The Catcher in the Rye: The Power of the Outcast

Written by J.D. Salinger and published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye follows high school dropout Holden Caulfield in New York three days after being expelled from Pencey Preparatory School. Catcher exhibits a fascination with the outcast by showing Holden's rejection of the adult role and desire to suspend time. In the end, however, Holden acknowledges that he cannot be a protector of innocence.

Rejection of the Adult Role

Holden is an outcast because he rejects the adult role. He thinks adults are lifeless and unpassionate. Repulsed by the idea of labor, he doesn't want to become a working adult. He sees labor—what adults spend most of their time doing—as a creativity-killer. While his peer Sally sees great prospects for the future, Holden believes that going through post-secondary education would not improve his prospects.

“There wouldn’t be marvelous places to go after I went to college and all… I’d be working in some office, making a lot of dough… ” (Salinger 71)

Holden feels that labor conditions adults to work for the system, repeating mundane tasks while being fulfilled with compensation. In contrast to children who are free, creative, and playful, he sees adults as preoccupied, non-innovative, and desensitized.

Holden argues that adults are also superficial. They take on prestigious jobs for external validation. He argues that we never know if a lawyer has a genuine desire to contribute to society or whether they want to flaunt their high-status job.

“Even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer.. with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody...?” (Salinger 92-93)

In contrast to children who are pure and straightforward, Holden sees adults as two-faced and egotistical.

Holden's concerns may ring true. It would be a lie to say that our work-oriented economy doesn't tend to reduce an individual's value down to the human capital it can churn out of them. And there surely are some people who are in it for the money or prestige.

However, Holden's arguments reflect not a real concern for toxic work culture, but rather a fear of being labeled a failure. Note that they are coming from a teenager who has never been part of the workforce. Holden comes from an affluent white household and was just attending a prestigious preparatory school. Someone like him is expected to take over the world, to build the next Amazon, or to make it big at Wall Street. As a high school dropout, Holden's position is in stark contrast to society's idea of success.

Holden's complaints are thus coming not from a place of logic but fear. He antagonizes the adult world to protect himself from confronting the gap between expectation and reality. Holden’s dream of a “Thoreau-like” retreat with Sally to the wilderness is a manifestation of his mental cry for help to escape such social pressures (Rosen).

"We'll stay in these cabin camps until the dough runs out. I could get a job somewhere, and we could live somewhere with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something." (Salinger 71)

Holden's rejection of the adult role culminates in his distrust of adults to provide guidance to their children. Holden’s own parents are absent during a difficult time of adolescence. Though there is a physical distance that comes from Holden's attending a boarding school, Holden’s parents are not present. His mother is busy grieving his younger brother Allie’s death (Salinger 58). The only time his father is mentioned is through a warning that “Daddy’s gonna kill you” hearing about Holden’s expulsion from school (Salinger 89). The main adult figures in Holden's life strays far from the image of a caring parent.

Furthermore, there are multiple references to abuse. Holden sees his close friend Jane Gallagher burst into tears from a quick exchange with her stepfather, implying that she was a victim of sexual abuse. Holden himself mentions that perverted acts have been done to him “twenty times,” suggesting that he had been sexually harassed (Salinger 104).

From Holden's worldview, adults do the opposite of what they are supposed to do—instead of being caretakers, they are largely absent and, at times, even abusive.

Desire to Stop Time

Holden is an outcast because he fights against the current of time. Salinger's genius shines through with his choice of time as a symbol because he makes use of two properties of time: 1) continuousness and 2) decay.

When we say we want to stop time, usually we mean countering the continuity of time. Time is like a current that carries on, indifferent to our desire to be in the moment forever. When we're having a blast with our loved ones or best friends, we want to stop this current and keep things the way they are.

Interestingly enough, time also causes decay. As we know from the Second Law of Thermodynamics, entropy (or disorder) increases over time. Buildings dilapidate, machines depreciate, people age, and food spoil over time.

In Catcher, time symbolizes the decay of innocence. Holden desires to stop time to prevent things from becoming corrupted.

First, Holden likes to visit the Museum of Natural History because it shows permanence.

"The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was." (Salinger 65)

Where objects are enclosed within glass walls and protected from decay, the museum is a representation of the static world he desires. It echoes his wish for the state of children’s innocence to be kept intact forever.

Second, Holden’s obsession with Jane Gallagher shows his desire to suspend time. Jane is a close friend whom Holden met when their parents stayed in neighboring summer houses two years before the events of Catcher. Despite wanting to reach out to her, Holden repeatedly shies away from calling Jane.

Though these were such face-palm moments, it signifies that Holden wants to hold onto the innocent image of Jane. To him, she is a perfect representation of innocence. He notices her idiosyncrasies, such as putting all the kings in the back row during checkers or closing her eyes when taking a swing during golf (Salinger 42). He likes how her mouth “went in about fifty directions, her lips and all” when talking about something she is passionate about (Salinger 42).

All her quirks show innocent motives and make Jane seem authentic and down-to-earth, an antithesis of adult phoniness. However, all that is no longer applicable because she is dating someone else, his roommate Stradlater at Pencey Prep (Rosen). His indecisiveness of calling her is a desperate act to cling onto the old, innocent Jane.

