What is The Catcher in the Rye about. Jerome David Salinger "The Catcher in the Rye" Book Review

The name of this work is inextricably linked in the minds of modern society with the theme of growing up, becoming a person, finding oneself. The analysis of "The Catcher in the Rye" means a return to youth for the sake of understanding the protagonist, his psychology, the subtleties and versatility of a maturing, just emerging nature.

During his career, although not as long as one would like, Salinger managed to recommend not only as a very mysterious, wayward and freedom-loving personality. The fact that the author of The Catcher in the Rye (an analysis of the work will be presented in this article) was a real psychologist, subtly feeling every facet of the human soul, does not require any additional explanation.

What does romance mean to the world

The twentieth century, so rich in literary masterpieces in general, managed to give the world this amazing novel about growing up in the world of American reality. The analysis of The Catcher in the Rye, perhaps, should begin with a definition of its significance for world culture.

Only having appeared on the shelves of bookstores, the novel managed to cause a real sensation among readers of all ages due to its deep psychological content, relevance and complete compliance with the spirit of the time. The work has been translated into almost all languages ​​of the world and even now does not lose its popularity, remaining a bestseller in various parts of the globe. The analysis of The Catcher in the Rye as one of the greatest works of American literature of the twentieth century is included in the required curriculum of schools and universities.

Through the prism of an accomplished personality

The story in this work is conducted on behalf of a seventeen-year-old boy - Holden Caulfield, before whom the world opens up to a new future, adulthood. The reader sees the surrounding reality through the prism of his developing, maturing personality, which is just getting on the road to the future, saying goodbye to childhood. The world embodied in this book is unstable, multifaceted and kaleidoscopic, like the very consciousness of Holden, constantly falling from one extreme to another. This is a story told on behalf of a person who does not accept lies in any of its manifestations, but at the same time tries it on himself, like a mask of an adult who sometimes wants to seem like a young man.

The analysis of "The Catcher in the Rye" is, in fact, the reader's journey into the most hidden, deepest human experiences, shown through the eyes of no longer a child, but not yet an adult.

Maximalism in the novel

Since the protagonist is only seventeen years old, the book is narrated accordingly. It either slows down, representing an unprotected contemplation, then accelerates - one picture is replaced by another, emotions crowd out each other, absorbing not only Holden Caulfield, but the reader along with him. In general, the novel is characterized by an amazing unity of the hero and the person who picked up the book.

Like any young man of his age, Holden tends to exaggerate reality - the Pansy school, from which he is expelled for underachievement, seems to him the real embodiment of injustice, pomposity and lies, and the desire of adults to appear to be what they are not is a real crime of honor, deserving only disgust.

Who is Holden Caulfield

In the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the analysis of the protagonist requires a particularly careful and painstaking approach, because it is through his eyes that the reader sees the world. Holden can hardly be called an example of morality - he is quick-tempered and sometimes lazy, fickle and somewhat rude - he brings his girlfriend Sally to tears, which he later regrets, and his other actions very often cause disapproval of the reader. This is due to his borderline state - the young man is already leaving childhood, but is not yet ready for the transition to adult, independent life.

Hearing by chance an excerpt from a popular song, he finds, as it seems to him, his destiny, deciding to become a catcher in the rye.

The meaning of the name

The original title of the novel is "Catcher in the rye". Breaking into the text of the novel in the words of a popular song, this image repeatedly pops up in the mind of the young Holden Caulfield, who identifies himself with the catcher. According to the hero, his mission in life is to protect children from an adult, cruel world full of lies and pretense. Holden himself does not seek to grow up and does not want to allow this process to be completed for anyone.

What did Salinger want to say with such a title to the reader? "The Catcher in the Rye", the analysis of which requires a comprehensive, broad approach, is a novel full of amazing symbolism and secret meanings. The image of a rye field over the abyss embodies the very process of growing up a person, the final, most decisive step towards a new future. Perhaps this image was chosen by the author because, as a rule, young American boys and girls went to the fields for secret dates.

Another image-symbol

Ducks, it is not clear where they go in winter, is another equally important component of The Catcher in the Rye. An analysis of the novel without considering it would be simply inferior. In fact, such a naive, even a little stupid question that torments the hero throughout the story is another symbol of his belonging to childhood, because not a single adult asks this question and cannot answer it. This is another powerful symbol of loss, an irrevocable change that awaits the protagonist.

