THE CATCHER IN THE

RYE

by Jerome David Salinger

 THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
 “The Catcher in the Rye” - written during the 1940’s and
published in 1951
 The novel represents the author’s autobiography

 Salinger admitted that he liked writing about very young

people in his books
 “The Catcher in the Rye” is compared to “The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain
 The idea of “the catcher in rye” comes from an old English
song and from a poem written by Robert Burns, entitled
“Coming Through the Rye”
 Work: The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories (The Laughing
Man, Teddy, Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes), Franny and
Zooey
 THE CATCHER IN THE RYE
 The novel has a simple
plot, starting with
Holden’s expulsion from
Pencey prep. school and
following his experiences
in New York City before
going home.
 It can be considered a
Bildungsroman
 The language is simple,
unsophisticated and
sometimes even vulgar
 HOLDEN
CAULFIELD
 The main character and the narrator of the
novel
 Ironic, liar, cynic; deals with issues of
identity and isolation
 Dislikes almost everything, nothing could
make him content; everything bores him
 Criticizes people around him, is disgusted
with people’s snobbism and falseness
 Feels alone and sad

 Intelligent even if he gets bad grades at

school
 Mature but sometimes childish, sensitive
and kindhearted, very curious in what
regards others’ lives
 THEMES
 Innocence
 Mortality

 Youth

 Isolation

 Sadness

 Madness

 Religion
 “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing
some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of
little kids, and nobody’s around-nobody big, I mean-
except me. And 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. I know it’s
crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I
know it’s crazy”.
 “Boy, it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets, I swear to
God. All the parents and mothers and everybody went over
and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, so they
wouldn’t get soaked to the skin or anything, but I stuck
around on the bench for quite a while. I got pretty soaking
wet, especially my neck and my pants. My hunting hat really
gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way, but I got soaked
anyway. I didn’t care, though. I felt so damn happy all of a
sudden, the way old Phoebe kept going around and around. It
was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to
know the truth. I don’t know why. It was just that she looked
so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in
her blue coat and all. God, I wish you could’ve been there”.