Post # 18 The Marxist Perspective

Dear AP students:

   This is the final blog posting I will be making. 

    There is at least one more perspective from which we will analyze novels--the one I want to address today is the class or Marxist perspective (after Karl Marx--the father of Communism).

   This perspective focuses on the economic elements of the story and stresses those elements that show the differences in economic classes of the characters, and any examples of worker exploitation.

  What's interesting about Holden Caulfield is that he is a rich preppy--he belongs to the upper class.  He lives in a nice area of Manhattan. he has parents and grandparents who provide him with money. He travels through Manhattan possessing money as a warrior on a quest would possess weapons. Yet, he questions the value of money. He seems to especially call people who are rich "phonies". His brother must make money as a screenwriter, yet he is a "phony".  His father has enough money to invest in failed Broadway plays--and I think Holden relishes the fact that his investments fail.  He mocks the idea of having money early in the book when he sells his 90 dollar typewriter for 20 dollars.

  Yet, unlike many people who scorn having money, he doesn't seem to hold the lower class in any respectful embrace. He gets in a fight with the elevator operator and the prostitute, and he makes fun of the musicians and the working girls from Seattle. I guess he sort of respects the nuns who are in the busines of collecting donations. But I don't think he comes across as a hero of the downtrodden. He's no Robin Hood or do-gooder social activist, right?  I don't think he identifies with the lower classes.  He doesn't seek to change the system, he just makes fun of it. Maybe that's what makes him a believable character--a truly mixed up teen who doesn't pretend to have any answers.

  What are we to think of this class/Marxist perspective regarding Holden Caulfield?  Can you come up with some scenes from the novel that might highlight this perspective?  Or using this perspective to analyze the novel, do you spot some actions of Holden that you didn't necessarily notice before?

Post # 17 Setting for the Novel

Dear AP students:

   Most of Catcher in the Rye takes place in the city--and not just any city, but NYC.  The Big Apple!  J.D. Salinger probably set the story in NYC because it was a place he was very familiar with, having grown up in Manhattan, but maybe he set it there for a more specific reason.

  You have to agree that this novel would have  totally different tone/mood if it had taken place in some little Midwestern town.  Fortunately, Salinger set the story in a big city and in doing so makes a statement about people and how they live in a big city like New York. 

     In each novel we read we will take a look at the role "setting" has on the mood, the characters , and the overall themes of the story. In Heart of Darkness, our next book, we will see what role the African jungle plays. In Frankenstein we will see how rain and mountain scenery plays a significant role.

    What is the role that the city plays in Catcher in the Rye? What kind of mood is created by New York City?  How about NYC in December?  This might have been a different story with a different mood had the story been set on a warm June day.  How does NYC influence Holden's state of mind?  Does it contribute to his being more mixed up? Give me some specific elements of the city as portrayed in the novel. 

   On a different subject, I mentioned in an earlier post that Salinger intentionally or unintentionally compares Holden to Shakespeare's Hamlet.  As I said, they are both mixed up young men, though Hamlet is older--not a teen. I noticed another comparison today--Hamlet is always carrying a sword or foil--in fact, a sword duel plays a prominent role in the end of the play. But in Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield mentions at the beginning of the play how he lost the bag of foils for the fencing team while on the subway.  Two very different uses foils in two different novels.  Hamlet is a serious swordsman, while Holden is a bungling manager for the fencing team.

   Don't forget to do your double entry journal as you read the novel.

Post # 16 The Psychological Perspective

Dear Eagles:

   In addition to looking at this novel from a feminist perspective, or from the hero's journey perspective, we can look from the psychological perspective to arrive at a better understanding of the themes of a novel. 

  In doing so, we can look at Holden's obsession with death. First, there is his natural obsession with the death of Allie.  This plays a central role in the novel, and this traumatizing event can be seen as the root of his problems.  Then there's the passages on pages 154-155 in which he talks about how everyone would react to his death, and his own feelings about dying, in light of Allie's death.  He imagines "jerks" coming to his funeral. He also says "I hope to hell when I do die somebody has enough sense to just dump me in a river or something."  Making another analogy to the Shakespeare play Hamlet, the character of Hamlet contemplates suicide in his famous "To be or not to be " soliloquy, but he chooses not to commit suicide because he is afraid of what comes after death--"the great unknown."  Does Holden contemplate suicide in this passage, and if so does he choose not to die because he doesn't like how the jerks or phonies will attend his funeral, or how his mother might react?  Or is he not seriously contemplating suicide at all?  Perhaps Salinger was making an analogy to Mark Twain's famous character of Tom Sawyer, who got to attend his own funeral when people thought he had died?

  There's also that passage on pages 170-171 where he discusses the suicide of one of his classmates at Elkton Hills--James Castle. The kid was not a friend of Holden's, but he recalls the kid because he had borrowed his turtleneck.

   I once read that every novel has a ghost story included...meaning, a novel's main character is usually haunted by a ghost or a death that occurred earlier in his/her life?  This ghost story is what consciously/subconsciously drives the main character.  Is that true in this novel? 

   What other psychological aspects can we draw upon to help understand Holden Caulfield? Or is this enough?