A Psychoanalytical Interpretation of The Catcher in the Rye

Editor's Note: The following treatise presents an Adlerian psychoanalytical interpretation of the J.D. Salinger’s play 'The Catcher in the Rye'. It attempts to demonstrate the neurotic behavior of Holden Caulfield along with his aim for social superiority. It also takes into account the factors influencing the feelings of inferiority in him.

"The great authors succeed in creating their characters in similar fashion as characters in real life 'create' themselves" (Ansbacher). This paper will be a psychoanalytical interpretation of Holden Caulfield, the 17-year-old tragic hero of The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger from an Adlerian angle. This will examine how Holden's mistaken life style results in his re­sorting to neurosis in order to deal with the particular life problems he faces. Holden's extremely high goal of superiority, his excessive feelings of inferiority, and his diminished social interest lead him to attempt to solve problems on the useless side of life. We will also consider some of the factors which contributed to Holden's original mistaken attitudes, such as his family constellation and childhood pampering.

Holden tells his own story in the play. He selects incidents that seem impor­tant to him and interlaces these incidents with his opinions about life. This information is similar to the kind the therapist gets from his client. Unlike the therapist however, the reader cannot use questions to clarify his understanding and provoke new information. The reader-therapist must accept what is provided and infer what he can.

At the beginning of the novel, we assume that Holden has had some neurotic symptoms which resulted in his being sent to some place to recover. He tells his story from the perspective of having been there a while, but what progress he has made is unclear. "I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come here and take it easy" (Catcher).

Holden does not present events chronologically; he tells a story and when he is reminded of a past event he digresses to tell about that. While we recognize that it is usually significant to note what particular event evokes a particular memory or comment on life, for the sake of clarity and brevity, we will examine the overall themes in his life and not necessarily the events one by one as he presents them.

In Adlerian psychology, the individual is conceived as a unit­ary, goal-oriented, creative self. This means that a person is uniquely consistent and is aiming in a specific direction. He aims toward his own personally defined goal of success. All this is called the style of life, formerly the life plan.

Family Constellation

An individual's style of life is formed at an early age and remains his way of dealing with the world. Holden is the second born of four children. While birth order is not destiny, it is important to realize that a child's psychological place in the family influences the attitudes he has and thus his life style. The family is the child's first social environment.

We do not know anything about Holden's relationship with his older brother when they were young, but Holden now seems to re­spect and admire D.B. He quotes him as an authority on good res­taurants and good books and says "My favorite author is my brother" (Catcher). But Holden also resents his brother because he has a successful career writing movies. "He's out in Hol­lywood being a prostitute. If there's one thing I hate, it's the movies" (Catcher). Holden may be disappointed that his brother chose a commercial career, or perhaps Holden is really envious of this older brother who has "lots of dough" and drives a sporty car. Holden repeats so often that he hates the movies that we suspect it's an accusation against others for liking them.

As the younger brother of D.B., Holden is in quite a race. His pace-setter for achievement has achieved much success in society. Holden's striving for superiority is going to be under pressure, as he competes with his older brother. The result of this competition de­pends on Holden's courage and self-confidence. We can see that Holden feels discouraged when he says such things, as, "As a matter of fact, I'm the only dumb one in the family" (Catcher). "Dumb" seems to include more than simply lack of intelligence; it seems to indicate that he is the worst at everything.

In Problems of Neurosis, Adler notes, "If the second child loses hope of equality, he will... tend to escape to the useless side of life, and ... laziness or lying will pave the way to neurosis and self de­struction" (Ansbacher). Holden tells us:

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.... If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera (Catcher, 1965, p. 16).

He lies to the woman he meets on the train just so he can have something to talk about, and he lies when he's in a situation that he can't handle by saying that he's just had a serious operation. This clearly is a way Holden strives for superiority on the useless side of life. He brags that he is the best liar. Lying seems to be a way that Holden can feel superior because he controls the situation. Only he knows the truth so he can dominate and manipulate others. He can save face, cover any feelings of inferiority by lying.

The second child is also "rarely able to endure the strict leadership of others or to accept the idea of 'eternal laws' " (Ansbacher). He is a rebel who will oppose things because they are cus­tomary. For example, Holden's first words to us are:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like . .. and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it. In the first place, the stuff bores me ... (Catcher).

He anticipates what would ordinarily be asked of him and refuses to give it. He uses "crap" in connection with a classical novel indicating that he is well educated on the useless side of life. He describes what we are interested in as boring. Holden begins rebelling before any­one is able to request anything. The exaggerated nature of this sec­ond child's rebellion tells us that he is indeed discouraged and lack­ing social interest.

Holden is not only a second born child however, he is also a mid­dle child. Allie and Phoebe were both younger than him. Allie died of leukemia four years ago when he was eleven and Holden was thirteen. Phoebe is only ten, seven years younger than Holden. The distance between them now would suggest that he is not in competi­tion with them. Holden describes them both as "sweet," and "intelli­gent" and says that "everyone" agrees.

When Holden is feeling what he describes as "lonesome and de­pressed" and what we would say is particularly inferior, he thinks of Allie and Phoebe. He has two early recollections of Allie that sup­port the idea that Holden's younger siblings are "sweet" because they admire and like him, that is, they make him feel superior. The first recollection is a very short scene of Allie sitting on a fence watching Holden tee off his golf game. Holden says he knew that

Allie would be there when he looked behind him. The little brother is looking up to the big brother in admiration of his abilities, while big brother looks back at him. In the second scene, Holden remem­bers the time when he wouldn't let Allie come with him on a fishing trip. He told Allie that he was just a child, too little to ride that far on his bike. When Holden is depressed he starts talking to Allie and says, "Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby's house." (Catcher). Holden remembers when Allie wanted to be like him, to do things with him, and looked up to him. Holden feels superior in both scenes. He tells Allie to get his bike now because he misses the appreciator he had in Allie. When Allie died, Holden spent the night in the garage and broke all the windows with his bare hands. This is a rather exaggerated response to even the loss of a much cared for brother. It can be assumed that in addition to losing a beloved brother, Holden also lost a source of superior feelings when Allie died.

Holden's relationship with Phoebe appears to be similar to that which he had with Allie. Phoebe too admires and emulates him. She skates where he skated and "If you tell Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you're talking about" (Catcher). In other words, Phoebe agrees with him.

In contrast to adults whom he almost always calls "phonies," Hol­den says, "God, I love it when a kid's nice and polite when you tighten their skate for them or something. Most kids are. They really are" (Catcher). Holden's feelings of inferiority are so great that he only feels fond of Phoebe and Allie because they are younger than him. He feels affectionate because he can be superior to them, benevolent, but nonetheless, superior. According to Adler, "Children who have a great feeling of inferiority want to exclude stronger children and play with weaker children" (Ansbacher). Holden is 17 years old, but he seems to be just such a child.

