English 1302.067
Michael S. Seiferth
Maymester, 2008
The Catcher in the Rye
Essay
The Topic
During the course of our study of J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, we noticed that the action of the novel was similar to the short stories we read including "A&P," "The Horse Dealer's Daughter," and "Araby." You may recall that traced the central characters' journey which led them from one way of looking at life to another way of looking at life. In order to establish the nature of the journey, we had to define the moment where a sudden change or epiphany occurred. For example, Sammy in "A&P," chronicles the events in the story which led up to his decision to quit. That decision became the defining moment of his story, his new way of looking at life. In much the same way Holden is shown the way to his central, defining moment in life, through his sister Phoebe and all of the occupants of his private world. Many scholars have noted the following passage as the central, defining moment" of Holden's life:
Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--little kids, except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy. (Salinger 224-225)
Another way to express the central action in Catcher is see Holden Caulfield as a Romantic hero: Briefly, this work and other "Romantic" works are about spiritual death and rebirth and a secular conversion. In this form, a man or a woman moves from a trust in the universe to a period of doubt and despair of any meaning in the universe, and then to a reaffirmation of faith in meaning, purpose and goodness or at least meaning or purpose. The transition from the first stage to the second we may call spiritual death; that from the second to the third we may call spiritual rebirth. By no longer trusting in the universe we mean that the world has become static, unable to respond to the central character's emotional, spiritual, and philosophic demands, thus, the doubt and despair.
Carl F. Strauch, Jr. in "Kings in the Back Row: Meaning Through Structure--A Reading of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye," suggests that the action in the book in its most general form is that
an immature Holden is not being delivered up to the unmerciful process of adjustment to a society he detests. The irony is profounder than that because the meaning is profounder: a Holden who has accepted both the mood and the act of responsibility with Phoebe does not require psychoanalytical therapy, for he has miraculously wrought his own cure and thus spiritually escaped the social rigidities that would be imposed upon him. The conclusion is, therefore, optimistic and affirmative, not in any credal sense but in terms of the unconquerable resources of personality (Strauch 47-48).
Strauch then goes on to refine the general action of the novel in terms of the action of the hero, Holden Caulfield, and offers us the journey, as it were, Holden takes: "We may thus perceive that Salinger has employed neurotic deterioration, symbolical death, spriritual awakening, and psychological self-cure" (48) as the journey which Holden takes.
Write an essay in which you trace Holden's journey as Romantic Hero following the patterns established in the definition of Romantic Hero (above) and the specific journey detailed by Carl F. Strauch, Jr. In all cases, you are pointing to the quotation from Catcher at the beginning of this topic page. In short, how does Holden reach his conclusion to become "the catcher in the rye"?
Requirements
1. You have several texts to consider in this essay: earlier short stories, Catcher, and Dr. Strauch's article. While you can get ideas and patterns from Strauch, you are urged to use the primary sources, the stories themselves, to prove and support your thesis.
2. You will be writing several drafts: prewriting, shaping, revising, editing, and the final version.
3. We will be using the MLA Documentation
Form. You will have instruction using this form of documentation, but you'll
need to have a copy of the form either drawn from your Handbook or from
the online site.
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Latest Guidelines on the MLA Style
Finally, kindly read these General Considerations:
1. Be sure that you are writing from a comprehensive THESIS, that is, an idea with movement, the central, informing idea of the paper. You will note that the first page of the WWW site offers a handbook on-line for your consideration. Topics such as the thesis and documentation procedures appear there and are worthy of your consideration.
2. Often a paper lacks coherence if the thesis is not dynamic and if the reader has little or no idea of where you have been and where you are going. Transitions lead the reader from what you have just said--they also provide a rather good internal summary--to where you are going. Again, you should lead your reader from sentence to sentence by providing linking words or expressions such as on the other hand, further, in addition to, moreover, thus, finally, etc. The WWW site offers extensive discussions of transitions and linking words.
3. As Aristotle tells us about drama, good plays all have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Papers, even though they are composed in the heat of creativity, and the pre-writing frenzy as having drunk of milk and honey, eventually have to be shaped and rewritten to reflect the central idea--stated in the introduction and developed in the middle of the paper. The conclusion, and the introduction for that matter, can be composed after you have actually completed the antepenultimate draft! The conclusion, unlike the introduction, follows an inductive structure, while the introduction is more deductive--general to specific.
4. This paper and all of your work need to be documented according to the guidelines discussed in the MLA Documentation Form. In short, quoting of primary and secondary sources is a requirement for learned discourse, and citing the references in a scholarly manner is a requirement of well-developed, supported, and written discourse. Note that the complete guide appears on the WWW and is linked within the assignment page.
5. The quality of an argument ultimately depends on the quality of the primary sources. You need to quote extensively from the stories and novels (primary source) and somewhat less from the analysis of the work (secondary sources) such as Strauch, for example.
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