Catcher in the Rye

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Summary: A classic read.
Review: A book that's a good read for either adult or teenager, we follow the adventures of life with a young man named Holden. A good comming of age story and it reads true to life all the way through. It's the book my boyfriend rereads annually.

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Summary: Just one more review about a wonderful book...
Review: A captivating, emotionally-charged work. No wonder it took Salinger 10 years to write.

A great read for summer -- or anytime!

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Summary: A Catcher in the Rye
Review: A Catcher in the Rye is a book about a late teen-aged boy named Holden Caufield. Holden is expelled from prep school for sub-par grades. Holden then spends the next three days in New York City by himself. While in the city, Holden gets a taste of the real world. He also formulates cynical opinions about society and finds himself needing a break from the constant melancholy the people around him create.

Although J.D. Salinger published A Catcher in the Rye in 1951, kids today can identify with the main character. The diction used in the book is very similar to that which is used by today's adolescents. J.D. Salinger does an outstanding job creating the mood that Holden Caufield emanates. Holden exemplifies an extreme cynicism that much of today's youth possesses; however, this parallel to adolescents today makes it a great book for people between the ages of 13-17. By the end of the book many of life's lessons come through and leave the reader pondering about his or her own childhood and beliefs.

I really enjoyed this book because of the unique way in which it was written. J.D. Salingers thoughts flow onto the paper so smoothly that it is almost as if he is speaking directly to the reader. I would definitely recommend this book to all youth that battle the perceived need to conform to society

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Summary: Groundbreaking
Review: A Catcher in the Rye, written by J.D. salinger, is my one of my all time favorite books. I first read it in 8th grade, and i read it all in one day. i really couldnt put it down. some people say it drags on, but i think it builds up more and more.

With each page Salinger takes you more and more into the world of Holden Caulfield. and In almost every way you can relate to this young man, or feel a sense or empathy because we have all been in similar situations to him. In no other time as anyone in literature fully described what its like to be filled with teenage angst. so check out this book if youve ever been a teenager.

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Summary: A what in the rye?
Review: A catcher. It's actually a misquote explained in the book. Now if you've read some of these bad reveiws you're probably all set move on to another book, but there's hope. First you have to understand Salinger writes most of his stories like a puzzle and its up to the reader to figure it out. If you take the book at face value all you get is a confusing mess about a teen age boy. If you dig a little beneath the surface you find the story of a boy coming to terms with adulthood and growing up. His little sister Phoebe is the childhood essence, his dead brother Allie symbolizes never growing old, and Being a catcher in the rye is his desire to save children from the pains of adulthood. It does a good job of explaining a teenagers view of the adult life and childhood and the pain of being stuck in between. as for the story being depressing, if you realise that Holden, the main character, is happy in the end, willing to grow up, youd see its not depressive. As for those who says he just needs help and they couldnt relate, perhaps they should have read it when they were 16 or perhaps they should read it again. Look for the clues and youll realise the story is being told in some sort of institution were Holden is resting. The character isnt perfect, isnt overly likeably but that's what makes the story so great. It's a look at one mans real life, not a happily-ever-after story. A great book for anyone whos secure enough to read to learn, but not for anyone who reads to escape

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Summary: Vexed By The Sex Question
Review: A classic of 20th century American literature, J. D. Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye (1951) is the timeless, hugely popular blueprint for all coming - of - age novels that followed. The book's 16 - year old protagonist and antihero, Holden Caulfield, is not a rebel as many believe, but a petulant, emotionally - injured, and insecure teenager who is fluent in outrage and at odds with almost every conceivable aspect of being alive. Unlike Fitzgerald's eager, amoral, and dashing Amory Blaine (This Side of Paradise, 1920), who delights in embracing and manipulating the shiny new worlds that open upon adulthood, Holden, who is grieving the recent death of a beloved younger brother, is a prematurely gray, lanky, and disgruntled loner belatedly stuck in the awkward years of adolescence. The privileged, somewhat spoiled son of a wealthy Manhattan family, the self - loathing Holden finds himself continuously surrounded by a web of other people who are obstructing embodiments of his own worst and most reviled qualities.

Informatively, the Catcher In The Rye opens and closes with hazy manifestations of homosexuality. The first goes unrealized by Holden, but the second is conspicuously realized and causes a full - blown panic attack. In the first, Holden nudgingly provokes virile prep school roommate Stradlater into a symbolical rape, a rape that leaves the ostensibly defenseless Holden bloodied but unsatisfied.

The charismatic, footloose Stradlater, who is nonchalantly used to getting his way with others, is, in Holden's eyes, "pretty handsome" and "very sexy," has "very broad shoulders," and is the type of young man Holden believes his own parents would find admirable; Holden comments repeatedly on the beauty of his roommate's golden hair. Unable to resist Stradlater's orbit, even while Stradlater is using the bathroom, Holden, a man obsessed, grabs his roommate in a headlock while he is shaving and bare - chested, and goes so far as to perform a spontaneous, effete mock tap dance for him. Crying out "It's the opening night of Ziegfeld Follies," Holden makes it clear that the role he is enacting in this courting ritual is one of a respectable citizen falling from grace by exhibiting his true, no - longer deniable inner nature. When the ignored Holden, who is a virgin, briefly backs away, Stradlater, "in just his damn shorts and all," gets "very damn playful" in return, and the two fall into a briefly blissful wrestling match on Holden's bed. Since during this episode Holden's irrepressible behavior -- and anger -- is ostensibly the result of Stradlater's "giving the time" to a young lady Holden covets, the narrative makes it clear that the atmosphere in their room is sexually - charged and haunted by displacement. A careful reading of this scene reveals that Holden, who reasonably lacks full self - awareness, is angry not because his roommate has had sexual intercourse with the young lady in question, but because Stradlater hasn't "given the time" to him. Afterward, Holden describes their violent fight -- which ends with Stradlater kneeling on Holden's chest, their drooling faces inches apart -- as a "tiff."