Pampering Mother

Though we know litde about Holden's mother, he offers some information that indicates indirectly that he was a pampered child. For example, his mother was apparently over attentive to his needs as he says, " .. .my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you. She's nervous as hell.". He also tells us that mothers only see good in their sons and describes his mother and grandmother buying him presents and giving him lots of money. When Phoebe disobeys Mrs. Caulfield, she simply says "I don't like it" and changes the subject. Pampering leads to a self-centeredness and impaired social interest and leaves the child feeling uncertain because he is excused from responsibility. The child feels special, that he deserves the best and thus sets his goal of superiority accordingly high. Holden tells us:

I still act sometimes like i was only twelve. Everybody says that.... Sometimes I act a lot older than i am—i really do—for people never notice it. People never notice anything (Catcher).

These are the words of the pampered child who wants to be praised for all his accomplishments and who is angry and accusatory when he feels he is not getting adequate recognition.

The Adlerian perspective emphasizes the "key role the mother must play in preparing her child for a life of cooperation and con­tribution" (Ansbacher). By her example, Mrs. Caulfield teaches Holden how to deal with life crises. Holden describes how at first his "mother gets very hysterical", and in general "she's very nervous". In this first relationship where he should be learning cooperation and trust, Holden learns that one can use nervousness, the weapon of weakness, in difficult situations. Holden applies this lesson using de­pression as his way of coping.

Holden used his own creative abilities to interpret his mother's attentions as pampering. He has selected from her behavior the les­son that being nervous or hysterical is a way of dealing with prob­lems. Thus, when faced with a situation that he feels inadequately prepared for, Holden lacks cooperation and uses symptomatology.

Inferiority-Superiority Dynamics

Holden's oversized inferiority feelings are in contrast to his ex­tremely high goals of superiority. Thus he is sure to feel small and inferior. Adler comments that an inferiority complex "burdens the character with oversensitivity, leads to egotistical self considerations and self-reflections, (and) lays the foundation for neurosis" (Ansbacher). We can certainly see that Holden does have this foundation. His oversensitivity to the social amenities which he considers hypocritical leads him to say, "I can't stand that stuff. It drives me crazy" (Catcher). He has a similar reaction to people saying "Good luck" or "grand" to him. That he is overly involved in self consideration is illustrated time and time again as he describes his acute awareness of what he looks like, what he does in any situation. His marked inferiority complex is ob­vious when he comments that if life is a game then he's on the wrong side. This surely is what Adler refers to when he says that the person with great inferiority feelings "lives, as it were, in an enemy country" (Ansbacher). Holden's strong temper and passion, illus­trated by the fist fight he gets into with his roommate because he dates a friend of Holden's; and his constant motion, wandering through New York City and from school to school, also indicate his deep sense of inferiority.

In contrast to these profound feelings of inferiority are Holden's extremely high goals of superiority. This goal shows itself frequently during his story. Appropriately, the first scene he describes shows his desire to be superior, and also his methods. He depicts himself standing on top of a hill watching the last important football game of the year. It was "supposed to be a very big deal" and so "practically the whole school except me was there" (Catcher). Hol­den literally and figuratively looks down on other people. Literally, he is on top of a hill so he looks down on them. They appear very little compared to him. He also "looks down" on them by defining what they think is important as trivial. It was supposed to be a big deal, but to him it's not. Another example of Holden's goal of superiority is his fantasy about having been shot and walking around with "a bullet in the gut" without anyone knowing. Finally he would avenge his honor, that is, get back at someone who made him feel inferior and he would be a hero.

Perhaps the best example of how lofty Holden's goals are is the scene he describes to Phoebe when she challenges him to name one thing he'd like to be. He replies:

Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff.... I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going. .. (Catcher).

Consistent with Holden's expression of love for his younger brother and sister and children in general, is his desire to be the only big person around. Holden's goal of superiority, to be the big hero and to have everyone's destiny in his control is obvious. Clearly it is re­moved from possibility, removed from common sense, and hence, he can only attempt to realize it on the useless side of life.

Lack Of Social Interest

Holden's lack of social interest, that is, lack of feeling of fellowship and empathy with others, has been implied in most of his story. It is further illustrated by the fact that all of his contacts with people are disappointing. For example, he says, "Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad" (Catcher). He feels lonely: "I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead" (Catcher). These experiences are the result of his rejection of society. " . . . if I were a piano player . . . and all these dopes thought I was terrific, I'd hate it" (Catcher). At no time does Holden express any concern for any­body but himself. Only once does he do anything nice for another person. That was when he bought a record for Phoebe, but he breaks it by accident before he gets it home. Typical of the neurotic, Hol­den expresses his lack of social interest in overgeneralizations about the way people are. Throughout his story, Holden says such things as:

People always ruin things.

People never think anything is anything really.

People are always hot to have a discussion when you're not.

People never believe you. (Catcher)

Clearly, Holden lacks the courage to cooperate in an adult world.

We have referred to a difficult situation that has precipitated Hol­den's developing symptoms. In this case, the exogenous factors do not seem to be so much related to a particular incident as they do to Holden's age. His first symptoms appeared at age thirteen, the onset of puberty and when he was first sent to prep school. Two of the three major life tasks come into focus at this time in life and Holden seems ill prepared to meet them.

The task of occupation is presented because Holden is enrolled in a school which is designed to help him prepare for college and hence, an occupation. He must stop being a little boy and begin mak­ing specific plans about what he wants for an occupation. He must succeed in prep school in order to live up to the expectations of an upper-middle class male. Holden has been expelled from four such schools. The experiences he describes occur just after he has flunked out of the fourth school and must go home and face his parents. We know that he excels in English and that he places a high value on being intelligent, but his fear of not being superior causes him to act lazy so he will have an excuse if he fails. Holden describes all the schools as being full of "phonies", criticizes their procedures, and generally expresses anger towards everything they represent. He par­ticipates in only the less admirable adult behavior such as smoking, swearing, and drinking. In this way he can justify not accepting the responsibility that prep school requires. He strives to be superior on the useless side of life.

The other task that Holden must actively deal with is sex and love. Not only has he reached the age of sexual maturity, but he is also in a situation where he has the opportunity to get involved in intimate relationships with the opposite sex. Sex, women, and love are the most common topics of conversation at this all-male school. Holden's peers all express their opinions about this issue and thus he is chal­lenged to make some decisions about how he will approach this problem of life. In this task, too, Holden must give up being a little boy and assume some adult responsibility.

Over and over Holden expresses the importance he places in lov­ing the woman he has sex with. He tells us that a girl has to be intelligent and genuine, and that physical and spiritual love must be combined. In sum, he says, "I have to like a girl" (Catcher). But Holden lacks the courage and cooperation necessary to meet this task. He would really like to run away, avoid the issue, and continue being a pampered child. He frequently says that he wants to get in contact with Jane, the girl he likes and respects, but is never "in the mood." Instead, Holden dates girls like Sally whom he de­scribes as the "queen of the phonies" (Catcher), calls on prostitutes, or tries to pick up older women in bars. In this way, he can justify rejecting growing up.

