The Personal Narrative and Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye"

Author(s): Danielle M. Roemer

Source: Western Folklore , Jan., 1992, Vol. 51, No. 1, The Personal Narrative in
Literature (Jan., 1992), pp. 5-10
Published by: Western States Folklore Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1499640

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The Personal Narrative

and Salinger's Catcher in

the Rye
DANIELLE M. ROEMER

Nowadays, J. D. Salinger's Catcher in

American critics, though it does rece
German and Japanese scholars. In t
novel's publications in 1951, howeve
scholars was sharply honed. During t
the novel's pedestrian content. Rathe
Catcher's links to everyday acts make
fully explored. The novel encourages
emergent yet expectable dimensions
by referencing dynamics of person
(1989) has explained, stories can be
playing a sense of one's self. Personal
about: the making of identity across
Telling stories requires telling about
ration, the speaking self is necessaril
spoken of. The narrator creates a sen
identity, framing it as an object of a
storytelling can be said to function a
and marking a sense of distance, it is
agent and object, between sign and r
should also remember that meanin
gap of difference. Meaning depend
(1989) has called allusive narration,
and object selves is evocative; the pres

Western Folklore 51 (January, 1992): 5-10

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 6 WESTERN FOLKLORE

transformed. However
and discrete self, groun
to re-emerge in the
emerges, allusive narr
through time.
Storytelling involves
of plot and description
well. In allusive narrati
a reconstruction. Stew
possibility of repetitio
[context of origin]. We
aesthetic." The search
acts of contemporaneo
in allusive narration. A
of Holden Caulfield's s
Like most of us, Hold
self. Where Holden out
foci of the identities h
sessed with his capacit
duces as defense and
uneasy plentitude of
surplus and a deficit o
litely contrite student
exam; an assertive indig
roommate Stradlater; a
a Pency student name
tumor in the brain" and
grandmother; a Govern
more or less straightfor
ened young man who w
his head-etc. Of the role of the Governor's son, Holden makes a
comment that seems to be applicable to them all: "I hate the movies
like poison, but I get a bang imitating them ... All I need's an audi-
ence. I'm an exhibitionist" (29).
Considering how much he has lost to the insensitivity, incompe-
tence, or disappearance of relevant others, Holden's intensity is per-
haps understandable. His parents are ineffective (at least as he por-
trays them), and he is reluctant to trust other authority figures. He is
separated geographically from his brother D. B. and by death from

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SALINGER'S CATCHER IN THE RYE 7

his brother Allie. He is drawn by the

social relationships, but he is made un
Because he has situated himself wi
alterity, Holden replays past losses. An
the involvement that would preface t
up in issues of repeatability:

"One thing I like a lot you mean?" I ask

"All right," I said. But the trouble was, I

was this one boy at Elkton Hills, named J
back something he said about this very
Finally, what he did, instead of taking ba
the window ... He was dead, and his teeth
place, and nobody would even go near h
sweater I'd lent him (170).

It is not coincidence that Holden's spe

Castle precedes one of his memories o
ing himself and begs Allie to help him
teriality. In consequence, he tries to r
tial repetition by storying his own an

"Allow me to introduce myself. My na

"Ya got a watch on ya?" [Sunny] said.
my name was, naturally. "Hey, how old
"Me? Twenty-two."
"Like fun you are."
"It was a funny thing to say. It sounde
a prostitute and all would say "Like h
instead of "Like fun you are." (94)

To Holden, what can be reified into

trolled, buffered against, or at least s
The root of the problem is not in H
in the daily life world. Rather, it has
from his sense of the appropriate grou
on which he should depend in genera
Stewart's is instructive here. She h
increasingly mediated and abstracted,
the phenomenological world is replace
and presence ... In this process of d