Resolution of internal conflict

Despite Holden's very obvious inclination towards some escapism, at the end of the novel he has to make a choice in favor of the transition to adulthood, full of responsibility, determination and readiness for a variety of situations. The reason for this is his younger sister Phoebe, who is ready to take such a decisive step for her brother, becoming an adult before the time comes. While admiring a wise girl on a carousel beyond her years, Holden realizes how important the choice he faces and how great is the need to accept a new world, a completely different reality.

This is what Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, the analysis of the work and its artistic originality tell the reader about. This is a life-long journey of becoming, placed in the three days experienced by the protagonist. This is a boundless love for literature, purity and sincerity, faced with such a multifaceted, versatile and complex world around. This is a novel about all of humanity and about each person individually. A work that is destined to become a reflection of the soul of many more generations.

The spontaneous protest of the literary youth of the 1950s against the world they inherited did not always take such demonstrative forms as in the work of the beatniks, and sometimes this gave more significant artistic results. So, in the stories of Truman Capote (1924-1984) "Forest Harp" (1951) and "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1958) and especially in the works Jerome David Salinger(born in 1919), written in line with what the greatest English Americanist M. Bradbury called "alarmed realism", fear of a nuclear threat, loss of historical optimism, alienation of personality, a sense of "wrongness", "falseness" of American life of that time are conveyed with amazing clarity and power.

Salinger's only novel is most striking in this respect. "The Catcher in the Rye"(1951), "bible" of post-war youths. Salinger's short stories and novellas of the so-called "Glasses cycle", also written in the 1950s, are very interesting, although not so integral.

J.D. Salinger is one of the most intriguing figures in US literature of the 20th century. Very little is known about his life; the writer basically does not give interviews and hides from journalists. He was born in the city of New York, into a wealthy family, graduated from the Pennsylvania Military School, briefly attended New York and Columbia Universities, was drafted into the army in 1942 and participated in World War II as part of the infantry troops until 1945. was admitted to the hospital with a nervous breakdown. Salinger began to print in 1940, but the productive period of his work fell on 1950-1965. Despite the resounding success of writing (and perhaps because of it), in 1965 he left New York, literature and settled in the provincial town of Cornish, New Hampshire, where he still lives. His long silence and complete seclusion do not interfere with the huge popularity that J.D. Salinger is used in the USA. [Note ed.: J.D. Salinger died January 27, 2010]

The Catcher in the Rye is written in the first person. The hero-narrator, a sixteen-year-old New York teenager from a respectable family, Holden Caulfield, gropingly, through constant throwing and failures, is looking for his place in the world, which he tells about in his own, like Huckleberry Finn in Twain, in the lively and figurative language of youth jargon. This is a lyrical novel, very small in volume, with a weakened plot beginning, with the external plot replaced by an internal one. All events are one-plan, concentrated around the hero and directed at him. It is the centripetal narrative so characteristic of 20th-century American prose. As we can see, the form introduced into literature in the 1920s has again entered artistic use; it turned out to be consonant with the moods of a different, but also a crisis era for the human personality.

Salinger's novel is based on the principle of "compressed time". The story begins at the moment when Holden is expelled from another prestigious school, where his loving parents have identified him. Childishly delaying the meeting with them and "in an adult way" trying to live on his own, "as he wants," Holden is in no hurry to return home and wanders around cold New York for three days, full of pre-Christmas fuss.

The immediate action of the novel fits into this brief time period, but at the expense of the hero’s memories and thoughts (about the death of his fourteen-year-old brother Alli, about their older brother, who was a “terrific writer” until he “sold out to Hollywood”, about former classmates and relations with girls, etc.) here is reproduced the whole short life of Holden and perfectly recreates the atmosphere of America in the middle of the 20th century.

The experience of "independence" turns out to be chaotic and not very pleasant for the hero. He feels unable to find his place in the world and does not see the prospects of finding it. Holden is not satisfied with what his usual environment can offer him, he is not attracted by the career of a lawyer, university teacher, doctor, possible for a young man of his circle. It is excruciatingly difficult for him to find a common language with peers - "normal" young Americans, standardly striving for success in life, that is, for comfort, financial well-being, social status.

