Hey, guys, what's up? Welcome to another (I know, I actually wrote one of these again!) edition of The Reading List. Today, I'll be reviewing Catcher in the Rye.
Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger tells the story of Holden Caulfield, a boy who drops out of school and decides to wander around New York for a few days in a psychological funk. At the end, he has a mental breakthrough/breakdown and gets admitted to a mental hospital. The whole novel is Holden's coming to term with death, sexuality, and other heady themes that are omnipresent in the adult world.
Holden is an interesting character. While many stories use their main character either as an author surrogate or as a hero of the land, Catcher takes us through the fragmented view of truly disturbed main character. It's not the first bok to do this, nor is it the last, but few books that survive in our collective consciousness from that time read like it, if any.
So why? Why does Catcher stay in our collective culture over fifty years after its original publication?
It may do good to look at the context of the book. The 1950's were a radical time in the world, and this is reflective in some of the literature of the time. The violence of World War Two could finally be looked at and comprehended, as seen in books like Elie Wiesel's Night (which I'm not looking forward to talking about) and the works of Ernest Hemingway. Writers like Isaac Asimov and Daniel Keyes were looking at the new world filled with the promise of science with caution. Meanwhile, two British friends were looking to the past to understand the space in which they were currently living. Bradbury and Vonnegut were warning people about what the future could look like, while William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch attempted to encapsulate the culture that people didn't always want to talk about.
J.D. Salinger's only real success is an attempt at a lot of these ideas. Holden's messed up headspace, while not caused by wartime trauma, is very much reminiscent of it. Many a veteran has spent sleepless nights roaming around in a daze without help, although the vilification of war and soldiers that came with America's involvement in Vietnam was still a few years away. Though it doesn't use the trappings of science fiction, it looks to the future through the unsure eyes of a cynical teen. And though it isn't fantasy, Holden's flashback give context to the state in which he currently is.
The book is very much a product of its time, in both dialect and content. Its language can be as foreign to some as a novel written in Old English, but the tone is what's important, and why I feel Catcher has survived so long.
Catcher very adequately captures that moment in your teenage years when you realize you don't have all the answers. For Holden, its when he flunks out of school and doesn't know where he's going to go next. For others, maybe its the first time you were rejected by someone you like, or when you learned something about your friends or parents. Maybe it comes when you graduate high school and try to live as an adult for the first time. You feel lost and confused, unsure of yourself. You want to sit down and let the emotions rill over you, but you also want to be independent and strong. You probably also want to go back home.
This is why Catcher remains so beloved today. It still holds an important message to teens and anyone struggling. That is why, of all the books from the 50's, this one still holds. Wiesel, Hemingway and Burroughs are historical artifacts, better suited for history than English. Asimov and Keyes' worlds seem naive to us now, while Vonnegut and Bradbury's messages need some tweaking to fit into our understanding. Tolkien and Lewis still hold up, but lose a bit of their immediacy.
What Salinger was able to do was immortalize the pain and suffering that accompanies adolescence. In this way, though the language and settings of Catcher become more and more distant, Holden's story and emotions still resonate with students today, and will probably continue to for generations to come.
Thanks for reading this installment of The Reading List. See you next time!
Showing posts with label The Reading List. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Reading List. Show all posts
Saturday, August 16, 2014
Thursday, April 24, 2014
The Reading List: A Separate Peace
Welcome to The Reading List, where I review books an English teacher forced you to read. This is a new series where I review books I read for English class, and tell you my thoughts on them. Today, we are going to look at the first book I read for Accelerated English 3-4, A Separate Peace by John Knowles.
Spoiler Warning: The following contains spoilers for A Separate Peace.
A Separate Peace is a novel about friendship during the Second World War. Gene Forrester, our narrator, is a quiet, studious teenage boy going to New Hampshire's Devon School in 1942. During the summer session, he befriends his roommate, an energetic and incredibly charismatic boy named Finny. Throughout the summer, Gene and Finny become great friends and form a secret society, the focal point of which is jumping out of a tall tree into a river.
As the summer progresses, Gene begins to suspect that Finny secretly wants to beat him in academics, as Gene is better academically and Finny is better in sports. Although Finny begins to soothe Gene's paranoia, it still causes Gene, during one tree jump, to shake the branch, causing Finny to crash to the ground below and break his leg.
In my mind, the book can be divided into four parts, each following the seasons. The above-mentioned plot takes place during summer, the carefree days where boys can and will be boys, and everything is more laid back. The war is far enough away to be a distant dream, like the heat on a pleasant summer day. Gene's paranoia, like annoying insects buzzing around a picnic, is the biggest conflict in this part of the novel, an issue at the time, but not very important.
Finny's leg breaking marks the beginning of fall. As everyone returns to class, something about the chill in the air suggests that things are about to change. War, like the coming New England winter, is more present, and several of the boys talk about enlisting. Leper, a kind-hearted, gentle classmate, is the first to enlist and leaves school. Meanwhile, Finny actively denies the existence of the war, claiming it's all a conspiracy by old men to keep them down. As fall changes into winter, Finny seeks to train Gene, sheltered by the thought that the war is far away.
Winter, like in real life, can be described as brief celebrations in the middle of frozen hardship. Finny organizes a winter carnival, complete with games, music, and alcohol. As the carnival progresses, though, Gene gets a letter from Leper, saying that he "escaped" from the army. Gene meets him and finds out that Leper has been driven to some form of madness by his stay in the army. This makes Gene afraid of the army which he and his friends are so close to being drafted to. Meanwhile, some of the other boys have been investigating what happened to Finny's leg. During the "trial" they conduct, Finny loses patience and runs out of the hall, breaking his leg again. A few days later, Finny is dead, as cold as the New England snow.