Antithetical Thinking

Adler has noted that neurotic patients only know contradiction and antithesis (Ansbacher). Because Holden finds maturing and facing adult responsibilities too difficult, he describes all of adulthood as phony while being childlike is genuine. We see that Holden does not want to grow up when he describes why he likes the museum: because "everything always stayed right where it was" (Catcher). The carrousel, too, is nice because it always plays the same song, "Certain things they should stay just as they are" (Catcher), he says.

Holden's great feelings of inferiority and his high goals of superiority combined with his lack of social interest result in his ina­bility to deal with the life tasks of sex and occupation in a useful way. He hesitates to grow up; however he must develop excuses in order to save face. He must reject adulthood by defining it as less desirable than childhood.

Holden attempts to save face by shining more rather than being more. His principal excuse is that incidents are unimportant. He de­lays telling that he's been expelled and then says, "I forgot to tell you about that. They kicked me out." (Catcher). He is always saying that things he doesn't like are boring and uses being bored as an excuse for doing as he pleases. (Note earlier reason for not telling about his childhood.) "I call people 'prince' quite often when I'm horsing around. It keeps me from getting bored or something" (Catcher). When the pampered child wants attention, he says he gets bored and, for example, starts tap dancing in the men's bathroom. "All I need's an audience" (Catcher), he says, and reveals his real feelings. Similar to the use of boredom as a way of trying to appear superior, is his saying that he doesn't care when faced with a difficult situation. "I'm partly yellow, but mostly the type that just doesn't give a damn" (Catcher). By saying that he doesn't care, Holden tries to cover up his feelings of inferior­ity. These neurotic excuses are typical of the way he avoids dealing with the issues of school (occupation) and sex. Holden is "never in the mood" to have a genuine exchange with the girl he cares for and he doesn't want to bother with all those phonies at school. His ex­cuses reveal the hesitating attitude which Adler found characteristic of the neurotic.

With other maneuvers, Holden demonstrates his desire to run away from these issues. By being lazy, Holden flunks out of four prep schools. He escapes facing the problem of what he's going to do with himself, yet is able to maintain the posture that he could do something very superior if he wanted to. The distaste he expresses for all the schools he attends is just another way of avoiding the issue. "Disgust is a gesture of aversion.... This affect can easily be misused by being made an excuse for removing oneself from an un­pleasant situation" (Adler). Holden also physically runs away when he leaves school early, but does not go home. During the few days he spends in New York City he escapes through anonym­ity, alcohol, etc.

Holden's pampered life style has left him inadequately prepared to deal with life problems in society and so he has defined the society as phony. In this way he can continue to feel superior. However, this "exclusion tendency," is Adler called it, is not without its drawbacks. It begins to narrow his circle of activity to an uncomfortable extent. Holden is interested in literature and the fine arts, but he finds that he can't go to plays because "if an actor acts it out, I hardly listen. I keep worrying about whether he's going to do something phony every minute" (Catcher, 1965, p. 117). By defining the world as phony, Holden has a full job watching out for any phoniness and thus has an excuse not to cooperate and get on with the business of life. As with any symptomatology, this way of escaping is unpleasant—less unpleasant than facing life's tasks, but unpleasant nonetheless. Holden forewarns us that he is going to become more extreme in his measures of avoidance. He says to Sally, "I mean did you ever get scared that everything was going to go lousy unless you did something? ... I hate (school) . . . But it isn't just that. It's everything" (Catcher).

Absurd Plans

Holden now makes two rather senseless plans to run away from having to live a cooperative life in society. In them we see how des­perate he is feeling, how far from common sense he has moved, and how really neurotic he is. His first plan is to run away to Vermont, where he thinks he can avoid people. He fails to think about how he would support himself and abandons the idea when Sally refuses to accompany him. His second plan is to hitch hike out West and get a job. "I didn't care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn't know me and I didn't know anybody.... I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes" (Catcher), so he wouldn't have to talk to anyone. He goes on to say that he would have a rule that "nobody could do anything phony" when they visited him. "If any­body tried to do anything phony, they couldn't stay" (Catcher). All the time he is making this plan, he is walking through the streets of New York talking to his dead brother, saying, "Allie, please don't let me disappear" (Catcher). Holden's use­less goal of superiority becomes clear. He is so ill prepared to face life's tasks that he feels he needs to control everyone around him. If he feels that they place any demands on him he will label them as phony and isolate himself from them. This is the only way he can continue to appear superior with such extraordinary feelings of in­feriority. He fears that otherwise he will disappear.

Holden's story ends when the one person, with whom he still feels good, the one person who makes him appear superior, challenges him. Phoebe shows him that he has rejected everything and yet she refuses to let him find excuses or run away. He cannot label her phony because she admires him too much. He cannot escape from his responsibilities because she insists on following him when he tries to run away. He has no choice but to relinquish his excuses and go home. "I felt so damn happy all of a sudden.... I was damn near bawling, I felt so damn happy, if you want to know the truth. I don't know why" (Catcher), the certain relief of having been discovered.

Holden completes the novel by saying that he went home, got sick, and came to "this Place." The exact nature of those symptoms we don't know, but they seem unimportant because we can be sure that they support the pattern we have seen.

Essence of the Matter

An Adlerian interpretation has been made of the life of Holden Caulfield as he presents it in Catcher in the Rye. As the second son in the family, Holden has lost confidence in himself. He feels discour­aged and thus adopts a life style based on a mistaken way of feeling superior. He resorts to lies and rebellion. He is able to feel fond of his younger brother and sister because they admire him and hence make him appear superior.

The pampering Holden received and/or interpreted in his child­hood contributed to his self-centeredness and impaired social inter­est. Holden wants to continue being the pampered baby and so is faced with quite a predicament when he is expected to assume some adult responsibilities at prep school. His experiences in childhood have helped prepare him to deal with such a quandary since he has a mother who handles problems by being nervous.

Holden demonstrates his feelings of extreme inferiority in a number of ways. His oversensitivity implies an accusation against others for being phony and driving him crazy. He has a strong temper and thus gets into arguments and fights wherever he goes. In short, Holden acts as if he were living in an enemy country where anyone could attack him. "Attack" in this sense means expose his inferiority.

Holden's lofty goals of superiority are illustrated by his fantasies. He imagines himself the tragic hero with a bullet in his guts and as the catcher in the rye. Holden presents himself as the only genuine and sensitive person in a world of phonies. By hating society, Hol­den is able to pretend that he is superior without having to be com­petent. He shines more rather than being more because he lacks adequate social interest to deal with adult problems in a productive way.

When Holden reaches adolescence and must face the life tasks of sex and occupation, he is unprepared. At this age, Holden must give up his childish ways and accept some adult independence. He is faced with the decision of how he is going to relate with the opposite sex and how he is going to prepare himself for a career. But Holden does not want to grow up. He is too self-centered, and too invested in appearing superior to risk competing in the adult world.