Holden is a non-standard teenager, too vulnerable, excitable and conflicted, he clearly does not fit into society. This cannot but injure the hero, even if he himself seeks independence from him and the value system adopted in him, which Holden defines as a "fake" (that is, falsehood, window dressing). He does not have any clear plans for the future, he would only like to catch children over the abyss in the rye: "You see, thousands of kids play in the evening in a huge field<...>. And I'm standing on the very edge of the cliff,<...>and my job is to catch the kids so that they do not fall into the abyss.<...>They play and don't see where they're running<...>and I catch them. I know it's nonsense, but the only thing I really want," Holden says to his soulmate, ten-year-old sister Phoebe.

Nature and children's consciousness, their purity, integrity and truth - this is what Holden Caulfield, a spontaneous romantic and maximalist, opposes to the standards of material prosperity. It is no coincidence that he wonders where the ducks go in Central Park, an oasis of huge stone New York, when their pond freezes over; it is no coincidence that he does not like cars - he would "better get himself a horse. In a horse, at least there is at least something human."

His utopian life plans are not accidental - to be a "catcher in the rye" and his ability to normally contact only with children. Holden himself is still very much a child, despite his tall stature, gray hair and "adult" smoking habit. In it, however, there is no longer a childish integrity and clarity, and the hero experiences their loss painfully; he subconsciously does not want to grow up, and this is also a kind of protest against the surrounding reality, which imposes certain behavior patterns on him, stuffs him with surrogates and scares him with the prospect of a new world war. It’s not for nothing that Holden breaks out: “In general, I’m glad that the hydrogen bomb was invented. If war ever breaks out, I’ll sit right on this bomb.

The prosperous life of post-war America, passed through the disturbing perception of a teenage hero, reveals the instability, vulnerability and dependence of a person's position in the modern world.

In Salinger's novel, as we can see, a number of important traditions of US literature of the 19th-20th centuries are developed and receive an extremely relevant sound: the romantic tradition of idealizing nature and children's consciousness, Twain's - showing reality through the eyes of a teenage hero, the tradition of lyrical centripetal prose of the "lost generation" and other.

Salinger, to a greater extent than even the beatniks and his other peers in literature, influenced the worldview of compatriots, taught them to think and feel non-stereotypically, non-standard, and in many respects shaped the socially active position of the youth of the next decade. The conflict with the modern reality of the heroes of the works of "children" of US literature of the 1950s remains fundamentally insoluble. So the restless young people of Kerouac will wander along the roads of America - alone, like the monks of the Dharma, one of the Zen Buddhist sects, until they die in a random brawl or from an excessive dose of drugs.

The Salinger Glasses, seven children of vaudeville eccentric actors with a "talking" surname (English "glass" - "glass"), will not be able to find a common language with other Americans. They will remain dangerous eccentrics for those around them, although in fact they are simply eccentric and Andersonian "grotesque". These are pure and vulnerable people with a living soul, subtle intellect and a fragile psyche. Despite all efforts to overcome isolation, they will remain closed in the glass walls of their inner world and will physically suffer when faced with the vulgarity surrounding them, and the best and most vulnerable of them, the poet Seymour Glass, will voluntarily die. And finally, Holden Caulfield will forever remain a rebellious teenager in literature, even if his real prototype - a young American of the 50s - settled down a long time ago, got married, got children and grandchildren and became a loyal member of society.

Read also other articles in the section "Literature of the 20th century. Traditions and experiment":

Realism. Modernism. Postmodernism

• America 1920-30s: Sigmund Freud, Harlem Renaissance, "The Great Crash"

The world of man after the First World War. Modernism

In the process of creating a literary text, the author needs to ensure the possibility of its effective functioning as a special form of communication. Orientation to the addressee permeates the entire structure of a work of art, directly or indirectly manifesting itself in the selection of speech means, the nature of their organization, in the principles of text formation, various norms and rules governing the communication of the author with the reader.