After winter comes spring. New life does indeed bloom at Devon, but it is not new life for the numbed students. Instead, a group of military workers set up shop at Devon. The novel ends with the boys leaving school and enlisting in the military while Gene reflects on the events that transpired over the past year.
Gene and Finny's relationship is the main focus, and while it is interesting, both characters are very juvenile. Finny's delusions about the war may have been important at the time, but they come across as incredibly naive to a modern audience all too familiar with the horrors of World War 2. Finny, however, is the personality of the duo, as Gene's quiet smarts give him a bad case of blank slate. The other secondary characters are more interesting, but don't get as much text space when they're not actively contributing to the plot.
In the beginning, the story is incredibly light and carefree. The various machinations of Finny's mind take precedence over really good characterization of Gene, who doesn't get good depth until after Finny's leg breaks, which comes about a third of the way through the book. Unfortunately, this is the climax of the book, and everything after that matches the "falling action" archetype well. There are few stakes in this book and the position of the climax so early kills off any stakes it might have had.
I am not a huge fan of A Separate Peace. Of all the books I've read for English, this one was the most dated, with the purposeful omission of Shakespeare. While not a bad book and certainly one whose setting we don't see discussed much in literature, it's a rather dull and easy read. It feels like it wanted to reach for some big message and let that come at the expense of proper pacing and plot construction. Not a terrible book by any means, but not the best either.
I hope you enjoyed this first installment of The Reading List. As I finish up my second year in high school, look forward to more and more reviews of books I have to read, and maybe you did too. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time.
Spoiler Warning: The following contains spoilers for A Separate Peace.
A Separate Peace is a novel about friendship during the Second World War. Gene Forrester, our narrator, is a quiet, studious teenage boy going to New Hampshire's Devon School in 1942. During the summer session, he befriends his roommate, an energetic and incredibly charismatic boy named Finny. Throughout the summer, Gene and Finny become great friends and form a secret society, the focal point of which is jumping out of a tall tree into a river.
As the summer progresses, Gene begins to suspect that Finny secretly wants to beat him in academics, as Gene is better academically and Finny is better in sports. Although Finny begins to soothe Gene's paranoia, it still causes Gene, during one tree jump, to shake the branch, causing Finny to crash to the ground below and break his leg.
In my mind, the book can be divided into four parts, each following the seasons. The above-mentioned plot takes place during summer, the carefree days where boys can and will be boys, and everything is more laid back. The war is far enough away to be a distant dream, like the heat on a pleasant summer day. Gene's paranoia, like annoying insects buzzing around a picnic, is the biggest conflict in this part of the novel, an issue at the time, but not very important.
Finny's leg breaking marks the beginning of fall. As everyone returns to class, something about the chill in the air suggests that things are about to change. War, like the coming New England winter, is more present, and several of the boys talk about enlisting. Leper, a kind-hearted, gentle classmate, is the first to enlist and leaves school. Meanwhile, Finny actively denies the existence of the war, claiming it's all a conspiracy by old men to keep them down. As fall changes into winter, Finny seeks to train Gene, sheltered by the thought that the war is far away.
Winter, like in real life, can be described as brief celebrations in the middle of frozen hardship. Finny organizes a winter carnival, complete with games, music, and alcohol. As the carnival progresses, though, Gene gets a letter from Leper, saying that he "escaped" from the army. Gene meets him and finds out that Leper has been driven to some form of madness by his stay in the army. This makes Gene afraid of the army which he and his friends are so close to being drafted to. Meanwhile, some of the other boys have been investigating what happened to Finny's leg. During the "trial" they conduct, Finny loses patience and runs out of the hall, breaking his leg again. A few days later, Finny is dead, as cold as the New England snow.
After winter comes spring. New life does indeed bloom at Devon, but it is not new life for the numbed students. Instead, a group of military workers set up shop at Devon. The novel ends with the boys leaving school and enlisting in the military while Gene reflects on the events that transpired over the past year.
Gene and Finny's relationship is the main focus, and while it is interesting, both characters are very juvenile. Finny's delusions about the war may have been important at the time, but they come across as incredibly naive to a modern audience all too familiar with the horrors of World War 2. Finny, however, is the personality of the duo, as Gene's quiet smarts give him a bad case of blank slate. The other secondary characters are more interesting, but don't get as much text space when they're not actively contributing to the plot.
In the beginning, the story is incredibly light and carefree. The various machinations of Finny's mind take precedence over really good characterization of Gene, who doesn't get good depth until after Finny's leg breaks, which comes about a third of the way through the book. Unfortunately, this is the climax of the book, and everything after that matches the "falling action" archetype well. There are few stakes in this book and the position of the climax so early kills off any stakes it might have had.
I am not a huge fan of A Separate Peace. Of all the books I've read for English, this one was the most dated, with the purposeful omission of Shakespeare. While not a bad book and certainly one whose setting we don't see discussed much in literature, it's a rather dull and easy read. It feels like it wanted to reach for some big message and let that come at the expense of proper pacing and plot construction. Not a terrible book by any means, but not the best either.
I hope you enjoyed this first installment of The Reading List. As I finish up my second year in high school, look forward to more and more reviews of books I have to read, and maybe you did too. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time.
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