Essay: Catcher in the Rye: Holden onto Innocence

       Catcher in the Rye makes my book list because it’s uniquely controversial.    It’s been on the best sellers list since it’s publication in 1952 and yet it has been banned in schools and from libraries off and on all over the country. 

            The story connects with some people on such a deep level that it becomes their personal story.  I’ve met one woman who says she reads it every December.  I’ve met men who have Holden’s hat tattooed on their skin.    

            But what really fascinates me is the book’s connection with three widely broadcast murders. 

The Shootings:

        John Lennon was killed by MarkDavid Chapman on December 8, 1986.  When police arrived Chapman sat nearby reading his personal copy Catcher in the Rye.  He didn’t resist arrest and even signed his name as Holden Caulfield.   He admitted the book as his statement. 

            Chapman said:  "I’m sure the big part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil."  

   Rebecca Schaeffer was stalked by Robert John Bardo for three years.   On July 18, 1989 Schaeffer was shot and killed by Bardo.    Bardo was later arrested while walking aimlessly through traffic.  Police discovered a copy of Catcher in the Rye in his coat pocket. 

  On March 30, 1981,  Ronald Regan was nearly assassinated by John Hinckley Jr.   Hinckley had a copy of Catcher in the Rye on his nightstand.    

 Is there something about Catcher in the Rye that appeals to the predatory nature in some people?  Is this nature in all of us? 

             

Is there something about the story?

Was the author himself special in someway?

Is there about special about the ones who are touched by it?

Is there a pattern?

            The Element of Innocents:

            For a full summery of the story see the spark-notes here.

            The main thing that stands out in the novel is Holden’s pre-occupation with childhood.  He sees everyone around him as being phony.  He wants to stay innocent.  He wants to remain an innocent kid forever but the world won’t let him.  The sheer fact that he saw the futility of his efforts torments him.    

            He can’t reverse the process and he spends the winter holiday in the cold, reluctant haze of this backward looking meditation.  Through his prospective no one can help him because they can’t help themselves.  All of his peers are just children pretending to be adults.  All the adults are phonies.  The only true human beings in the world are the children and they are all doomed to some day grow up and some day loose their innocents.

            The obsession with innocence seems to be only thing these of real world killers have in common with each other.

    Mark David Chapman was angry because he preserved John Lennon as being a hypocrite, a phony, and an atheist.  Lennon had sang about equality of all men.  But when Chapman discovered how rich Lennon was he became filled with rage.   

   Robert John Bardo was angry with Rebecca Schaeffer because she’d preformed in a sexually charged scene in the film Scenes from the Class Struggle in Beverly Hills.  She had therefore lost her innocence and broken Bardo’s heart.

John Hinckley Jr’s assassination attempt had nothing to do with President Regan.  He was trying to impress actress Jodi Foster.   Hinckley saw Foster as a child film star in the movie Taxi Driver and had fallen in love with her.  

            However,  I found an interesting detail about innocence when researching the novel's title.  

            Holden is inspired by a children’s song.    The melody to which you may recognize.  

  Holden is walking when he sees a family coming from church dressed all nice.  The parents are walking with a little boy who is running about merrily singing.

“Gin a body meet a body
  Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
  Need a body cry?”

     It’s one of the few times in the entire novel where Holden smiles and feels honestly happy.  We find out later why as he talks to his 10 year old little sister Phoebe.  She is the only person with whom he is capable of communicating at all.  Holden has miss understood a line in the song.

Holden heard:   “Get a body catch a body

                             Coming thro the rye” 

   Holden imagines a party of children  playing and ramping in a rye field at the edge of the world.  He is the only adult and his job is to catch the children if they should venture too close to the edge of the cliff.  It is discussed in other forms that to Holden the cliffs represents and end to innocence.  He is therefore saving the children from loosing their childhood.

           

            However, the original poem is completely opposite of Holden’s imagined dream. 

            Coming Thro the Rye is a poem by 16th century poet Robert Burns: the best translation for which I found here.

           

         I interpret the poem to be talking about a girl or woman named Ginny or Jenny whom the speaker of the poem admires and knows that he can steal a kiss from her, as she is coming through the rye field.  There is allusion to wetness and how Ginny is seldom dry, as well as how all the lads will smile when he comes out of the rye field after Ginny.  The poem, to me is obviously of a happy, but sexual nature.   It would seem that boys go into the rye to loose their innocence, not preserve it. 

        Holden does eventually recognize that his efforts are in vain.  It sickens him but he all really wants is for all the kids to just be left alone.  

        

Is there a cosmic connection to the author?

. 

            J. D. Salinger is described as an introverted child.  He preferred to keep himself to himself and had few friends.  An inspired teacher encouraged him to write.  

            Writing kept him grounded after he was drafted into the military.  While stationed in Norway during World War II he started drafts for Catcher in the Rye.  He would continue to work on his book even after suffering a mental breakdown, and all during his recovery. 

       It seems that J.D. Salinger wasn’t prepared for the fame his novel gained him.  He retreated from his home in New York and became a recluse.  Lovers that he took and lost shed unwanted light in his private life for mass public consumption.  They claimed  that he was a mean controlling man with violent tendencies.    

            Does the distress of Salinger's soul reach out across time and space to touch the souls of others of a similar nature?   Some would believe that the book hones in on a sickness in the mind.  Others say that there is a hidden message or code that brings out the madiness is otherwise decent people.  

  Even if these sick-minded individuals who seemed to be obsessed with the preservation of innocence overlooked, or didn't know, the irony of the theme’s origin did the book inspire them to kill? 

 

 Art does inspire action after all.

Or is this just another case of apophenia:  the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas)

   

     Conclusion:  Is there a pattern?

Since it’s publication Catcher in the Rye as been read by millions of people in well over a hundred countries.   The story connects on a personal level with adolescents in who find their childhood slipping away and this cold dreary world of adulthood pulling them towards the bleak unknown. 

     Out of those millions of readers and fans of the novel only three of them took their fandom to such extremes.  Of those three only one of them claimed the novel as their inspiration.  

            Hinckley was a copycat who studied other sick-minded individuals.  Hinckley first spotted Jodi Foster in the movie Taxi Driver.  This was based on a diary by Arthur Bremer, the man who assassinated George Wallace.  The movie features a man who, undergoing his own mental breakdown,  attempts and fails to assassinate a fictional president-elect over a woman who scorned his interest.    

            After his arrest Hinckley spent his time in prison reading  up on, and trying to contact other mass murderers such as Ted Bundey.  It is perfectly possible that Hinckley only had a new copy of Catcher in the Rye when he was caught because he’d learned about Chapman before hand and thought it would be a nice touch. 

John Bardo says it was a coincidence that he had a copy of Catcher in the Rye.  He credits the U2 song ‘Exit’ as his motivator.  He previously stalked another celebrity but had to give that up when she died in a plain crash.  And that was before he bought Catcher in the Rye.

            So the only real connection of the book with a murder is Mark David Chapman who practically changed his name to Holden.  

     And one does not a pattern make.