The artistic image, as I.V. Arnold is one of the forms of reflection of reality, and its specificity lies in the fact that, giving a person a new knowledge of the world, he simultaneously conveys a certain attitude of the author to the reflected reality. Artistic images make it possible to convey to the reader that special vision of the world, which lies in the text of the work and is inherent in the lyrical hero, author or character. The artistic image is always expressive, and often emotional and evaluative. This is created using a variety of stylistic devices and means that have been discussed above.

The artistic form of a literary work as a whole is made up of individual images. The construction of a figurative system of a literary text brings unity and integrity to the compositional elements of a work that are heterogeneous in composition. This is one of the functions of the composition of a work of art.

The novel "The Catcher in the Rye" is compositionally homogeneous. Written on behalf of a rebellious teenager, in terms of content, he rejects the conformist unanimity, the consumer lifestyle of the modern American society to the author and his hero.

The central image of the novel is the teenager Holden Caulfield. It may be noted that a character with this name also appears in the early stories of Jerome Salinger (for example, "Slight Rebellion off Madison" and "Last Day of the Last Furlough"). Holden is acutely aware of the discord between what really exists and what is desired in society, school, and family relationships. He is forced to find his way in the repulsive, seemingly fake world of adults. To a certain extent, the novel expressed the sentiments that were called by the American writer and sociologist Paul Goodman "a phenomenon of social immaturity of that part of the youth who" did not want to grow up ", since society is deprived of" worthy goals ". The image of the protagonist, namely Holden's inherent honesty and the freshness of his view, his constant involvement in "situations of rebellion" (such as a fight, running away from school, a conflict with an elevator operator in a hotel, etc.) give Salinger's story about a restless teenager an acute relevance, are read by many as a response to the usual conformism of American society and philosophy of material success.

In Salinger's novel, an unusual teenager opposes the adult world, with the help of the image of this boy, Salinger proclaims the denial of society, rules, violence, the meaning of which is the oblivion of the "I" and the dissolution of oneself in love.

It is important to point out that when creating his images, the writer did not become isolated in negativism. Freedom for his hero Holden Caulfield is not an end in itself, and the existing society seems hostile to him, primarily because it does not allow him to do selfless good deeds. The inability to reconcile the desired and the real causes Holden to feel confusion, anxiety, plunges him into depressive moods.

The writer's idea is expressed through the image of the main character he creates, as well as other heroes of the work, which are given through the prism of their perception by the boy, through his subjective attitude and assessment. Thus, the central image of the novel is Holden Caulfield, and this image is created using various stylistic means that characterize his speech, emotions, feelings, character. In addition, the novel contains images of other characters - Holden's parents, his sisters and brothers, classmates, teachers. All of them are depicted indirectly, the author "sees" them through Holden's eyes, through his subjective perception and evaluation.

The writer does not strive for an objective reflection of the real world and characters, he deliberately creates subjective images, which helps to realize the author's intention - to depict the process of growing up a teenager in difficult living conditions.

Summing up the course work devoted to the study of the problem of revealing the author's intention through imagery into works based on the material of the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" ("The Catcher in the Rye", 1951) by the famous American writer of the 20th century Jerome David Salinger, we can make a number of basic conclusions.

A literary text has features inherent in any text, but it also has specific features. The main specific feature of a literary text, which distinguishes it from non-fiction texts, is that a literary text performs an aesthetic function. The main feature of the style of artistic speech is figurativeness, as well as the emotional coloring of statements, special forms of communication between parts of the statement. Literary text, as a rule, is characterized by high expressiveness.

The stylistic means of expressing the expressiveness of emotionality, the author's assessment are various stylistic devices: paths, artistic details, etc.

In the practical part of the course work, an analysis was made of the imagery of Jerome David Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye" ("The Catcher in the Rye"). This novel was written in 1951 and has enjoyed unflagging popularity ever since.

The novel "The Catcher in the Rye" is written from the perspective of a teenager, and it is his image that is central. It is created with the help of the whole set of stylistic devices that form a peculiar system of presentation.

From the point of view of syntax, the novel is characterized by a variety of types of sentences used in the text. The author writes both in simple short sentences, often one-part and with elements of an ellipsis, and in compound and complex sentences. Each of these types of sentences performs a certain syntactic function in the text of the novel.

The main syntactic stylistic features of Jerome David Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye" are the use of one-part sentences, elliptical constructions, rhetorical questions, inversion, repetitions. They serve as a function of stylizing the text as lively colloquial speech, dialogue with the reader, and conveying the emotional state of the character.