Confronted with this situation, Holden must create excuses in order to avoid these tasks. His feelings of inferiority are so great that he is afraid he will not succeed. Without social interest, Holden lacks the courage to grow up. Thus, Holden becomes a bitter, hateful young man. He defines the adult world as disgusting, boring, and most of all, phony. He runs away from school, from his family, from his friends, and finally, himself. This brings on the onset of his neurotic symptoms which he simply describes as being "sick." The Adlerian perspective shows that Holden does not get sick, but rather he suffers from profound discouragement about growing up.

References

Ansbacher, H. L. (Ed.) Alfred Adler: Problems of neurosis. New York: Harper & Row,1964.
Ansbacher, H. L. (Ed.) Alfred Adler: The science of living. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1969.

Ansbacher, H. L. Adlerian psychology: The tradition of brief psychotherapy./Mir»«*/ of Individual Psychology, 1972,28, 137-265.

Ansbacher, H. L. & Ansbacher, R. r. Alfred Adler: Superiority and social interest. New York: Viking Press, 1964.

Ansbacher, H. L. Ansbacher, R. R., Shiverick, D., & Shiverick, K. Lee Harvey Os­wald: An Adlerian interpretation. Journal of Individual Psychology, 1967, 23, 24-34.

Credits: Joanne Irving University of Vermont

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The Burning Carousel and the Carnivalesque: Subversion and Transcendence at the Close of ‘The Catcher in the Rye’

Editor's Note: In this treatise of significant value, Yasuhiro Takeuchi examines the merits of "The Catcher in the Rye" beyond contemporary assessments of the novel's political/cultural relevance. and as a literary document that epitomises a bold revolt against all fixed values. Takeuchi explores the carnivalesque aspect of the novel, which is fundamental to its import and value. Carnivalesque is a term coined by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, which refers to a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos.

Beyond the controversy that has surrounded The Catcher in the Rye since it first appeared, and beyond contemporary assessments of the novel's political/cultural relevance, J. D. Salinger's Catcher merits ongoing consideration because of the subversion it conducts, a revolt against all fixed values. Ironically, the comment of one editor who rejected Catcher for publication is suggestive of the nature of this revolt: "Is Holden Caulfield supposed to be crazy?" (Hamilton 114). It is the sense of madness, often expressed in the novel through Holden's characteristic humor, that-as Mikhail Bakhtin observes in regard to carnival-"makes men look at the world with different eyes, not dimmed by `normal,' that is by commonplace ideas and judgments" (Rabelais 39). This carnivalesque aspect of Catcher has yet to be explored fully, but it is fundamental to the novel's import and value.

In addition to madness and laughter, Bakhtin identifies other principles of the carnivalesque that offer liberation from conventional values, principles that illuminate the essential concerns of Catcher. These include a "peculiar festive character without any piousness, [and] complete liberation from seriousness" (Rabelais 254); "free and familiar contact among people"; "behavior, gesture, and discourse . . . freed from the authority of all hierarchical positions (social estate, rank, age, property)" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 123); and "disguise-that is, carnivalistic shifts of clothing and of positions and destinies in life" (125). In the spirit of the carnivalesque, Holden's story is set in the festive Christmas season, yet it is far from pious. Holden himself delights in and encourages the "liberation" of a classmate who farts under his headmaster's watchful eye during the speech of a respected alumnus. During Holden's two day stay in New York, he enjoys "free and familiar contact" with diverse people, regardless of "social estate, rank, age, [and] property"; these people range from a nine-year-old girl (his sister Phoebe's friend) to a married society woman in her forties (his classmate's mother), and from a prostitute to a pair of nuns. Finally, "shifts of clothing" are a recurring motif for Holden and those around him, with lendings and borrowings of his hound's-tooth jacket, his turtleneck sweater, and his famous hunting hat. How these exchanges of clothing signify shifts of "positions and destinies" shall be considered at greater length below. It is worth noting first, however, that the received values that the novel aims to subvert encompass not merely prevailing social conventions but also fundamental binary oppositions, including self/other, body/mind, father/mother, heaven/hell, life/death, writer/reader, and notably, savior/saved.

This subversion of binary oppositions takes center stage at the novel's ending, the ambiguity of which has long divided Catcher's critics. During the final carousel scene, Holden has the following thought in reference to the children on the carousel: "If they fall off, they fall off, but it's bad if you say anything to them" (274). Holden's willingness to let his beloved sister fall has perplexed many readers because it seems to contradict his dream of becoming a "catcher in the rye"-one who saves children from falling (224). Some critics have failed even to appreciate the ambiguity resulting from this contradiction. Warren French, for instance, maintains that "Holden no longer sees himself as a catcher in the rye" (121) at the novel's conclusion. Sanford Pinsker argues that "one thing is clear-Holden, the narrator, no longer clings to the same desperate scenarios that defined him as a participant in his story" (96). Underpinning such views of the novel's ending is the notion that to catch and not to catch are opposing, irreconcilable actions that cannot be taken (or aspired to) simultaneously.

Other critics have regarded the final carousel scene as less clear-cut, but have viewed its ambiguity as cause for complaint. Carl Strauch calls the novel's conclusion a "blunted, ambiguous ending" (29), and Maxwell Geismar derides it as belonging to "the New Yorker school of ambiguous finality" (198). Gerald Rosen likewise concludes that "ultimately, the problems faced by Holden . . . have no 'answer' that we can hold on to" (561).

Such readings fail to appreciate that the ambiguity of the novel's ending itself provides a kind of "answer" in its blurring of the binary oppositions through which we come to understand Holden. Critics sensitive to this quality of blurring have found insight into Catcher in the perspective of Zen Buddhism, which according to Zen master Daisetz Suzuki, "takes us to an absolute realm wherein there are no antitheses of any sort" (68). In their pioneering study "Zen and Salinger," Bernice and Sanford Goldstein observe Holden's Zen-like identification with the very people he criticizes, as well as the underlying unity ("wherein there are no antitheses") reflected in the catcher Holden's being caught by both Phoebe and his deceased younger brother Allie (322). Dennis McCort extends this perspective by considering the specific influence of Suzuki on Salinger, maintaining that in the carousel scene, Holden transcends the "contradiction between permanence and change" (266). In the readings of these critics, Zen Buddhism affords substantial insight into the ambivalence of Catcher's conclusion. Yet the Zen approach to Catcher is less successful in explaining the novel's blasphemous, carnivalesque aspect. In concluding that Holden "is caught by love" (322), for instance, the Goldsteins privilege a static principle (love/hate) that, in a larger sense, Catcher overturns a typical reversal of binary oppositions upon which Bakhtin, perhaps, casts a clearer light than Zen.