Holden's combustible encounter with Stradlater is also partially a self - inflicted if failed initiation into manhood: "You never saw so much gore in your life. I had blood all over my mouth and chin and even on my pajamas and bathrobe. It partly scared me and partly fascinated me. All that blood and all sort of made me look tough." Is the bloodied Holden symbolically no longer a virgin? Does Stradlater's beating represent a provoked if less than fulfilling violation? Has Holden now become more of a man, or less of one?

After the series of disastrous episodes that compose the balance of the story, some of which involve transvestites and "flits," as Holden calls homosexually - inclined men, the exhausted young man briefly finds false hope in the company of former teacher Mr. Antolini, one of the few adults for whom he has any respect. Comforted for the first time in the book by his teacher's wisdom and concern, Holden ("a very, very strange boy," Antolini calls him), "shaking like a madman," bolts from his mentor's apartment in well - realized homosexual panic when he awakens to find the married Mr. Antolini patting his head in the darkness. Is the wise, sympathetic Mr. Antolini molesting Holden or genuinely expressing anxious regard and tenderness?

"I know more damn perverts, at school and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around," Holden now reveals. He has already conveyed that "Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away...sex is something I just don't understand. I swear to God I don't." What rules has Holden set for himself and then broken? Holden has been told that "half the married guys in the world were flits and didn't even know it," and is subsequently "waiting to turn into a flit or something." It may be that Holden, who despises "phonies" above all others, suffers profoundly from being an unconscious or semi - conscious phoney himself. Throughout the narrative, Holden's wishful associations with women prove to be more like sibling relationships than romantic or erotic attachments.

Controversial in its day, The Catcher In The Rye shocked the American reading public with its coarse but realistic language and its sympathetic depiction of the morose, angry, often hilarious Holden, who was an explicit example of every "good" family's worse nightmare. Today's readers will relate to Holden as all honest readers did then and have since, since Holden is only a vulnerable, frightened, perceptive everyman searching for a single validating role in life, and one who is temporarily a little more lost in the world -- and within himself -- than most find desirable.

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Summary: The Catcher in the Rye was the best book I have ever read.
Review: A couple of weeks ago, I picked up "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D. Salinger and I couldn't put it down. All my friends were saying stuff like-it's the stupidest book ever written-i don't know how anyone could like it-that kind of stuff. But from the moment I read the first line I was engrossed by Holden Caulfield's insights and experiences. I think a lot of teenagers related to this book because it's a fairly easy read but most importantly it relates to us. I thought that "The Catcher in the Rye" kind of paralleled "Huckleberry Finn" because both of them are coming of age and they don't like all the hypocrites and "phony's" in the world so they try to get away from them. They both are going around in circles that they don't like-Huck is tired of trying how to be civilized-and Holden doesn't like all the people that are "phonies" in the world. So the book is kind of sad-because this is how the rest of Holden's life is going to be. Holden Caulfield is a darker, more serious Huckleberry Finn. But at the end of "Huckleberry Finn" Huck breaks off from the circle and goes out west in search of the new territory-but Holden seems to be going around the same circle for the rest of his life. Holden loves his sister D.B. a lot because she's the real thing-she loves him for what he is and she really cares about him. He also likes the nun's because they're good people. The scene with the woman on the train is also funny because he's such a terrific liar and he's going on and on to that woman about what a great kid her son is even though he's the biggest jerk out of all the kids in Pency

The story kind of relates to J.D. Salinger because he isolated himself from the world once his now-famous novel became a success.

I don't know-it's hard to describe-whatever, nevermind. But this book touched me in a way that no book has ever touched me because that's how much teenagers feel like. I'm fourteen by the way-that's all i have to say about that.

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Summary: A Pretty Phony Review.
Review: A deeply troubled adolescent, the streets of New York, and a Robert Burns poem construct this novel of youth and beauty. Holden Caulfield has become the patron saint of world-weariness, bewildered vulnerability, and a perplexity leaning on desperation. The novel has a narrative voice that verges on the vernacular but consciously avoids it and a minimal plot that is set into action by a single decision. The sorrow in 'Catcher in the Rye' does emerge from solipsist insularity but rather from a deep concern for innocence lost, or in peril. He feels genuine empathy for, among others, a disregarded child walking on the street, ignored by his parents, in danger of being hit by passing cars, another child in a movie theater who is hushed by his mother, herself weeping at a dramatic scene, when he says that he needs to use the bathroom, and young whore named Sunny, too ignorant to realize her own sullen wretchedness. But perhaps most foreboding of all is his fear that perhaps one day his beloved little sister, Phoebe, may become corrupt, or at least a part of our corrupt socety. His distress and pain arise from conviction, and an acknowledgement that it is impossible for a single person to save another.

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Summary: dull, pedantic, trite
Review: A dull, pendantic book about a dull, pedantic hypocrite.
Maybe this was groundbreaking when it came out, but it's dull as dishwater today.
The main character is irritated by every tiny miniscule event that happens in his life, and has to tell you about every single one as if it's momentous. That's pretty much the sum total of this book, a kid griping about inconsequential nothings the entire book.
The only thing that kept me going till the end were the teasing hints that he was about to become seriously ill and/or die. No such luck, just had a bad cold.

Rating:
Summary: a great book every teenager and adult should read
Review: a fascinating insight into the mind of a curious teenage boy, as he searches for his true identity and place in life