The Catcher In The Rye

Novel shows a young man’s deeply troubled journey trying to find meaningful life

The Catcher in the Rye is J. D. Salinger’s (1919-2010) only novel and was first published in 1951. It was an immediate success and skyrocketed Salinger’s fame. Before this novel, he had published many short stories in various magazines, and some of them contain the rudiments of this novel. He was a person who didn’t like fame, and for this reason, after the publishing of this novel went to a reclusive life. In his later years, he didn’t publish new works and avoided contact with the media.

Salinger didn’t ever graduate from any university. He attended a fiction writing class at Columbia in 1939. This was the impulse that strengthened his writing skills, appearing in The Catcher in the Rye. He was enlisted in the US Army and fought on different war fronts. It was the time when he worked on the early drafts of this novel.

There are autobiographical traces in this novel. There can be much resemblance seen between Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the novel, and Salinger. Caulfield, like Salinger, fails and is unable to reach the college. There are several other references to his personal life in fictional guise. He participated in the second world war, and this had an impact on him.