However, both Eastern and Western thought inform the novel's ultimate ambiguity, and a third perspective-that of Carl Jung-offers an initial vantage from which Zen and Bakhtinian readings resolve to be complementary.4 Through Jung, a Zen-informed Bakhtinian perspectives affords a reassessment of Holden's ideal of becoming a catcher in the rye. More specifically, Jung and Bakhtin-neither of whom have figured prominently in previous studies of Salinger-afford a deepening of the Zen understanding of why Holden, in the end, accepts falling (death). Finally, these critical perspectives expose seemingly negative values, such as phoniness, as essential to the process of "catching," or salvation, leading us (as Catcher's readers) toward the goal of "all legitimate religious study," as Seymour Glass put it in Salinger's "Zooey": "unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, between boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and cold" (67).


The Identity Between the Hunter and His Prey

Salinger's catcher-related imagery is paradoxical: Holden is both savior and saved; Holden's younger siblings Phoebe and Allie, as shall be shown, represent the caught even as they act to catch Holden. The image of Jesus Christ that Jung develops in Aion embodies a similar paradox, and will prove helpful to a discussion of the identity between the savior and the saved in Catcher.
Jung considers Christ as being both fisherman and fish, remarking that "the Christian Ichthys is a fisher of men par excellence" (Aion 112). Jung observes that as "Christ wants to make Peter and Andrew `fishers of men,'" and as a "miraculous draught of fishes (Luke 5:10) is used by Christ . . . as a paradigm for Peter's missionary activity" (89), Jesus is himself a fisher of men. Yet as Jung notes, the fish has become a universal symbol of Jesus Christ because "Ichthys" or "Ichthus," an abbreviation of "Iesous CHristos THeou Uios Soter" (Greek for "Jesus Christ Son of God Savior"), means "fish" ("Fish"). Jung's conception of the "identity between the hunter and his prey" (112) thus poses a challenge to conventional notions of the hunter (savior) and the prey (saved) as existing in an overdetermined hierarchical relationship.
Salinger explores a similar conception of the hunter (savior)/prey (saved) relationship through similar imagery. In his later story, "Seymour: An Introduction," narrator Buddy Glass refers to the unity of fisherman and fish directly:

The hazards of fishing in general were themselves a favorite subject of Seymour's. Our younger brother Walt was a great bent-pin fisherman as a small boy, and for his ninth or tenth birthday he received a poem from Seymour-one of the major delights of his life, I believe-about a little rich boy who catches a lafayette in the Hudson River, experiences a fierce pain in his own lower lip on reeling him in, then dismisses the matter from his mind, only to discover when he is home and the still-alive fish has been given the run of the bathtub that he, the fish, is wearing a blue serge cap with the same school insignia over the peak as the boy's own; the boy finds his own name-tape sewn inside the tiny wet cap. (143-44)

Clearly, the fisher boy has caught himself as prey. Considering the fish as a symbol of Jesus Christ, the two identical caps in Seymour's poem not only suggest the identity of savior and saved, but also bring to mind the case of Holden Caulfield in particular, who as savior/catcher, wears a hat-the red hunting cap that he both gives to and has returned by Phoebe (exchanges to be considered in detail below).

In light of the cap in Seymour's poem, the significance of Holden's calling his cap "a people shooting hat" is clear. If the hat were "a deer shooting hat," as Holden's dormitory neighbor Ackley suggests, it would represent the conventional binary opposition of hunter and prey. However, Holden firmly states that "[t]his is a people shooting hat . . . I shoot people in this hat" (30), an assertion that resonates with the Jungian identity of hunter (savior)/prey (saved). Furthermore, although Holden's cap confers a hunter identity, Holden often imagines himself as a wounded, suffering gunshot victim (135, 195). Holden is thus at once the shooter and the shot, an ambivalent hunter akin to Jung's fisherman, Jesus.

The nature of "catching" in the novel lends nuance to its representation of "the identity between the hunter and his prey." Imagining a catcher in the rye, Holden dreams of preventing children from falling off a cliff, a notion of catching that presupposes the conventional binary opposition of life and death, in which life is preferable to death. But Holden's dream (like this conventional notion of the life/death opposition) is informed by the many acts of picking up the fallen-as opposed to catching the falling-that occur throughout the novel.

A particularly resonant instance of picking up concerns a phonograph record that Holden buys as a present for Phoebe but drops and breaks before giving to her. The fictional song on this record, "Little Shirley Beans," concerns a girl who has lost two of her front teeth. Considered in light of Catcher's Christmas setting, this song is surely patterned on the 1949 hit "All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)," sung by Spike Jones and His City Slickers. This real song tells us how the little girl lost her teeth: she "slid down the banister just as fast as . . . [she] could" (Jones), and was injured. Like the fictional fallen record, the girl in the real song falls and is not caught. Given this parallel, it follows that the broken pieces of the record can be understood to represent the fallen. Significantly, Holden picks up these broken pieces and gives them to Phoebe despite their condition. Phoebe responds, "I'm saving them" (212, emphasis added); the fallen girl can be understood to merit the same treatment: to be picked up and saved.

Another fallen figure, James Castle, is also picked up after having hit the ground.' James falls to his death after an incident of bullying, and as Holden recalls, his body is picked up by Holden's former teacher Mr. Antolini:

He was the one that finally picked up that boy that jumped out the window I told you about, James Castle. Old Mr. Antolini felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over James Castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. He didn't even give a damn if his coat got all bloody. (226-27, emphasis added)

In Holden's eyes, Mr. Antolini's heroism in this scene qualifies him as "the best teacher . . . [he] ever had" (226), and even after Antolini attempts to seduce him, Holden retains his respect for his teacher because of Antolini's treatment of James: "I mean I started thinking that even if he [Antolini] was a flit he certainly'd been very nice to me. I thought . . . how he was the only guy that'd even gone near that boy James Castle I told you about when he was dead" (253). Given Holden's reaction to Antolini's advances-and his casual use of the epithet "flit"-Holden clearly ascribes conventional notions of corruption to Antolini, yet nonetheless Holden views him as a savior. Finally, it bears mentioning that another James, the oldest half-brother of Jesus Christ, was martyred (and thus saved) by being thrown down "from the pinnacle of the temple" (Eusebius 125). James Castle's suicide (221-22) thus deeply informs the development of the theme of falling in Catcher, and indeed, Holden conceives of his ideal of the catcher in the rye almost immediately after relating this episode (224-25).

