The Catcher in the Rye - J. D. Salinger

The language is something that was outstanding about this book, seemed queries, free flowing and natural which made me pick this book to be 82 of 2020

Example: "Boy, it began to rain like a bastard. In buckets, I swear to God. All the parents and mother's and everybody went over and stood right under the roof of the carrousel, so they wouldn't get soaked to the skin or anything, but I stuck around on the bench for quite a while....."

Comparing rain to bastard; and parents and mother so parents don't include mother? Was fascinated. 

Catcher In The Rye is hailed because of it's 'direct', hard hitting nature. The writer unabashedly uses the language, pretty much the same way as any teenager does. It was banned in schools and was criticized because of the tone used and the rebellious central character portrayed in it. Like Holden, we all face dilemmas in our lives - of not being able to decide to give a call to someone who we miss for the fear of being judged, the monotony of our lives frustrates us and I guess we all, at sometime or the other have felt like a loser at school or college or office. However, we find solace in little things of life, like Holden does in his sister.

"People always think something's all true. I don't give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am - I really do - but people never notice it. People never notice anything." 

And how true. Holden is a really important character in literature because of the way he is. One could easily think he's a stupid young boy who hates everything and is depressed all the time. But actually Holden is a an extremely emphatic intellectual who just figured out that it is easier to be "stupid" and a failure that it is for him to explain what is going on inside his head because, while observing the world, especially people around him, he figured that no one could actually, fully understand his thoughts. Holden is this guy that values honest human relationships above everything else and he constantly dreams about a world where that is possible to have, that's why he adores his younger brother Allie and younger sister Phoebe, they are kids and therefore honest, pure, playful and they don't understand what it means to be fake and act and pretend. When Holden was talking to Phoebe in D.B.'s room, she in a way accused him of there not existing one thing that can make him happy and it took him quite a while to think of something that did. Phoebe doing that perfectly showcased what everybody that knew him thought of him, but only Phoebe, because she is a kid, had the guts to say it to his face, and that killed Holden because it is not true. He couldn't think of something that made him happy because the things that make him happy aren't specific, concrete things but abstract ideas that in a way don't really exist because they are all based on human relationships and values. And that is when Holden thought about being the catcher in the rye. All he truly wants in life is for the kids not to die while playing, but not in a literal sense. What he wants to say with that is, that he wished people would stay honest and pure, as kids are, their whole life and not just fall off the edge while playing and becoming all the things he, and a lot of us, hate about adults. Because that's one thing he can't stand, people not paying attention and running towards the edge, falling off and ruining everything because they didn't care.  When Phoebe asks Holden what he wants to be when he grows up, he answers “the catcher in the rye” – a person he imagines as responsible for “catching” children in the field before they “start to go over the cliff.” The field of Holden’s fantasy is free of adult ideas and artificiality. The field is reminiscent of Peter Pan’s Neverland or the Garden of Eden, both of which are realms that protect innocence from the corrupting influence of experience. By contrast, the fall from the cliff represents the “fall” into adulthood—that is, into lust, greed, ambition, and “phoniness.”  And the ending quote too add to this:

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

And that just confirms how much Holden actually cared about all the people he encountered even if he "hated" them, because he had a relationship with them and that is what he is all about; people.