Coming Through a Rye
O Jenny's a' weet, poor body,
Jenny's seldom dry:
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
Comin thro' the rye!
Comin thro' the rye, poor body,
Comin thro' the rye,
She draigl't a' her petticoatie,
Comin thro' the rye!
Gin a body meet a body,
Comin thro' the rye,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need a body cry?
Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the glen,
Gin a body kiss a body,
Need the warld ken?
Gin a body meet a body
Comin thro' the grain,
Gin a body kiss a body,
The thing's a body's ain.
-Robert Burns-
If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you should probably know is the reason why I am writing a review on The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger: namely, because I owe a lot to this fine work of literature. I know a lot of people would disagree with me calling this literature, let alone a fine example of it, but the simple fact is that everyone has that their own literary doppelgangers; characters who behave like them, see like them, think like them and go through life like them. I would have to say that Holden Caulfield is quite a doppelganger of mine or maybe its vice-versa. I can’t tell to this day.
Holden could perhaps best be described as a ‘teenager’s teenager’. He is full of complaint, angst, frustration, irritation, blasphemy, indolence and has a certain romance with failure. It is this trait of his character that makes him interesting. Although he does make sweeping generalizations about people all the time, labelling them as ‘phony’ or ‘hot-shots’, depending upon the situation. He also has a seeming grudge against all his Alma-maters, including Pencey Prep which he is on the way of flunking out of.
Holden’s cynical tone is apparent right from the start when he tells the reader that he doesn’t want to bother him with ‘David Copperfield kind of crap’ (a reference to Charles Dickens’ character who tells his life-story right from the start) because he doesn’t feel like going into it. This frank tenor grips most readers from the start because they expect a book to begin with all sorts of information but to see the protagonist actually holding something back just because he can’t be asked to show-and-tell was quite a novel beginning for a novel. However, Holden does share events from his childhood later on in the story.
Holden’s time at Pencey has not been well spent and has amounted to nothing. He is very aware of not applying himself at school and the only explanation he gives for this is that he didn’t do it. This puts him in a different light from most troubled characters because unlike them, he doesn’t have any such problems or valid reasons for his truancy. He just doesn’t ‘apply’ himself. So he gets the axe and is asked to leave. Before he leaves, however, Holden wants to ‘feel’ some sort of goodbye from Pencey because he is quite used to leaving schools and places but it saddens him when he doesn’t know he’s really leaving it. He goes to visit and say goodbye to his history teacher, Mr. Spencer as well; only to have a bad taste in his mouth from all the needling Mr. Spencer gives him for his failure at Pencey. Holden abruptly gets up and leaves for his dormitory.
Till this part of the book, readers suspect that Caulfield’s been cynical only because he is flunking out and has a lot against the education system for some reason. What follows next, establishes in our minds that no, Holden is not just a boy with an academic problem; he seems to have acute problems in interacting with the world. His interaction with his peers is quite confusing. On one hand, he labels anyone with false pretensions as ‘phonies’ and on the other hand he confesses: ‘I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.’ He accuses his roommates Ackley and Stradlater of being slobs but acknowledges this only to the reader. Stradlater asks him to write an English composition for him; asking him to write about ‘a room or something’ while he goes out on a date. Conversely, when the comparably erudite Holden writes the assignment on the subject of a baseball mitt of sentimental-value, Stradlater is quite annoyed. Holden tears the composition apart and smokes a cigarette in the room just to annoy him. What started out as an artistic difference leaves Holden with a bloody nose.
Salinger has very cleverly blended the protagonist’s nature with his immediate nurture. What with not having a minute alone due to Ackley’s constant interference, Stradlater’s criticism of the work for which he should be grateful for and teasing over Jane (a girl the two of them know) and the battle that leaves the weaker fighter bleeding: Holden decides that he has had enough of Pencey. He packs up his stuff and leaves for New York City the same night, getting slightly emotional but harnessing the emotions well enough to shout, ‘Sleep tight, ya morons!’ to everyone in the corridor before stepping out of Pencey forever.
The Catcher in the Rye is a narration of the narrator’s increasing emotional breakdown though it is not quite this direct. Previously, we only had hints of Holden’s strain as we observed him writing emotional compositions, heckling his roommates and fighting Stradlater over nothing. But now, Holden has left that world of friendship and security. Now he becomes a lone creature of the night, in the concrete jungle of New York. As soon as he gets off the train and into the city, the readers can sense a subtle yet creeping apprehension in Holden. He picks up the phone but doesn’t call anyone because he claims to not ‘feel like it’. This is his subconscious acting up as he realizes that he is far from any human solace and in the city by himself.
He takes a cab to the Edmont hotel and on the way, trying to make conversation, asks the uninterested cab-driver if he knows where the ducks in the Central Park lake go to during the winter. In the hotel, there is nothing to do but watch the people in the windows across perform bizarre acts. He gets bored and soon calls a loose girl to whom he was recommended by a boy in a party. The girl is surprised to be disturbed this late and says she needs to sleep.
Holden’s desire for human contact gets even more desperate and takes him down the hotel’s nightclub. Although he is refused alcohol, he tries to catch the eyes of three women who are visiting the city from Seattle. They are amused by him by quite unresponsive to his amorous approach. They are more interested in movie-stars which made Holden feel depressed. He paid for their drinks and left the nightclub.
Seeing that all the perverts in the opposite rooms have their lights out, Holden decides to pursue entertainment elsewhere. He grabs a taxi and goes to a nightclub called Ernie’s. Here, he is unimpressed by Ernie who is the star piano-player. He finds comfort in the alcohol that he manages to get. But no sooner than he had settled in when he comes across a girl that his brother D.B used to date before he went to Hollywood. In no mood to make small talk, he takes part of her and get out of Ernie’s.
By now it is clear that it is loneliness that is eating Holden inside out. He walks forty-one blocks to make up for the cowardice in Ernie’s. He has an overwhelming rush of nostalgia grab him as he remembers Phoebe, his younger sister and Jane, Stradlater’s date and a girl he used to know from before. He looks at the world around him in complete mockery so as to chip away at his own desperation and desolation. It is much easier to do so. Up till now, he has treated all the people around him with utter scorn. He soon gets a taste of his own medicine.
After getting inside the hotel, Holden is made an offer by the elevator operator that would see some ‘company’ in his room for five dollars. The flustered and depressed Caulfield accepts the offer and goes to his room, waiting for seduction to come knocking. Once inside, he once again confuses himself and paints himself in a corner. Suddenly he realizes that he doesn’t want to do anything with the prostitute who turns out to be quite a young girl. He makes her go away, paying her five dollars when she demanded ten. Minutes later she turns up on the door with Maurice, the elevator man/pimp. Knowing Holden and his jogging mouth, it is no surprise that the episode ends with him lying crumpled on the floor. He pretends to himself that he and Maurice have a gangster mêlée, with him taking his revenge after been hit by a bullet. Then he goes to sleep.
(to be continued......)
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