The main stylistic characteristic of the text of the novel "The Catcher in the Rye" can be called high expressiveness. When analyzing the lexical stylistic features of the work, it was shown that the text of Jerome David Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye" is rich in various expressive lexical units related to expressive-interjective, swearing and slang vocabulary. These expressive words and expressions have the function of expressing various emotions and the attitude of speakers to certain events or people. In addition, the use of such words in the character's speech is one of the most striking characteristics of his personality and emotional state.

The novel also uses expressive epithets, metaphors, comparisons and hyperbole that characterize both the emotional state of the narrator and his attitude to certain people, things and events. There are also allusions in the novel, with the help of which the author expresses his attitude to the character being described, and also gives elements of an indirect characterization of the hero's image.

In addition to the central image - Holden Caulfield - in the novel there are images of other characters - Holden's parents, his sisters and brothers, classmates, teachers. All of them are depicted indirectly, the author "sees" them through Holden's eyes, through his subjective perception and evaluation.

In addition, one can note the image of American society of that time as a whole, which is also created through the prism of perception by the main character. The author shows the rebellious teenager's rejection of the values ​​of the adult world, his condemnation of the customs and rules that are accepted in this society, his assessment of the adult world as thoroughly false and hostile.

The writer intentionally creates subjective images, which helps to realize the author's intention - to depict the process of growing up a teenager in the difficult conditions of American society in the middle of the 20th century.

abyss novel salinger design

Comparison of the life of the author and the fate of the hero allows us to talk about the autobiography of this work of art. Like the hero of the novel, Salinger did not study well and often changed schools, and then universities, without having received a higher education. As a result, Jerome had a tense relationship with his parents, seriously quarreled with his father. The hero Holden Caulfield also fails to build his relationship with his parents. Holden dreamed of a solitary life; this dream was realized by Salinger himself after the publication of the novel.

The very beginning of the story contains a reference to the traditions of the autobiographical and educational novel, which the narrator seems to refuse to follow: he is "reluctant ... to dig" into "David Copperfield's dregs". However, the mention of Dickens' novel is not accidental and, at the author's level, actualizes the English-language literary tradition, with which Salinger's novel correlates not only in terms of narrative strategy, but also in terms of the organization of artistic time and space.

The plot specifies that Holden is expelled from another prestigious school (Pansy) on the very eve of Christmas, associated with miracles, magic, renewal. There are allusions to Christmas prose (which includes the prose of Ch. Dickens, who is considered the founder of the Christmas story genre). In keeping with the genre of the Christmas story, miracles await, updates and Holden.

The semantics of the plot time of the novel was noted by University of Chicago professor J. Miller, Jr., author of the monograph “J. D. Salinger" (1965): Christmas Eve symbolizes "death and resurrection". Indeed, the motif pair of "death-resurrection", synonymous with departure and return, disappearance and reappearance, oblivion and remembrance, can be traced in the narrative. Already in the outset, talking with the teacher on the eve of leaving the next school, the hero reacts with hostility to the moralizing remark: “Why did he say that - like I'm already dead? Terribly unpleasant” (our italics – E.B., E.P.).

It is interesting that all prestigious schools and colleges are perceived by the hero as something feigned, untrue, where real existence is impossible. The deceitfulness of directors, the discrepancy between advertisements and real life in these educational institutions, a system of values ​​not accepted by a teenager, in the paradigm of which the younger generation is brought up (social well-being and prosperity come first) - all this determines Holden's perception of the world of prestigious schools as a space of inauthentic existence, pseudo -life: “... I swear, you won’t lure me into these aristocratic colleges by any means, better off dead, honestly” (our italics - E.B., E.P.). The young man wants to get out of the false social world and live in solitude, only at Christmas and Easter receiving guests - his relatives (sister, brother). However, the departure is not carried out: the sorrow of his sister due to a possible separation keeps him.

