Blog # 2 The Relevancy of The Catcher in the Rye

The Relevancy of The Catcher in the Rye

            Some educators would argue that J.D. Salinger's novel The Catcher in the Rye is not a relevant text for a twenty-first century classroom because the book is dated irrelevant for modern readers. However, there are many aspects of the novel that allow the book to remain relevant in the lives of students today. Most notably, Salinger's work deals with themes that students can relate to, and it presents a complex text with several layers of meaning. By reading The Catcher in the Rye, students can relate to Holden as a character and reflect on common young adult issues they deal with on regular basis; students can also explore different elements of a complex text, which is important for becoming an active and engaged reader.

            Throughout the novel, Holden encounters issues that are prevalent in the lives of young people today: depression, isolation, relationships, sex, drinking, smoking, tension with parents, and dreaming of running away from everything. On many occasions throughout the novel, Holden states that he is depressed: "Boy I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can't imagine" (Salinger 98). He also comments on the fact that he feels isolated, especially while he is at Pencey Prep, a school that is full of "phonies" (Salinger 167). Once Holden leaves the school and goes to Manhattan, he seeks out old relationships and tries to establish connections with strangers because he is lonely and searching for love and meaning. He tries to find ways to make himself feel fulfilled; he drinks, smokes, flirts with women, and yet, he still feels empty. When he has the encounter with the prostitute, he states, "I know you're supposed to feel pretty sexy when somebody gets up and pulls their dress over their head, but I didn't . . . I felt much more depressed than sexy" (Salinger 95). Young adults of the twenty-first century can relate to these issues of isolation and depression. Relationships are such an important part of this stage of life, and many teens deal with social  anxiety throughout their adolescent years. Adolescents also tend to struggle with disappointing their parents as Holden does when he is expelled from school, and they can likely relate to his fantastical plan of escape where he decides he want to go "somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody'd know me" with their own daydreams of escaping their everyday life and struggles (Salinger 198).

            Salinger's text is also relevant to the twenty-first century student because of the text's complexity. Though the actual language of the text is easy to comprehend, there are aspects of the book that make it qualitatively complex, which is evaluated based on "levels of meaning, structure, language conventionality and clarity, and knowledge demands" (Glaus 408). The Catcher in the Rye contains an unconventional structure as the narrator reflects back on past events: "I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy" (Salinger 1). Furthermore, the novel has several levels of meaning; it is not a straightforward text that resolves with a typical happy ending. Instead, the end of the text can leave readers with an unsettling feeling. For example, as Holden watches his sister on the carousel, he feels "so damn happy all of a sudden" and was "dawn near bawling" (Salinger 213). Readers are left to wonder whether he has lost his mind or whether he is sincerely happy and hopeful. The fact that Salinger does not provide a cookie-cutter-ending requires readers to create some of their own meaning from the novel and wrestle with their own feelings about Holden's state of mind at the end of the novel.

            The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger is a relevant text for twenty-first century students in several ways. The themes and issues Holden's character experiences are relevant to the lives of students as they are developing and growing up along with the character. Additionally, the book itself is relevant to the classroom as it presents a text that has easy-to-read language but is also a complex text that allows students to examine different levels of meaning and structure.

 

Works Cited

Glaus, Marci. "Text Complexity and Young Adult Literature: Establishing Its Place." Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 57.5 (2014): 407-416. Print.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. Print.