Considering how falling (death, corruption, and betrayal) thus fuse into the process of salvation, it is significant that at the time of his fall, James is wearing Holden's sweater as if he were disguised, in a sense, as Holden. Because of this sweater, many readers have identified James with Holden, seeking psychological and other similarities between the two characters but the greater significance of the sweater lies in the differences between the characters' positions. That is, the fallen (James) and the catcher (Holden) are unified through the sweater, which thus represents a Bakhtinian disguise in that it transposes the characters' "positions and destinies in life." Bakhtin's view that "[b]firth is fraught with death, and death with new birth" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 125) provides further insight into the fusion of James's death and Holden's salvation: death gives rise to its opposite, life or birth, and indeed the two principles interpenetrate.
Aspects of salvation or new being can also be discerned in falls that Holden himself experiences later in the novel. During his visit to Mr. Antolini, whom Holden has presumably sought out in the hope of being caught, Antolini tells Holden that he may soon experience a fall: "This fall I think you're riding for-it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling" (243). As Holden wanders about town the following day, he feels like he is "just go[ing] down, down, down" (256). At this point, a fall is indeed something horrible for Holden, as Antolini foresaw. Soon after, however, falling takes on a positive aspect when Holden faints and falls to the floor in the museum lavatory. Although Holden narrates, "I could've killed myself when I hit the floor," he is physically restored by the fall, thinking, "I felt better after I passed out. I really did" (265).

Bakhtin offers further insight into this particular fall, insofar as Holden has diarrhea immediately before collapsing. Bakhtin regards images of feces as "presenting at the same time the death of the old and the birth of the new world" (Rabelais 149), and that "feces and urine are ambivalent. . . . [T]hey debase, destroy, regenerate, and renew simultaneously. They are blessing and humiliating at the same time" (151). From this perspective, the proximity of feces to this moment of falling allows us to view the episode as prefiguring the subversion of positions in the subsequent scene, in which a debased Holden moves from being a catcher of children (savior) to one of the fallen in need of being saved.

In this, the novel's climactic scene, Holden's savior (catcher) is herself a child-Holden's sister Phoebe-a reversal that reflects a subversion of values best appreciated in view of the scene's setting: the carousel in Central Park. This fictional carousel offered Salinger a fitting locale for consummating his exploration of the ambivalence of life and death because it is based upon a real carousel that itself fell-in a fire on November 8, 1950, eight months before Catcher's publication ("Carrousel Burns"). In a manner of speaking, the carousel experienced death, or in the novel's chronology (the novel is set in 1948 or 1949), faced imminent death. Salinger, born in 1919 and brought up in New York, surely rode on the Central Park carousel, which went into service in 1922. News of its destruction saddened many New Yorkers ("A Day of Disappointment"), no doubt including Salinger. However, by rendering the carousel within his novel as the site of the great joy that Holden finds while watching his sister (275), Salinger locates renewal and rebirth within destruction, changing the news from sad to happy.

Significantly, Salinger represents the fusion of binary opposites in this scene, as in others, through a pairing of elements of the novel with elements that have foundations in the real world. As the fallen phonograph record in the novel is paired with the fallen girl of the real song on which it is based, and as the fallen James Castle of the novel is paired with the fallen martyr of the Bible, this scene pairs Phoebe's imminent potential fall from the fictional carousel with the actual fall of the real burnt carousel. Coming at the ending of a novel in which falling figures so prominently, the happiness that befalls Holden in this scene must be seen to suggest that to fall-in general, and contrary to conventional notions-is indeed a blessing.

The Caulfield Quaternity

In accord with Bakhtin, Jung too recognizes the coincidence of such binary opposites as death and life, maintaining that "the corruption of one is the generation of the other, an indication that this death is an interim stage to be followed by a new life" (Psychology 95). Let us now consider how death and rebirth mediate between catcher and caught (and/or fallen) in the relationships of Holden and his siblings, the central characters in both Holden and the novel's figurative pantheons. By overturning the static relationship of savior and saved, these relationships reveal the birth of a new savior to be a process that subverts and transcends conventional oppositions.
The family member with the greatest need of being caught, arguably, is Allie Caulfield (because of his fatal leukemia), and Allie must be seen as the primary inspiration for Holden's dream of becoming a catcher in the rye. However, Holden takes on so many of Allies characteristics that he emerges as possessing a desire to become Allie (the fallen) which infuses and redefines his desire to be a catcher in the rye.

For instance, we learn that on the night that Allie died, Holden broke all the windows of his family's garage with his fist, permanently injuring his right hand (50). This act of grief and anger is associated with Allies left-- handedness; Holden may have ruined his chances of becoming "a goddam surgeon or a violinist" (51), but the impairment of his right hand has entitled him to Allies "left-handed fielder's mitt" (49), the baseball glove that equipped Allie as a catcher.
Baseball and other games played on fields also link Allie and Holden through Holden's red hunting hat, which Holden often wears in the style of a baseball catcher (with the peak at the back). In explaining "what kind of red hair he [Allie] had" (50), Holden invokes a childhood memory of seeing Allie sitting outside the fence surrounding a golf course on which Holden was playing. Later, when Holden elaborates to Phoebe his ideal of becoming a catcher in the rye, the catcher he describes stands watch over children playing "some game in this big field of rye" (224), much as Allie watches Holden playing golf. The catcher, moreover, is "standing on the edge of some crazy cliff' (224), an image that intensifies the sense of boundary produced by the "fence that went all around the course" (50) that separated Allie from Holden in Holden's childhood memory. In view of these connections, Holden's prized red hunting hat suggests the identity of the catcher Holden and the redhaired Allie, serving much like the fish's cap in Seymour's poem to embody the oneness of catcher and caught.

There are, furthermore, strong suggestions that Holden desires to reenact Allies fall (death) himself. As described above, Holden is identified with James Castle, the classmate who leapt from a window to his death. Holden earlier toys with the idea of jumping out of a window (136), and another suicide fantasy of Holden's resonates specifically with Allies cause of death: "Anyway, I'm sort of glad they've got the atomic bomb invented. If there's ever another war, I'm going to sit right the hell on top of it. I'll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will" (183). Leukemia, the cause of Allies death, is widely understood to be a common fatal consequence of atomic bomb fallout.

Holden eventually succeeds in joining his brother, not in death, but through the rain at the close of the novel's climactic carousel scene. As Holden watches Phoebe riding the carousel from a nearby bench, a drenching rain suddenly pours down. Everyone standing nearby dashes for shelter, but Holden stays out in the rain and gets completely soaked (275). With this sudden downpour, the carousel scene becomes paired with the scene that Holden described earlier in which he makes a visit with his family to Allies grave (201-02). As in the carousel scene, rain falls suddenly during this family visit, and in both scenes everyone flees except for one person who gets soaked: Holden in the carousel scene, and Allie in the gravesite visit. Given this parallel structure, the rain of the carousel scene can be understood as identifying Holden with his deceased brother Allie-they are both dead men in the rain.

Jonathan Baumbach characterizes the "purifying rain" of the carousel scene as "a manifestation of Allies blessed and blessing spirit" (472), a description that points to the salvation inherent in transcending binary oppositions. When Holden takes the place of the deceased Allie in the rain, he realizes his dream of becoming the catcher even as he becomes one with the fallen/caught (i.e., Allie), and this is the reason for his great joy. To put it another way, the catcher (savior) is saved (blessed) by identifying himself with the caught/fallen (saved). Death brings about birth through the rain; as Jung put it in a similar context, "the water is that which kills and vivifies" (Psychology 80).

