complete without this novel.
holden's not just a teenager "run riot" in nyc, he's the epitomy ofabsolute honesty(something evryone no matter what he may stand for admires)
i recommend this book to you because thereis nothing like it in literature- no one can match the wit ,the cynicism the easer with which holden washes away all impurities to bring out the true, the eternal, the pure.....the honesty.
no literary acumen can match it. to the holden in all of us!
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Summary: a book for the youth
Review: The Catcher in the Rye was what I would call an "a-ok" book. It didn't grab me and pull me in like many say it would. It was a book about a teenage boy trying to cope with the real world and running away from problems, much like a stage in life the present day's teenager would associate with.
The tone of voice in Holden, because it was written in first person, sets a depressing state in the reader. Holden just didn't seem like a positive figure, and that may be why many school libraries ban this book. I think that this book is good for the adolescent though because it mirrors life, and because I think teenagers like to read books that they can relate with instead of the long, boring stories that some students are forced to read.
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Summary: The Catcher in the Rye
Review: The Catcher in the Rye, a book by J. D. Salinger, is a teenager's journal. Holden's (the protagonist) troubles begin with him being kicked out of his school. It's not that he is stupid or lazy - he just does not give a damn. Holden doesn't want his parents to know that he was kicked out, and spends a week wandering around New York city, listening to jazz, talking to old friends and strangers. Throughout the book, he tells time and again how disgusted he is with everybody he has a chance to meet or talk to. He is not a nasty person at all; on the contrary, he is kind and caring in the heart. The book is about a teenager growing up, about rebellion against accepted norms and stereotypes of behavior.
Holden does not sound like a person who you would want to have tea with, but his reasoning is interesting and captivating. The way he talks about each of the characters that he meets is just like listening to a . . . You can't explain it. You just have to read it. I liked this book a lot. Holden makes life seem so simple and not worth living. This book plays with your mind - it seizes your mind, forces you to think the way Holden thinks. That's the main reason why I loved this book.
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Summary: A lonesome phony
Review: The Catcher in the Rye, a novel about Holden atypical boy's sense of isolation and distrust. It is apparent through the episode that he is lost and cannot accept the responsibility time and age bears on him. In doing so he claims people and acts to be phony and uses this pretext as a means of justification. Instead of acknowledging that adulthood scares and mystifies him, Holden invents a fantasy that adulthood is a world of superficiality and hypocrisy ("phoniness"), while childhood is a world of innocence, curiosity, and honesty. Nothing reveals his image of these two worlds better than his fantasy about the catcher in the rye: he imagines childhood as an idyllic field of rye in which children romp and play; adulthood, for the children of this world, is equivalent to death-a fatal fall over the edge of a cliff. His created understandings of childhood and adulthood allow Holden to cut himself off from the world by covering himself with a protective armor of cynicism. "Phoniness," which is probably the most famous phrase from The Catcher in the Rye, is one of Holden's favorite concepts. It is his catch-all for describing the superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension, and shallowness that he encounters in the world around him. In Chapter 22, just before he reveals his fantasy of the catcher in the rye, Holden explains that adults are inevitably phonies, and, what's worse, they can't see their own phoniness. Phoniness, for Holden, stands as an emblem of everything that's wrong in the world around him and provides an excuse for him to withdraw into his cynical isolation. Though oversimplified, Holden's observations are not entirely inaccurate. Although Holden expends so much energy searching for phoniness in others, he never directly observes his own phoniness. His deceptions are generally pointless and cruel and he notes that he is a compulsive liar. For example, on the train to New York, he perpetrates a mean-spirited and needless prank on Mrs. Morrow. He'd like us to believe that he is a paragon of virtue in a world of phoniness, but that simply isn't the case. Although he'd like to believe that the world is a simple place, and that virtue and innocence rest on one side of the fence while superficiality and phoniness rest on the other, Holden is his own counterevidence. The world is not as simple as he'd like-and needs-it to be; even he cannot adhere to the same black-and-white standards with which he judges other people. Holden's loneliness, a more concrete manifestation of his alienation problem, is a driving force throughout the book. Most of the novel describes his almost manic quest for companionship as he flits from one meaningless encounter to another. Yet, while his behavior indicates his loneliness, Holden consistently shies away from introspection and thus doesn't really know why he keeps behaves as he does. Because Holden depends on his isolation to preserve his detachment from the world and to maintain a level of self-protection, he often sabotages his own attempts to end his loneliness. For example, his conversation with Carl Luce and his date with Sally Hayes are made unbearable by his rude behavior. His calls to Jane Gallagher are aborted for a similar reason: to protect his precious and fragile sense of individuality. Loneliness is the emotional manifestation of the alienation Holden experiences; it is both a source of great pain and a source of his security. Lying and Deception - Lying and deception are the most obvious and hurtful elements of the larger category of phoniness. Holden's definition of phoniness relies mostly on a kind of self-deception: he seems to reserve the most scorn for people who think that they are something they are not or who refuse to acknowledge their own weaknesses. But lying to others is also a kind of phoniness, a type of deception that indicates insensitivity, callousness, or even cruelty. Of course, Holden himself is guilty of both these crimes. His random and repeated lying highlights his own self-deception-he refuses to acknowledge his own shortcomings and is unwilling to consider how his behavior affects those around him. Through his lying and deception, Holden proves that he is just as guilty of phoniness as the people he criticizes.
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Summary: Holden Caulfield
Review: The Catcher in the Rye, begins with Holden Caulfield, the narrator, while in psychiatric care remembering what happened to him last Christmas. He begins his story when he was a student at Pency Prep at the age of sixteen. Holden had been having a hard time at school and failed four classes causing him to become expelled from his fourth school. He struggled with school, because of his immaturity and lack of responsibility.
Throughout the novel Holden puts himself in situations of self destruction. He allows himself to be bossed by another peer, he clearly stated to a teacher that he found what he learned a complete bore, and accepted his unfortunate fate without trying to improve his life and get back into school.
Fed up with Pency Prep, Holden leaves early and decides to stay at some cheap hotel in New York City. There he finds his way into several night clubs and realizes how phony everything seems to him. He had strong feelings for wanting to escape as far away as the woods to live in a cabin with Sally Hayes, a girl he had feelings for.
By the end of the story he tells Phoebe, his sister, that he will be leaving soon and this causes much grief for her, because all she wants is for her brother to get his life together. Holden begins to become more distraught and feels as if he were going to die. By the end we are left hanging with the curiosity of what happens next as he goes back to the present time ending with how he misses his peers from Pency Prep.
I would recommend this book to anyone especially a teenager who could possibly have an easier time relating to the story. Holden's struggles were very interresting to follow, because at times they reminded me of how I have felt in the past, because of all the pressures I have in life. It was interresting to follow how he interpreted life and how difficult it was for him to be happy with himself. The ending was excellent, because it didn't leave a definite ending. On the other hand it allowed me to continue the story in my own mind according to how I came to understand it.
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