(Apart from this whole symbolism-of-time thing, Holden's struggle to let go of someone he deeply cares for absolutely crushed me. Especially since Holden is emotionally distant from a lot of people, we can tell Jane is one of the few people whom he respects. I mean, look at how he pays attention to all the little details about her! He's also furious that Stradlater isn't serious with her because he doesn't want her to get hurt. Having to let go of someone you care for is such a universal experience and it just killed me.)

Third, Holden keeps mementos such as Phoebe’s broken record. Holden buys a record of the children’s song “Little Shirley Beans” for Phoebe. Even when Holden tries to protect the record by placing it in a big envelope, it shatters into fifty pieces (Salinger 82). Holden keeps this now useless record. This shows his unwillingness to accept that the shattering of childhood innocence is inevitable. That is why Holden resists change with all his might.

Holden’s attachment to the past is shown through Salinger’s naming of our protagonist—Holden sounds like “hold on” (Lohnes). Through his preference for going to the museum, obsession with Jane, and storage of mementos, Holden desperately holds onto his conception of childhood innocence. He holds back from entering the corrupted adult world.

No longer a catcher in the rye, but something more realistic

Holden is shaped as an outcast through his rejection of the adult role and desire to stop time. As we follow him on his odyssey, however, Holden reaches a new mindset as he accepts that becoming a “catcher in the rye” is an illusion (Mochidome).

He discovers that there is a physical limitation to being a protector of innocence. When Holden sees “Fuck you” written on a school wall, he rushes to erase it. He agonizes about it corrupting the children who will stumble across it. However, Holden realizes the helplessness of his situation as he quickly finds countless other “Fuck you” signs across the school (Salinger 109). He realizes that shielding children from profanity is impossible since it is so rampant.

In addition to a limitation, Holden also recognizes that his intentions may actually be damaging to the children. When Holden sees his sister Phoebe riding on a carousel, reaching far out for the brass ring, he wants to keep her from falling off the horse. At this fateful moment, however, he notices that

“if they want to grab for the golden ring, you have to let them do it... If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them (Salinger 114).”

All children try to reach for the brass ring, but they fail and fall. That is, as they grow up they are bound to fall from childhood innocence. Holden has a sudden realization: shielding them only delays their exposure to face the vulgarities of life. Holden abandons the role of a saver, letting go of what previously was the “only thing I’d really like to be” (Salinger 93). This is a complete reversal of his previous stance.

Holden's new mindset is to embody the mature man that Mr. Antolioni quotes from psychoanalyst Wilhelm Stekel:

“The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one” (Salinger 101).

Awakened by reality, the mature man overcomes groundless fantasies and lives every day humbly. Likewise, Holden abandons the grand vision of sacrificing himself for a utopia, settling instead to contributing little by little every day. We see a major transformation. Holden is no longer a naive dreamer, but an informed realist.

Lastly, Salinger tells the reader that Holden reaches a new truth structurally. Salinger craftily plants Holden’s troubles during a period of adolescence, thus designating it as something that he must ultimately outgrow (Aubry). This change is apparent as we see Holden missing his classmates in the concluding sentences of the novel. It suggests his resolution to re-enter society with this new revelation.

Conclusion

Seventy years later, Catcher remains popular among today’s youths in times of anxieties brimming from a saturated job market and instability from the Covid-19 pandemic.

There has recently been a surge of anti-labor movements. The “I don’t dream of labor” movement is a direct rebellion against hustle work culture. It seeks to break away from the idea that work is who we are and what we live for. The cottagecore aesthetic takes this a step further, rejecting the busy city work-life and idealizing a withdrawal to the countryside with its picturesque cottages and sourdough bread-making.

There are viral Tik Toks where teens jokingly ask why we have to pay bills to just exist, unlike animals who have carefree lives and do nothing. Another one shows a 22-year-old adult screaming in his pillow that Monday means another existential crisis to question why they haven't figured out their life purpose yet.

Catcher's great success over the decades testifies to the social pressures and expectations that make adolescence a universally difficult period (Aubry). Generation Z’s disappointment in the materialism and shallowness of society almost directly parallels Holden Caulfield’s desire to escape labor and suspicion of adults’ work attitudes. Although the term “outcast” by definition denotes a minority, many people are “outsiders” in the sense that they feel just as emotionally disconnected from contemporary values. As each coming generation confronts its own problems, the outcast will continue to garner sympathy and rescue people from feeling alone in their struggle—such is the power of the outcast.

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Works Cited

Aubry, Timothy. “The Catcher in the Rye: The Voice of Alienation.” The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History AP US History Guide, 15 Aug. 2012, ap.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/fifties/essays/catcher-rye-voice-alienation?period=8.

Lohnes, Kate. "The Catcher in the Rye". Encyclopedia Britannica, 26 Jul. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Catcher-in-the-Rye. Accessed 14 June 2021.

Mochidome, Koji. “An Abstract of the Thesis ‘In Quest of Identity: J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield and Seymour Glass.” Bukkyo University, Bukkyo University English Literature Society Student Thesis Collection, 2018, pp. 1–5.

Rosen, Gerald. “A Retrospective Look at the Catcher in the Rye.” American Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 5, 1977, pp. 547–562. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2712573. Accessed 14 June 2021.

Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, 1951.