I don't get the hype

[Anonymous No.23112989]

It wasn't bad but nothing happens. I'd heard it was very popular and controversial so I expected something to happen but literally nothing ever happens when you get bored with his shtick like halfway through and wait for something to happen. How did this get so popular to begin with?

[Anonymous No.23112996]

>>23112989
You had to be there. Also, some of the infamy comes from killers being inspired by it but not from the book itself.

[Anonymous No.23113060]

He rapes his sister, Phoebe.

[Anonymous No.23113064]

>>23112989
I gotta ask, how does it feel to get filtered by a book that even high schoolers get?

[Anonymous No.23113068]

>>23113064
Bourgeois high schoolers feel sympathy for Holden.
Proletarian high schoolers despise him.

Neither engages in a critique of the pedophile enclosure of Holden by his father, and Holden's failures to escape from child abuse.

High Schoolers "get" it eh?

[Anonymous No.23113076]

>>23112989
What struck me was that I was so similar to a 16 year old american kid living in the 1950s. So many of holden's thought processes were identical to mine as a teenager.

For example when he for no reason starts pretending he's been shot and imagines having to make it to his hotel while bleeding out, or how he is obviously in love with jane but doesn't seem to realise it or lies to himself about it. That's the exact type of dumb shit I would think and do when I was younger. What made the book so good was how relatable it is; I felt understood.

[Anonymous No.23113078]

>>23113060
he's quickly established as an unreliable narrator but I don't agree with that interpretation, he says he was molested at least 20 times and he wants to catch kids falling off the cliff, he wants to save them from becoming like him

[Anonymous No.23113082]

>>23113060
Spbp

[Anonymous No.23113083]

>>23113076
Your dad rapes you on page 1, your imouto is raped by her step father but gets over it, and you're imprisoned in a psych ward instead of being sent to military school?

[Anonymous No.23113085]

>>23113076
it's relatable due to universal teenage experience, mostly acting like you don't care when you really really do but that's kind of the only thing that goes on in the whole book, I didn't think it would be so uneventful if it was so big

[Anonymous No.23113089]

>>23113083
Reddit moment

[Anonymous No.23113103]

>>23113085
I felt the same way when I finished it I think; a bit confused but after a while it just resonated with me because of how relatable it was. I still think about it often.

[Anonymous No.23113132]

>>23112989
Yeah it's a piece of engineering that operates on three main levels. First it's a coming-of-age about a teen who feels he doesn't fit in, to make it palatable to youth and justify its inclusion in the high school curriculum. Secondly it's focused on sex and sexual abuse in a nasty subliminal way, to subvert the youth reading it and expose them to jewish sexual neuroses. Thirdly, it's a symbolic parallel of the Freemasonic initial rituals so that anyone who reads it is psychically taking part and contributing their energy to the Great Work.

[Anonymous No.23113572]

>>23113132
first two make a lot of sense, idk what anything in the third means but it sounds like its time for your meds big dog

[Anonymous No.23113587]

It's one of those books where what you take away from it largely depends on knowing what your teacher wants to hear.

[Anonymous No.23113594]

the last line of the book has always stuck with me throughout the years for some reason

[Anonymous No.23113608]

>>23113572
You only see the surface of things. Learn to see underneath.

[Anonymous No.23113611]

>>23113608
The Great Work is surface level.

[Anonymous No.23113676]

>>23112989
I remember reading it in high school, and when I was a third of the way through it, I thought
>Well, nothing's happened yet, but they're just setting things up.
Then when I was two thirds of the way through and he's talking to that guy, I thought
>Okay, I guess something could still happen. But there's so little of the book left, it would have to be super compressed.
Then nothing happened anyway.

[Anonymous No.23113759]

He didn't rape his sister it's just a joke

[Anonymous No.23114012]

Its because protagonist is a 16 year old who acts, thinks and talks like a 40 year old book writer... There is no adolescence in that book.

[Anonymous No.23114082]

>>23113132
bait used to be less tiringly unhinged and cliche
I wouldn't respond to this post at all, because you are partly just (You) farming, but the other part is you fags trying to just push the collective attitude of 4chan toward your paranoid beliefs, and you count on the fact that people eventually get tired of responding to bait.

Basically, either way you win, and with the added bonus of usually moving the site more toward your derangement. Pretty slimy behavior. A /pol/friend might even call it "jew-ish".

[Anonymous No.23114132]

>>23112989
It is diary of a wimpy kid for adults
A clockwork Orange is a more interesting portrait of a teenager

[Anonymous No.23114483]

>>23114132
Clockwork Orange is unreadable tbqhwyf

[Anonymous No.23114643]

>>23114012
/thread
This. I wish I hadn't thrown away everything I wrote when I was a teenager. I was a fool

[Anonymous No.23114694]

>>23114643
>/thread
>This

[Anonymous No.23115255]

>>23114012
I would say the book captures a lot of common thoughts and feelings teenagers have

[Anonymous No.23115350]

>>23112989
You're not alone, it's a shit book.

[Anonymous No.23117058]

>>23112989
The entry for it in Encyclopædia Britannica says

Interpretation
The Catcher in the Rye takes the loss of innocence as its primary concern. Holden wants to be the “catcher in the rye”—someone who saves children from falling off a cliff, which can be understood as a metaphor for entering adulthood. As Holden watches Phoebe on the carousel, engaging in childlike behaviour, he is so overcome with happiness that he is, as he puts it, “damn near bawling.” By taking her to the zoo, he allows her to maintain her childlike state, thus being a successful “catcher in the rye.” During this time, however, watching her and the other children on the carousel, he has also come to accept that he cannot save everyone: “If they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off.”

Holden’s name is also significant: Holden can be read as “hold on,” and Caulfield can be separated into caul and field. Holden’s desire is to “hold on” to the protective covering (the caul) that encloses the field of innocence (the same field he wishes to keep the children from leaving). Holden desperately wants to remain true and innocent in a world full of, as he puts it, “phonies.” Salinger once admitted in an interview that the novel was semi-autobiographical.


>>23113064
I didn't get it in high school, either. I don't remember having a class discussion of it. Must of been one of those books the teacher gave us because they had to or felt they had to, but didn't get it themselves so didn't do any lecture or class discussion on it, skipping that to go to the next book

[Anonymous No.23117081]

>>23117058
>Salinger once admitted in an interview that the novel was semi-autobiographical.
Salinger wished to rape Phoebe.

[Anonymous No.23117254]

>>23117058
midwit interpretation, the carousel was him saying goodbye to his childhood and making the active decision to grow up, he'd lost his innocence before the events of the book

[Anonymous No.23117269]

>>23112989
It's a massive nothingburger, totally portentous and is merely modernist projection. The feds were using a lot of literature around this time to reinforce the American commercial institution while commies were printing their own propaganda. It's best if we just pretend this book doesn't exist

[Anonymous No.23117337]

Reading The Moviegoer reminded me of this book. Different perspective but tackling a lot of the same issues. Also the main character isn't an unlikable asshole.

[Anonymous No.23117379]

>>23112989

If you guys want a better version of this book, watch Igby Goes Down