The Catcher In The Rye- Analysis

5 Pages 1374 Words

So what is Catcher in the Rye really about???




This book has been always in argument since it was banned in America after it's first publication. “John Lennon's killer, Mark Chapman, asked the former Beatle singer to sign a copy of the book earlier in the morning of the day that he killed John. Police found the book in his possession upon capturing the psychologically disturbed Chapman.” However, the book itself contains nothing that could lead Chapman to act as he did. I could have been any book that he was reading the day he decided to kill John Lennon, and as a result of the fact that it was The Catcher in the Rye, a book describing a nervous breakdown, media discussed widely about the possible connection between the two. This led the book to become more notorious than it has. So what is The Catcher in the Rye actually about?
From all the views possible, the story of a young man's kicking out from another school ( he has been kicked out from other schools), The Catcher in the Rye is in fact a sensitive study of one individual's understanding of his human condition. Holden Caulfield, a teenager growing up in 1945s in New York, has been expelled school for poor achievement and losing school property on a train. In an attempt to deal with this and “run away from it all” he leaves school a few days before to the end of term, and goes to New York to “take a vacation” before returning to his parents' inevitable wrath. Told as a monologue, the book describes Holden's thoughts and activities over these few days, during which he describes a developing nervous breakdown, caused by his bouts of unexplained and sudden depression, impulsive spending and generally odd, erratic behavior, just before it happened.
However, during his mental battle, life continues on around Holden as it always had, with the majority of people ignoring the craziness that is happening to him. Progressively through the novel we are challenged to...