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 8 WESTERN FOLKLORE

body is replaced by t
phoric remakings of th
present characterize H
Much of Holden's trus
with Allie's death. Since, it has become a focus of- avoidance and
desire. As one consequence, Holden moves now within coordinates of
otherness. His is a world of things lost before they can be gained, of
nostalgia that precedes involvement. And, again in defense, he tried
to focus himself within frames of metaphoric and literal corporeality.
For example, unmoored from his identity by Allie's death and other
familial disjunctures, Holden has identified and sensitized himself to
others' territories of self (Goffman 1974): Dick Slater's suitcases, Mr.
Spencer's old sick body, Ackley's fingernails and mossy teeth, the
nun's smile, the rotting mummy faces. He has keyed into selfcon-
scious dramas and narrations various material signs of his own per-
sonhood (e.g., his red hunting cap and his prematurely grey hair).
Oftentimes, he gives up material signs to others: his coat to Stradlater,
his sweater to James Castle, his typewriter to the guy down the hall.
And finally, separating himself from the social body, Holden has
refracted involvement into values of disengagement and idealization.
For example, he tries to avoid confrontations, sidestepping encoun-
ters, such as those with Stradlater and Maurice, that might leave phys-
ical traces of contact.

In addition, remaking physicality into its contrary, Holden ideal-

izes the other. As perhaps the most significant instance, he places
himself in the transcendent role of the catcher in the rye. Here, na-
ture is not grotesque but miniature. This is the domain of the child
and other innocents--Phoebe, Ernest Morrow's mother, the ducks in
Central Park. Storied into vulnerability by Holden, they function as
evocative foci in his nostalgic reconstructions. He uses his perceptions
of them to recontextualize memory, questing in the present for a lost
assuagement and relation. We see this drive as well when Holden
places himself in the role of the buffered child. In this identity, he
imagines an Eden in the woods and appreciates the museum for
encasing its objects behind protective glass. He echoes it further in his
identity as the abandoned child, the mourner of a lost brother. And
because the personas of protector and innocent mean so much, be-
cause he uses them to draw into membership so many of the details of
his life, Holden tries to dampen his awareness of their pervasive man-
ifestations. As he says lightly at one point: "I think maybe I'm just

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SALINGER'S CATCHER IN THE RYE 9

partly yellow and partly the type th

they lose their gloves. One of my t
when I lose something-it used to dr
a kid" (89).
Situating the genuine outside of h
originator of himself. Rather, he pl
concern with authenticity and its c
stems from his felt need for a cont
he was rather than for who he is. P
those people he calls phonies rem
need to achieve a sense of self. Phoe
can significantly interrupt Holden's
ald Rosen (1987:107) has put it, wha
out of his obsession with the sorrow
tion to the existential situation h
conversations with Phoebe, Holden
what he will do now that he's been k
he will go to Colorado and work o
make me laugh. You can't even ride
admits that he still thinks of Allie i
"Allie's dead" (171). Phoebe is the m
ally honest appraisors of the past a
to. She is the one who most effecti
Holden sense how he oversignifies hi
Salinger allows Holden to recon
identities - that of the catcher in th
carousel. As she plays, Phoebe uns
privileges of life which Holden ten
Phoebe enjoys the presentness to th
Routinely, people attempt a sense
life. And that desire for continuity
one's sense of self. Who people wer
erable extent on who now in the pre
been. Storytellers use allusive narra
present and past identities. It is sim
and of concealment. A past, which e
manufacture, becomes as the locus o
eryday experience, allusive narrator
strategically ignorant of the fact an
self. Or, selfconsciously, they ma

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 10 WESTERN FOLKLORE

present identities for

(Bauman 1977). Holden
social roles, yet we can
figure. On the one hand
remaker of the ongoing
for control, excessively
On the other hand, Hold
in acts of self-construc
personas are emergent c
gests the fictive status o
self-making is somethin

Northern Kentucky Univer

Highland Heights, KY

References Cited

Bauman, Richard. 1977. Verbal Art as Performance. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury

House.

Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization ofE

ence. New York: Harper & Row.
Rosen, Gerald. 1987. "A Retrospective Look at The Catcher in the Rye." I
Salinger. Ed. Harold Bloom, p. 95-109. New York: Chelsea House
Salinger, J. D. 1951. The Catcher in the Rye. Toronto and New York: B
Books.
Stahl, Sandra Dolby. 1989. Literary Folkloristics and the Personal Narrative.
Bloomington: Indiana University.
Stewart, Susan. 1980. "The Pickpocket: A Study in Tradition and Allusion."
Modern Language Notes 95:1127-54.
- . 1984. On Longing, Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir,
the Collection. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

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