The saved must experience a fall (death) in the process of salvation, and thus Holden in this scene bears witness to Phoebe's imminent potential fall from the carousel, even as we bear witness to the fall of the real Central Park carousel immanent in the fictional carousel upon which Phoebe rides. Phoebe, like Allie, is instrumental to these reversals of life and death (and of catcher and caught) in the carousel scene, as closer consideration of her relationship to Holden will illustrate.

First, it is suggestive that Phoebe-a child like the children in the rye field over whom Holden's catcher watches-bears the name of the Greek goddess of the hunt ("Artemis"); Holden, with his hunting hat, views himself as a hunter of people ("I shoot people in this hat"), yet it is Phoebe who catches Holden at key junctures of the novel. Exchanges of the hunter/prey roles between the two are signaled, appropriately enough, by exchanges of Holden's red hunting hat. After telling Phoebe his dream of being a catcher, Holden narrates, "I took my hunting hat out of my coat pocket and gave it to her" (233). This moment marks their exchange of roles: Holden, the catcher, becomes the caught/fallen, while Phoebe, in possession of the hat, soon comes to catch, or rather pick up, Holden. As shown earlier, Holden's fall gains momentum during his visit to Mr. Antolini in the subsequent scene, and hits bottom with his literal collapse on the lavatory floor at the museum. It is Phoebe, in the role of catcher-indeed, transformed by the hat into the former Holden-who comes to Holden's rescue: Finally, I saw her. I saw her through the glass part of the door. The reason I saw her, she had my crazy hunting hat on-you could see that hat about ten miles away.

I went out the doors and started down these stone stairs to meet her. The thing I couldn't understand, she had this big suitcase with her. She was just coming across Fifth Avenue, and she was dragging this goddam big suitcase with her. She could hardly drag it. When I got up closer, I saw it was my old suitcase, the one I used to use when I was at Whooton. I couldn't figure out what the hell she was doing with it. "Hi," she said when she got up close. She was all out of breath from that crazy suitcase. (266, emphases added)
Phoebe wears Holden's hat, drags Holden's suitcase, is out of breath as Holden often is, and during the ensuing scene refuses to return to school (269) as Holden himself has decided to refuse.

Yet their reversed relationship is again reversed when Phoebe returns the hat to Holden: "All she did was, she took off my red hunting hat-the one I gave her-and practically chucked it right in my face" (269). Salinger here again uses clothing as a formal device signaling an exchange of position: once more in possession of the hat, Holden again assumes the catcher/hunter role and pursues Phoebe as prey. However, although this time Holden tries to catch Phoebe literally, his prey eludes him.

Playing the role of prey but still acting in accord with her identity as goddess of the hunt, Phoebe teaches Holden a new technique for catching people; this paradoxical way of catching-catching by way of not catching-- is dramatized by the dynamic of their hunter/prey relationship in this scene. Holden narrates, "I sort of tried to get hold of her old hand, but she wouldn't let me" (268), and goes on to make numerous similar attempts to reconnect with her physically (268-71). However, Phoebe rebuffs Holden definitively when he becomes too forceful: "I took a hold of the belt at the back of her coat, just for the hell of it, but she wouldn't let me. She said, `Keep your hands to yourself, if you don't mind"' (271-72, emphases added). If one tries to hunt the prey by catching it, one fails in hunting. Not only do the roles of hunter and prey resolve to be interchangeable, but the very act of catching resolves to be its opposite: not catching. This ambivalent way of catching, akin to Zen archery, 9 dissolves the binary opposition of catching/not catching, and only by adopting it does Holden become a real people hunter embodying the identity between his prey and himself.

Having mastered this lesson, Holden narrates, "Then what she did-it damn near killed me-she reached in my coat pocket and took out my red hunting hat and put it on my head" (274). Beyond signifying the exchange of roles in the Holden-Phoebe relationship, the red hunting hat has been performing what Bakhtin calls "[c]rowning/decrowning . . . a dualistic ambivalent ritual, expressing the inevitability and at the same time the creative power of the shift-and-renewal" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 124). The shifts of the hunting hat signal not merely exchanges of fixed hunter/catcher-prey/ caught roles, but also rebirth through these role changes, as well as the underlying identity of the roles themselves. This "dualistic ambivalent ritual" recognizes no difference between the catcher and the caught, between catching and not catching, or even between life and death. Watching Phoebe and other children as they face an imminent fall (from a carousel informed by an immanent fall), Holden thinks, "If they fall off, they fall off" (274). It is indeed through a fall (death) that new life is born-in this case, a new catcher who embodies the oneness of Phoebe, Allie, and Holden, joined by the carousel and the rain.

Only D. B., eldest of the four Caulfield children, remains to be saved after the carousel ride and the rain. We first encounter D. B. in the novel's opening paragraph, in which Holden introduces him as having once been "a regular writer" but having since become a "prostitute" Hollywood scriptwriter, and thus fallen (4). Holden furthermore reveals that his favorite book is D. B.'s The Secret Goldfish; from the outset, his relationship with D. B. is defined as that of reader and writer.

D. B.'s salvation is set in motion at the novel's beginning when he and Holden-like Holden and Allie, and Holden and Phoebe-exchange roles. That is, although D. B. is a writer, it is Holden who tells his story to D. B., the story of The Catcher in the Rye: "I'll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me. . . . I mean that's all I told D. B. about, and he's my brother and all”. Holden thus assumes the role of writer and D. B. that of reader, even as Holden identifies himself as a reader of D. B.'s story.

Recalling that the story by D. B. that Holden admires is "The Secret Goldfish," it is reasonable therefore to consider how Holden, in his authorial role as narrator of Catcher, undertakes to tell his own fish story. From this perspective, the novel can be viewed simply as the story of Holden as Ichthys. However, like the ambivalent fish symbolism that Salinger employs in "Seymour: An Introduction," fish in Catcher portray a far from orthodox vision of Christian salvation, as Holden's encounter with the taxi driver Horwitz reveals.

Horwitz explains how fish survive the winter to Holden as follows:
"Their bodies, for Chrissake. . . . They got their pores open the whole time. That's their nature, for Chrissake . . . Listen," he said. "If you was a fish, Mother Nature' d take care ofyou, wouldn't she? Right? You don't think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?"
In this explanation of fish-the only one that Holden is to receive-"bodies" rather than the spirit are emphasized, as is "Mother Nature" rather than the Holy Father, and "hell" rather than heaven (Holden observes that Horwitz drives "off like a bat out of hell". These emphases undermine the primacy assigned to spirit, Father, and heaven in Christian orthodoxy, rendering equivocal their values vis-a-vis body, Mother, and hell, much as death and the caught are to fuse into birth and the catcher as the novel progresses. Thus, Ichthys in Holden's Christmas story represents not a traditional Christ but rather a Jungian version of an ambivalent Christ.

