Literary Analysis Essay On The Catcher In The Rye

Intriguing, boring, captivating, uninteresting: these are all examples of words that teenagers use to describe the novel, The Catcher in the Rye. In this coming-of-age fiction by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield, an expelled teenager, kills a few days in New York City in order to prolong having to tell his parents the news of his expelling. This book is irrelevant to today's teenagers because they have different interests, they can’t feel sympathy for Holden, and the language used throughout the book is outdated.

Today’s teenagers have different interests now than they did back in the 1950s. Teenagers seem to be more interested in succeeding academically, reading fantasy books, and exploring the technology they now have at their fingertips.

He has mostly everything he needs to succeed in life, however rather than using his resources, he is immature and rude. Some teachers are stating that their students can’t feel sympathy for Holden because of how much he has. For example, Ariel Levenson, an English teacher at the Dalton School in Manhattan, stated that many of her students couldn’t “really feel bad for this rich kid with a weekend free in New York City” (Schuessler). Holden, who is rich, just gets to spend free time roaming New York City. Since he is rich and gets a ton of open time, teenagers aren’t able to feel bad for him. The book then becomes irrelevant to them because they don’t want to read a book about a teenager who thinks that his life is difficult although he is rich and has a lot of free time. Holden is also seen as quite immature, which causes teenagers to not feel sympathy for him. Though he was once thought as being a rebel, he strikes many teenagers as being whiny and immature (“Is Catcher in the Rye still relevant to teens today?”). This may be because of his harsh opinions towards the world with many people being phonies or because he was expelled. If Holden wasn’t so harsh towards people in the world and had more maturity, teenagers would give him sympathy. It is often argued that Holden Caulfield is whiny and rude because of all the frustration that has built up from the endless quest for Jane Gallagher (“Is Catcher in the

People in the world today don’t speak or think the way Holden does in the novel. Since the language used is outdated, it causes teenagers to not have the same connection as teenagers in the past did. This is due to the fact that they don’t use the language anymore. Ariel Levenson and her students agreed with this idea of the language being obsolete. She found that even her “students who liked the book [tended] to find the language… grating a dated” (Schuessler). Holden is suppose to be a paradigmatic teenager who all teenagers can relate to, but the teenagers today just don’t talk the way he does. The teenagers find the book to be irrelevant considering they cannot relate to the way he communicates. Further, the common vocabulary that teenagers use today isn’t found anywhere in the book. Jennifer Jolly, a writer for USA today, says that the most common words teenagers use today amongst each other are: “Fam, lit, turnt, goals, thirsty, shade, savage, squad…” and many more (“A guide to all those weird words your teen uses.”). Out of over twenty words, not a single one is found in the Catcher in the Rye. Instead, there are words such as “Flits,” “backassackwards,” and “phony” (Salinger). These are a few of the words that many teenagers don’t even use today. This causes the book to become irrelevant because it doesn’t use the common language that they use today.