The Catcher in the Rye (Special Edition) - New Version

Author: J.D. Salinger
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-09-01
Features: I love you, but I don’t dare to say it. I’m afraid that if I say it, I’ll die right away. I’m not afraid of death, but I’m afraid that if I die, no one will love me as much as I do. I just want to be a catcher in the rye.
The protagonist of this book, Holden Caulfield, is a sixteen-year-old boy from a wealthy middle-class family. After being expelled from school for the fourth time, he doesn’t dare to go home alone and wanders around New York City, the bustling metropolis of the United States, for one day and two nights. He stays in small boarding houses, visits nightclubs, sleeps around with girls, and drinks excessively. He sees the ugliness of capitalist society, meets all kinds of people, most of whom are "phony phony hypocrites." Holden almost can’t stand what’s happening around him. He even wants to escape this real world and go to a poor, remote place to pretend to be deaf and mute. But it’s impossible to actually do so. As a result, he can only live in contradiction: he hates movies all his life, but out of boredom, he has to spend time in movie theaters; he dislikes sex without love, yet he carelessly summons a prostitute; he dislikes his girlfriend Sally, yet he is obsessed with her beauty and cannot help but hug her. Therefore, although he can’t stand the world, he can only be frustrated and bewildered, comforting himself with various unrealistic fantasies, deceiving himself, and ultimately having to compromise with reality society, failing to become a true rebel. This can be said to be the tragedy of both the author J.D. Salinger and his character Holden Caulfield.