I know we talked about it in class, but I just don't understand why people are inspired to kill after reading this book. It has happened on a few occasions...
-Mark David Chapman's murder of John Lennon
-Winona Ryder was convicted of murder, stealing, and kitten-huffing? I don't know.
-John Hinckley's attempted murder of the president
-Robert John Bardo's murder of Rebecca Schaeffer
After these murders were committed, investigators found reference to the book Catcher in the Rye.
Initially after reading this book, I was confused on how it could ever drive someone to kill. But after I thought about it, Holden is pretty negative. He always seems to be depressed, never happy. He's always talking about how everyone around him is fake and how he needs to just get away. Whenever something happens, it "kills him". I guess I always took that as a figure of speech, never literally.
One particular blog I found interesting was talking about how when Mark Chapman shot John Lenning, he was trying to save him from all the phonies. The blog compared this to how Holden wanted to save the kids from falling off the cliff at the edge of the field of rye.
A lot of the other sites had the same comparisons we had: being depressed, negative, always swearing, living with phonies and how everything kills him. Holden's also always smoking and drinking. Neither are good for you and can also act as a depressants, which obviously isn't going to work in his favor.
He also seems to have a pretty big sex drive. Most girls don't seem interested in him or see him as just a friend. And if a girl does seem interested in him, he considers her a phony, along with everyone else, and disregards her.
As girls don't like him, he doesn't seem to like much of anyone either. There's only a few people in the book that he ever really talks highly of-- Allie, Pheobe, and Jane. Everyone else is just a phony. He doesn't really seem to fit in or have a tight group of friends, which would be really hard. He also doesn't seem to really care about anything, especially school. I just think his day-to-day life would be hard to live.
Agreed! I was wondering while reading the book, why people would be driven to murder. However, after pondering the thought for awhile, it isn’t too hard to see all the references in the book that would cause someone to murder. Like you said, Holden constantly mentioned phonies and how most everything “killed him.” He also has an extremely negative outlook on life and only thinks kindly of three people. His life would be very hard to live; he also seems to be suffering from a deep depression. Too bad Salinger didn’t write something explaining the book a little more, that would have probably helped tie-up a lot of loose ends and questions that are left unanswered.
ReplyDelete