In general, the time of events preceding the placement of the hero in the hospital is three days (Saturday, Sunday and Monday). You can see a certain symbolism in the days of the week: Saturday, filled with memories, accumulates a past life, on Sunday he confesses to his sister Phoebe and is given a chance for resurrection, and Monday is perceived by him as a new stage in his life: it is on Monday that he wants to go far, far away and to begin a new life. Retrospection expands the chronological boundaries of the narrative, and the horizon of Holden's view (the social world of America from the highest officials to the very bottom) allows you to go beyond the boundaries of only a psychological novel, to pose the problems of moral orientations of the post-war society of the late 1940s - early 1950s. Nevertheless, the focus of the image is the fate and inner world of one teenager.

The chronotope of the road is especially significant in the novel. MM. Bakhtin wrote: “The road is the predominant place for chance meetings.<…>Here the spatial and temporal series of human destinies and lives are uniquely combined ... This is the point of tying and the place where events take place. The hero of Salinger's novel is the hero of the road, who is in motion both spatially and mentally. The very process of writing-remembrance is a metaphor for the road. His behavior on the road (a place of accidents and chance meetings) serves as a significant characteristic of the character: on the way to the fencing competition, he forgets his sword in the train car (which indicates the low value of this kind of occupation and the very competition for Holden); going home from Pansy's school, in the carriage he meets the mother of one of the pupils of the school, and tells her about her son as a good person, while despising him (this indicates the ability to lie to support another person).

Caulfield does not want to fit into a society whose values ​​he despises, but at the same time he is not asocial: evaluating people's behavior as false, he makes contact, which turns out to be uncomfortable and even traumatic. Therefore, he leaves places and people without regret, but at the same time he does not have any clear plans for the future. This is evidenced by the dialogue with the sister; she asks him who he would like to be. The hero cannot decide on a profession: “Probably not bad as a lawyer, but I still don’t like it ...”. And the words of a song come to his mind in which he replaces one word, saying "If you caught someone in the evening in the rye ... ". Phoebe, his sister, corrects her by quoting Burns: “Not like that! It should be “If someone called someone in the evening in the rye.”

The poem by R. Burns is a love sketch, ending with a quatrain: “And what a concern for us, // If at the boundary // Someone kissed someone // In the evening in the rye! ..”. In Holden's mind, the lyrical plot of a love meeting associated with approaching the violation of the border (boundary) is not actualized, but a spatial image of a rye field appears, hiding the danger - the abyss. He confesses to his sister: “You see, I imagined how little children play in the evening in a huge field, in rye.<…>And I'm standing on the very edge of the cliff, over the abyss, you understand? And my job is to catch the kids so that they don’t fall into the abyss.”

The motive of catching, semantically associated with goal setting and hunting, deserves a separate study. It is interesting to note such a detail as red hunting Holden hat. She distinguishes him from the crowd (by his hat he immediately recognizes his sister who put it on), respectively, emphasizes his individuality, which he emphasizes with a headdress. But hunting hat and contrasts with the inner world of a teenager: the hunter is clearly focused on some goal, and Holden does not know what he wants until the thought arises of saving children with whom there is no desire to communicate, but there is a goal to protect them from falling (“call” in Burns's poem it is replaced by the verb "to catch"). Orientation to save children is an important characteristic of the character. Holden almost does not intersect with children (more often he watches them from the side), however, it is children's games in the bosom of nature (in rye) that seem to him a symbol of something real, opposite to the falsity of the adult social world, but potentially dangerous.

Not accepting the social life of megacities, Holden (the semantics of his name is important - “living in a deep valley”, containing the meanings of depth and isolation) sees only one way to break ties with the outside world - escape. He fantasizes that he could pretend to be deaf and mute so as not to communicate with people (again, the motive of dumbness, set in the episode of the substitution of the verb "call" for "catch" is supported); retire away from everyone and live a natural life, where there will be no lies. But Holden fails to escape from New York. On the one hand, he is held by love for his younger sister Phoebe, who decided to go on a journey with him; on the other hand, he lacks determination, experience, and maturity. As noted by I.L. Galinskaya, "Holden Caulfield is on the 'flight' and on the 'search', although he has nowhere to run, and the search for the hero brings him back home" .

The motive of flight / desire to escape from the circumstances of one's life is supported by episodes about "ducks". Thinking about “where the ducks go” from the pond in Central Park does not give the hero peace of mind. With this question, Holden twice turns to random people - taxi drivers, who are annoyed by the seeming senselessness of the question.