That D. B. visits Holden in the hospital suggests his desire to help-to save, in a sense-his younger brother, but in receiving Holden's Ichthys story, it is D. B. who is saved. Since it was his own fish story, "The Secret Goldfish," that conferred D. B.'s status as a "regular" writer initially, Holden's gift of a fish story may be seen as restoring that status. Once again in possession of a fish story, D. B. is no longer a "prostitute" at the novel's close. Thus D. B. experiences a rebirth like that of Mary Magdalene, the penitent prostitute who bore first witness to the resurrected Savior.
D. B.'s birthday present to Holden of a book by Ring Lardner lends further significance to the brothers' exchange of roles. As noted above, the Lardner book contains the story "There Are Smiles," which culminates with a death in the rain. The story that Holden offers to revive D. B.-the narrative of Catcher-also depicts a death (i.e., rebirth) in the rain, and thus comprises a fitting gift for D. B.'s (re)birthday at the end of the novel. By becoming both giver and receiver of stories, D. B. is restored to the status from which he fell.

Finally, by appearing in both the first and final chapters of Catcher, D. B. provides the novel with a circular structure through which its own birth (beginning) and death (end) are connected. In this regard, it seems likely that the initials D. B. are an abbreviation of Death and Birth. It is noteworthy that these initi,ls reverse the conventional order of these words; death precedes birth as falling precedes salvation. The character of D. B. may be understood to embody the flux between and ultimate oneness of these binary opposites.

Despite the contrasts between Holden and his three siblings, they have merged by the end of the novel in such perfect harmony through their exchanges (and fusions) of roles that we come to recognize the fundamental unity of this quaternity of siblings. Their identity--the identity of savior and saved, life and death, and other binary oppositions-finds clear expression in the novel's final rain, the circular movement of the carousel, and Holden's closure of his story to his brother. Furthermore, in the devices by which Salinger connects the novel to the real world-the phonograph record, James Castle, and the carousel itself21-we recognize the creative principle implicit in the underlying unity of opposites. Thus as we witness the carousel in the novel, we are conscious of its Phoenix-like rebirth from the burnt carousel that was its precursor in reality. We may also find fire, the agent of its rebirth, to be informed by the "deeply ambivalent" image of fire in carnival, the fire that-as Bakhtin remarks-"simultaneously destroys and renews the world" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 126).

The Identity Between the Novel and Its Reader

Beyond the binary oppositions considered above, Catcher explores the dynamics and underlying unity of a range of oppositions worthy of further study: mind/body, father/mother, man/woman, nun/prostitute, sun/moon, fiction/fact, and of course real/phony. On the topic of sexuality alone, for instance, the novel repeatedly undermines conventional fixed values. Although Holden seemingly accepts his society's conventional prejudices against homosexuality, the only two people that Holden respects other than family members are Antolini and Carl Luce, the novel's gay or bisexual characters. As if to reflect the blurred relationship of sexual innocence and guilt, to take another example, Holden ends his meetings with the prostitute and the nuns by giving the same amount of money, ten dollars, to each. Catcher offers fertile ground for further readings that look to such subversions of conventional oppositions.

Studies of Salinger would benefit, too, from a broadened theoretical perspective. Although Salinger has long been considered in terms of the influence of Zen Buddhism, the perspective of Western mysticism has been largely neglected, despite its relevance to Salinger's struggle against the hierarchical binary oppositions that constitute central principles of Western thought. As yet largely unconsidered vis-a-vis Salinger, Jung, in particular, promises further insight in this regard, not only into the problem of sexuality, but also the relations of heaven and hell, mind and body, and other binary oppositions beyond the scope of this essay. Finally, this essay's concern with Bakhtin represents an initial approach to the postmodern point of view on Salinger, yet this perspective, too, remains to be fully developed.

But it must be noted that, regardless of theoretical perspective, any analytic reading that focuses upon the dissolution of binary oppositions cannot evade the risk of self-betrayal. Analysis necessarily divides the analyst and the analyzed, introducing a binary opposition of the very sort it aims to interrogate. To conclude, therefore, let us apply our reading of the identity between catcher and caught to ourselves, the analysts, in our experience of reading the novel.

First, the notion of the underlying identity of binary opposites developed thus far suggests that as readers of Catcher, we cannot "catch" the novel unless we are "caught" by the novel. That is, to stand outside of the novel scrutinizing it is to miss the point; rather, the novel must be experienced, because only experience affords the possibility of self-evidential knowledge beyond analysis. In exploring such a possibility, John T. Irwin quotes Wittgenstein's remark that "[t]here are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words". Words-doubts, questions, even explanations-are predicated upon the separation of subject from experience. What is anterior to this separation literally cannot be said. It can only be shown.

A more analytical Holden might share this view, for Holden's experience at the end of Catcher is to witness the self-evident: that which lies beyond language or analysis. Thus Holden, bearing witness to Phoebe on the carousel, narrates, "I don't know why. It was just that she looked so damn nice, the way she kept going around and around, in her blue coat and all"; Holden shares with us his own deed not by explaining it, but by showing us what he witnesses even as we read (witness) the novel.

It furthermore bears mention that as a reader (of D. B.'s stories, The Great Gatsby, and other literary works), Holden himself does not analyze literary experience so much as he lives it-as a Gatsby-like, blessed dead man in the rain, for example, and as a mystical Ichthys like D. B.'s secret goldfish; Holden's reading experience is manifested thus in his own life rather than in his thoughts or beliefs. As readers of Holden's story, we, in turn, must live and experience Holden's story, for its essential fusions of binary oppositions lie in the realm, not of analysis, but rather of "what cannot be said." Holden, verging on tears, reveals this to us directly as he shares his happiness at watching his sister on the carousel: "God, I wish you could've been there". Holden simply cannot explain the truth he witnesses in words, but his longing to share it with us is its own fulfillment. Addressed directly by Holden's words, we step inside the novel to experience it by his side. With the collapse of this final boundary-the boundary between novel and reader-- the Catcher's subversion of binary oppositions is completed; the boundaries dividing Holden-Allie, savior-saved, life-death, Gatsby's fictional world-- Holden's real world (book-reader), and finally writer-reader dissolve in the rain.

This moment is one deeply informed by the sensibility of carnival, a chief value of which is the elision of the boundary between performer and spectator. As Bakhtin remarks, "Carnival is a pageant . . . without a division into performers and spectators. . . . [E]veryone is an active participant" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 122). In keeping with this sensibility, Salinger has orchestrated this conclusive moment around a structure much akin to a central feature of carnival, what Bakhtin describes as "a special structure (usually a vehicle adorned with all possible sorts of gaudy carnival trash) called `hell.' . . . [Alt the close of carnival this 'hell' . . . [is] triumphantly set on fire" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 126). Joining Holden by the carousel in the rain, we as readers share Holden's triumphal realization, witnessing it in the nimbus of fire surrounding the original carousel that links it to reality.
References:
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little, Brown, 1951. READ MORE!