Into The Catcher in the Rye

Key Facts Key Facts Full Title: The Catcher in the Rye Genre: Coming-of-Age Novel (Bildungsroman) Setting: Agerstown, Pennsylvania and Manhattan, New York in 1950. Protagonist: Holden Caulfield Antagonist: Stradlater, Phonies, and Adults Point of View: First person (Holden is the narrator) STYLE: Stream of consciousness THEME: The importance of preserving innocence

Author Bio Full Name: J. D. Salinger January 1, 1919- January 27, 2010 Place of Birth: New York City Brief Life Story: Jerome David Salinger grew up on Park Avenue in New York. His father was a successful Jewish cheese importer, and his mother was Scotch-Irish Catholic.

Author Bio Continued After struggling in several prep schools, Salinger attended Valley Forge Military Academy from 1934-1936. He went on to enroll in several colleges, including New York University and Columbia, though he never graduated. He took a fiction writing class in 1939 at Columbia that cemented the dabbling he had done in writing since his early teens. During World War II, Salinger ended up in the Army’s infantry division and served in combat, including the invasion of Normandy in 1944.

Author Bio Cont. Salinger continued to write during the war and in 1940 he published his first short story in Story magazine. He went on to publish many stories in the New Yorker, the Saturday Evening Post, Esquire, and others from 1941 to 1948. In 1951 he published his only full-length novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which rocketed Salinger into the public eye. Salinger hated his sudden fame and retired from New York to Cornish, New Hampshire, where he lived the rest of his life.

Banned His estate continues to avoid contact with the media, and has ceased to publish and refuses to make a movie of the book. Banned in the Rye. Many critics dismissed the book as trash due to its healthy helping of four-letter words and sexual situations, and even today Catcher in the Rye has been banned in school districts in Washington, Ohio, Florida and Michigan.

Into Catcher Holden is probably one of the most rebellious, cynical, and disturbed characters you will meet in English class. Yet, you may feel strangely connected to this troubled young man. You may, perhaps, do what countless other readers have done in the past fifty years: you may see remnants of Holden Caulfield in yourself. Imagine you’re rich and go to boarding school You have every opportunity to have power and influence in society Why might you still be unhappy?

It is more important to build a child’s self-esteem than his/her academic abilities.

When a teenager does something wrong, it is his/her parents’ fault.

Parents should be strict with their teenagers.

It is important for parents to be friends with their kids.

Teachers should have high expectations for behavior and quality of work.

High schools should have fewer rules and trust kids more.

High schools should be more strict on kids so that those who wish to learn can do so.

Some people are just born “bad” or “good” and there is nothing anyone can do to change them.