A Literature Review

Lesson 7 Assignment: Mindfulness in Reading

My favorite book is The Catcher In the Rye by J. D. Salinger. I reread the first two chapters in a mindful manner, looking for examples of how Salinger supplies the reader with foreshadowing, theme, and symbolism.

The novel is narrated through the voice of the main character, Holden Caulfield, who is recovering from a mental breakdown in an institution. Nearing adulthood, Holden looks back on the four day period following his expulsion from Pencey prep school and the events that precipitated his breakdown. Although Holden's narration is cynical, laden with vulgarity, and often reads in a rambling fashion, I am impressed by the significance of each passage is to the themes and plot of the novel. For example, the following paragraph is an excerpt from chapter one:

"Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall. The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell on top of Thomsen Hill, right next to this crazy cannon that was in the Revolutionary War and all. You could see the whole field from there, and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place. You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because practically the whole school except me was there, and scrawny and faggy on the Saxon Hall side, because the visiting team hardly ever brought many people with them."

This passage shows the main themes in the novel: the painfulness of growing up and alienation as a form of self-protection. Holden talks cynically about the football game between the two schools. He refers to the school he is being expelled from as "old Pencey" which seems to suggest he sees Pencey as 'adulthood'. He then describes the visiting team, the Saxon Hall side, as "scrawny and faggy" symbolizing fragile childhood. Holden's statement about "the two teams bashing each other all over the place" symbolizes his pain of growing up.

Holden's voice has undertones of a sense of urgency and not meeting others' expectations which gives the reader a clue about his mental state. Holden mentions he was standing on the hill beside a "crazy cannon" which symbolizes Holden himself. Salinger cleverly chooses to make the canon from the Revolutionary War, a war marked by great change, much like the conflict within Holden. Like a canon, Holden is a madman on the verge of exploding in attempt to fight this change. Part of Holden's conflict is that he knows the world expects him to become a man. The words "commit suicide or something" foreshadows Holden's mental breakdown with this line: "It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win".

The "football game" seems to represent the phoniness of adulthood. The fact that Holden is standing up on a hill rather than watching the football game with "practically the whole school except for me" is a good example of how he tries to protect himself from the phoniness of adulthood and from the adolescent changes that are happening to him. By removing himself from the game he is alienating himself from others and protecting himself from the phoniness he despises. Moreover, Holden standing way up on a hill, high above the game field suggests Holden's desire to be better than the phoniness of adulthood on the field below him.

This passage also foreshadows a conversation Holden has later in the chapter with Mr. Spencer, his friend and History teacher, when Holden goes to his house to say goodbye before he leaves Pencey prep forever:


"Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules."
"Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."
Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right-I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.

Holden's answer is deceitful, but he answers the way he knows his teacher expects him to answer. However Holden's internal thoughts show his belief that adults are phony. He refers to the adults here as "hot shots", and he refers to childhood as "the other side where there are no hot shots" and no game.

Ultimately, these passages foreshadow Holden's ideal fantasy to protect children from falling over a cliff and "dying" into adulthood. He talks later in the novel to his young sister, Phoebe, about how he wants to be "the catcher in the rye":

" . . . I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."