But the flight of ducks is a question of an alternative that Holden cannot see, cannot define. It is noteworthy that the hero remembers this at a time when he does not know where to go. The first time I left school, out of habit I gave the taxi driver my home address, but on the way I remembered that I couldn’t go home and found myself at a crossroads: where to go. The second time, moving from a hotel to a bar. The hero seems to be running from himself, from his problems, questions that haunt him. The seemingly meaningless question about where the ducks go from the pond in Central Park takes on existential meaning: for the hero, it seems that his own life depends on the answer.

The third time, not knowing where to spend the night, Holden makes it to this duck pond, overcoming his fear of the dark. He sees a half-frozen pond and does not find any ducks there. “He is half cold and half not. But there were no ducks there.” This half-frozen pond evokes associations with Holden himself: he, too, seems to be half frozen, disappointed in the world around him, where lies and hypocrisy reign, but for some part he is ready for warmth, for life. Near this pond, he reflects on life and death, imagines what the world will be like without him. The realization comes to him that Phoebe's sister really loves him, and he goes home, no longer remembering the ducks.

Holden has complicated feelings for the adults around him. Many demonstrate greed and self-interest (headmaster), inability to understand behavior that does not correspond to their ideas of what should be (history teacher Spencer, father). Relations with peers are also complex, since schoolchildren are a product of the same social system, where cruelty, venality, ranking is not personal (courage, kindness, responsiveness, etc.), but external (attractiveness, grooming), including social ( clothing, wealth) qualities. The upbringing of a teenager in the novel comes down to the imposition of educational and life goals, for the achievement of which you need to study successfully, so the concern of parents is expressed in the transfer of Holden from one prestigious school to another. But social self-realization does not motivate Holden, as it seems to him to be something external, not reflecting true existence, true goals: “If you become a lawyer, you will just drive money ... and walk around like a dandy ..., in a word, like in a movie, in trashy films ". Therefore, he formulates not a social, but an existential goal - to become a “catcher of children” playing near the abyss: “... I run up and catch them so that they do not break.<…>I know this is nonsense, but this is the only thing I really want, ”he admits.

Holden reproaches others for falsehood, but he also repeatedly says about himself that he is a liar. The false / false parallel provokes to understand how Holden differs from others. And it turns out that his lies are humane, aimed at supporting another person, and most importantly, devoid of self-interest, profit: this is how he composes a heroic story about his cruel classmate for his mother: “It’s always like this with mothers - just tell them what magnificent sons they have” . Other situations of lying are related to self-defense, are a way to get out of unpleasant circumstances: he lies to a history teacher in order to free himself from a moralizing conversation; lies to a prostitute, not wanting to enter into a relationship with her. The episode with the latter shows that, firstly, he cannot defend himself, and secondly, in a borderline situation, he demands justice, is dangerously honest. So, he is ready to pay a prostitute for services not rendered, but is not going to overpay (this despite the fact that he is not greedy, he easily parted with money, giving it to charity, for example). The fact that they still take away the extra five dollars from him brings tears, Holden cries. Crying as a sign of the hero's immaturity, his sensitivity and at the same time inability to cope with emotions, cope with circumstances, is repeated at least twice.

The genre canon of the Christmas story "assumes the moral transformation of the hero", which, as a rule, is reflected both in the narrative and in the specifics of the artistic chronotope. The hero talks about the events that happened to him a year later, while in a sanatorium, where psychoanalysts talk to him: “... I will tell that crazy story that happened last christmas. And then I'm a little did not give up, and they sent me here to rest and be treated” (our italics - E.B., E.P.). He seemed to have experienced a symbolic death, "falling into the abyss", and now has a chance for rebirth. However, in leaving the ending open, Salinger is following not the Dickensian but the later tradition of the Christmas story, where the possibility of a miracle is questioned. The desire for a happy (Christmas, miraculous) ending is understandable, but in the novel, along with the motive of Christmas and Easter, the motive of the carousel is realized.

