kwilecki's+book+review

kwilecki __Catcher In The Rye__

__Catcher In the rye,__ written by J.D Salinger, is surely a book of its own kind. It was written in the time between the 1940s to early 1950s. Little, Brown and company were in charge of publishing Catcher In The Rye. The novel is set in the 1950s in New York City. It is narrated by a young man named Holden Caulfield. Caulfield doesn’t actually say where he is while he is telling the story but he makes it clear that he is undergoing treatment in a mental hospital. Throughout the story Holden keeps referring to people as phonies but as the you read more and more of the story it is clear that he is the biggest phony of all.

The “Catcher In The Rye” Begins on a Saturday night following the end of school at Pencey Prep. Pencey prep was located in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Holden has been kicked out of three other Prep schools before enrolling at Pencey. He failed four out of the five classes that he took. He was kicked out of school on a Friday and wasn’t supposed to return home till Wednesday. In Holden’s eyes this opportunity of no supervision gave him all the freedom that he could wish for. After he gets into a fight with his roommate Stradlater, Holden finally decides to leave Pencey and return to Manhattan.

On the train from Pennsylvania to Penn station in New York City, Holden meets the mother of a fellow Pencey student. Even though he thinks the ladies son is a complete “bastard,” he tells the woman made-up stories about how shy her son is and how well respected he is at school. When Holden gets of the train he thinks about calling a few people to let them know that he is home, but for some reason he decides against it. He gets a cab and has the cab take him to the Edmont Hotel. On the way to Edmont Hotel, Holden asks a question that really defines what he is going through. Holden asks the cab driver “where do the ducks go when the lagoon freezes over in Central Park”? The cab driver seems to get annoyed with the question and never answers.

Throughout the novel you can see that Holden Caulfield makes remarks about random things, such as the ducks in central park. I think he asked the question “Where do the ducks go when the lagoon freezes,” is a result of himself being unstable. Holden failed out of three prep schools and is now on his own. He doesn’t know where to go because he is too afraid to confront his parents with the news. Also the constant word that was used by Holden in the novel also shows that he is very unsure of him self.

He calls people phonies but really he is the biggest one of all. He tries to almost cure himself by isolating himself in a hotel room but he grows more and more lonely. As a result of this he orders a prostitute from a man named Sunny that he met. As you can see, as the novel progresses you can realize that Holden gets more and more lonely and falls deeper and deeper in to a social and mental abyss.