In the final lines of his notes, the hero describes how Phoebe rode the carousel: “And then it began to pour like a hundred devils. Shaped downpour, I swear to God. All the mothers and grandmothers - in a word, everyone who was there, stood under the very roof of the carousel so as not to get wet through, and I remained sitting on the bench.<…>The hunting cap still somehow protected me, but still I got wet to the skin. And I didn't care." There is an association of the carousel with life, with the rotating earth. The carousel is opposed to the road as a closed route, the certainty of the unknown of an individual path; as a collective movement to a personal one. In addition, the carousel contains the semantics of entertainment, something that is not connected with the serious. Holden watches the carousel spin from the side, not escaping with everyone under the ride's roof, even when it started to rain. He remains alone, moving away from the crowd, from those around him, watching them from the side (even his beloved Phoebe, which, it is worth noting, he refuses to take with him to his “new life”, realizing that this is no way out, but an escape and a dead end). The image of the carousel is ambivalent: on the one hand, it is associated with a return, dizzying joy, on the other hand, it also has the semantics of eternal repetition, an uncontested movement in a vicious circle. Persistent questions to Holden - whether he will study diligently in the new (repeating all the previous ones) school, are left unanswered: “... they ask me if I will try when I go to school in the fall. I think this is a surprisingly stupid question. How does a person know in advance what he will do?<…>I think I will, but how do I know?

The treatment did not change the consciousness of a teenager who painfully perceives collisions in social life and is unable to come to terms with falsehood and injustice, with the total imperfection of the world. However, the process of writing, in which he restored the lost (for various reasons) connections in his memory, contributed to a revision of the attitude towards others: people are imperfect, but still valuable. Writing becomes a means of overcoming alienation. This teenager understands only at the end, completing the story. Through a confessional letter, he not only understood more about himself, but also realized the value of relationships: “... somehow I miss those whom I talked about.<…>Sometimes it seems that this scoundrel Maurice is not enough. Strange thing. And you<…>Tell us about everyone - and you will be bored without them.

Writing reconciles a teenager with the reality around him, allows him to search for himself. The final downpour is symbolic: on the one hand, it is a wall that separates it from people, and a sign of sadness, and on the other, it is a symbol of a possible purification or at least reconciliation. Immersion into the past is Holden's path to himself, at the end of which he still continues to oppose himself to the world, but does not exclude rapprochement with it.

It is interesting to note that the attention of teenagers to the novel in Russia was also stable during the Soviet era. Yu.O. Chernyavskaya and S. Kolmakov revealed that "The Catcher in the Rye" is a significant literary context in the novel "And it's all about him" by V. Lipatov, which has an educational pathos / Chernyavskaya Yu.O., Kolmakov S.Yu. Literary context in V. Lipatov's novel "And it's all about him" // Russian literature in modern cultural space. Sat. articles on mat. VII All-Russian scientific. conf. October 30-31, 2015. / Ed. M. A. Khatyamova. Tomsk: TSPU Publishing House, 2015-2016. pp. 164 - 172.

This is confirmed by research data: Lipovka V. O., Poleva E. A. Study of the reader's interests and needs of seventh graders based on the results of the survey // Scientific and methodological electronic journal "Concept". - 2014. - No. 7 (July). – P. 81–85. – URL: .; Bryakotnina E.B., Poleva E.A. Studying the reading circle of teenagers as a pedagogical problem // Scientific and Pedagogical Review. 2016. No. 2.

Borisenko A. J. D. Salinger: classic and contemporary // Salinger J. D. Catcher in the Rye: A Novel. Tales. Stories. M.: Eksmo, 2007. S. 16.

Salinger J. Catcher in the Rye. [Electronic resource].URL: http:// readbooks. me/ books/? name= above- propastiy- vo- rji(date of visit 04/27/2016). The following text is cited from this source.

Kozlova G.A. Moral paradigm of Ch. Dickens in "Christmas stories" (problems of studying the work of Ch. Dickens at school) // Kozlova G.A. Foreign Literature in the Context of Christian Thought: Sat. scientific articles. Armavir, ASPA, 2011. [Electronic resource].URL: (date arr.12.05.2016).

Quoted from:Galinskaya I.L. Philosophical and aesthetic foundations of JD Salinger's poetics. [Electronic resource].URL: http:// litersp. en/ chitat/ en/% D0%93/ galinskaya- irina- ljvovna/ philosophical- i- aesthetic- foundations- poetiki- j- d- selingera (date of access: 04.05.2016).