Çavdar Tarlasında Çocuklar (The Catcher in the Rye)

The Catcher in the Rye was published by Little, Brown on July 16, 1951. Its author is J. D. Salinger. Depending on the edition, it runs to about two hundred thirty-four pages. In Turkish it is known as Çavdar Tarlasında Çocuklar.

Here is what I saw about the Turkish editions: the Kitapyurdu page lists a 198-page edition dated 2019, translated by Coşkun Yerli and published by Can Yayınları. The description on the same page says the book had earlier come out under the title Gönülçelen and that this translation was newly made from English. Turkish Wikipedia, on the other hand, writes that the first Turkish translation came out in 1967 by Adnan Benk and was made from French. I could not cross-check these two pieces of information anywhere else, so I am not speaking with certainty about the publisher and the year.

This article relies on the book's chapter structure, publisher descriptions and published reviews. It is not a reading diary but a reading guide.

Three days, a single voice

The novel is told in the voice of a teenager. Holden Caulfield is sixteen, has been expelled from Pencey Prep in Pennsylvania and leaves school before the Christmas break. Instead of going home, he wanders around New York for three days. The story is told after those days, from a sanatorium or rest home; on the last pages of the book Holden makes this clearly felt.

The book consists of twenty-six numbered chapters. The chapters have no titles. That is why, as I go through the book, I move by events rather than by chapter names.

The book opens with this sentence: "If you really want to hear about it" (Salinger). The narrator turning his back on the reader in the very first line sets the tone of the book. Holden does not enjoy telling the story, but he does not stop.

Salinger and the book's arrival

Jerome David Salinger was born in Manhattan on January 1, 1919. He went to several schools, including Valley Forge Military Academy, and attended the writing class of Whit Burnett, editor of Story magazine, at Columbia. His first story came out in Story in 1940.

In 1942 he was drafted, and as a counterintelligence officer in the 4th Infantry Division he was at D-Day, in the Ardennes and in the Hürtgen Forest. According to Wikipedia, the war affected him deeply. It matters to put this next to the book, because some critics read the novel as "a war novel in disguise." David Shields and Shane Salerno stand close to this reading.

Holden first appeared in a story sold to The New Yorker in 1941. Because of the war, the story was only published in 1946. Part of the novel had also been published in 1945 and 1946.

After the book came out, Salinger withdrew. In 1953 he moved to the town of Cornish in New Hampshire and published very little. His last published text was "Hapworth 16, 1924" in The New Yorker in 1965. He died in 2010 at the age of ninety-one.

The starting idea

The book was written for adults but lived on among young people. The reason is that Holden speaks in a voice that is funny, angry and lonely all at once. In his hands, the word "phony" is a measuring instrument: teachers, classmates, girls, a taxi driver.

But the interesting side of the book is that this measuring instrument is actually a defense. While Holden is busy finding other people phony, he does not have to look at what he himself has lost. His brother Allie died of leukemia. The novel mentions this death in passing like a side detail, but whichever way Holden turns, he ends up at Allie.

Pencey: walking out the door

In the opening chapters Holden has failed four classes. He goes to see his history teacher, Mr. Spencer; Spencer talks to him about following the rules, and Holden, privately finding him phony, is more focused on getting out as soon as possible than on listening. When he returns to his room, Ackley from the next room wears him down, while his roommate Stradlater goes on a date with Holden's childhood friend Jane Gallagher.

The real scene in this part of the book is Holden writing Stradlater's English composition. As his subject he chooses the baseball glove of his dead brother Allie. Stradlater does not like the composition because it does not follow the assignment, and Holden tears it up. The argument turns into a fight, and Stradlater knocks him to the floor.

I think what matters here is this: Holden's decision to leave school is not a plan, it is a reflex. After the fight he leaves Pencey early and gets on a train. The rest of the book is spent on the consequences of this reflex.

New York: the first night, the second day

Holden checks into the Edmont Hotel. In the hotel's nightclub he dances with Bernice Krebs, but quickly gets bored with her and her friends. He gets into a taxi and asks the driver where the ducks on the lagoon in Central Park go in winter. The question passes like a joke, but it keeps coming back until the end of the book: where the things that change go.

When he gets back to the hotel, Sunny, arranged by the elevator operator Maurice, comes to his room. Holden is too nervous to do anything, and an argument about the fee ends with Maurice beating him up. This section is one of the most uncomfortable parts of the book; here the author does not rescue Holden, and does not let the reader off easy either.

The next day he meets Sally Hayes. He finds Sally shallow but also attractive. On the date he criticizes everything, suggests they run away together to New England, and in the end insults Sally and loses her. Then he has drinks with his former classmate Carl Luce and asks him uncomfortable questions about his sex life. Luce gets up and leaves.

At night Holden is left alone, thinks about his own death in the park and decides to go home, to Phoebe.

Phoebe, Antolini and the carousel

The warmest part of the book is Phoebe. Holden sneaks into the house to see his little sister and tells her he wants to go to a ranch out west. This is where the source of the book's title comes in: Holden wants to be the one who stops children playing in a rye field from falling off a cliff. Phoebe corrects the words of the song: in Robert Burns's poem, the words are not the way Holden remembers them. The book shows, in a very gentle way, that Holden's greatest dream was born of mishearing.

Then he goes to the home of his former English teacher, Mr. Antolini. Antolini advises him not to be rigid and judgmental. Holden falls asleep on the couch and, when he wakes up and notices his teacher's hand on his head, he runs away. How the scene should be read is still debated to this day: some critics count it as a sexual advance, others say the exact opposite. I think the book deliberately leaves this question closed.

He sleeps in Grand Central and in the morning leaves a note for Phoebe at her school. At the Museum of Natural History he talks with two little boys about Egyptian mummies, then faints in the bathroom. Phoebe arrives with her suitcase and says she wants to go with him. In that moment Holden sees how pointless the plan is. He takes her to the zoo and the carousel; Phoebe rides the carousel and gives the red hunting hat back to Holden. Holden promises not to run away.

The last chapter is the frame story: Holden is in a rest home, working with a mental health professional, unsure whether he will go back to school, and sorry that he has told everyone this much.

Its strongest points

The voice. This is what keeps the book readable seventy-five years on. Holden's language catches the half-irritated, half-funny rhythm of everyday speech. Critics have always praised the book's vocabulary, teenage slang like "phony."

Second, that it does not state the grief outright. Not a single sentence about Allie comes in the form "he died and I am very sad." The grief shows itself in the subject of a composition, in a fight, in the ducks, in the protectiveness felt toward Phoebe.

Third, I think, that the ending of the book does not give an answer. Louis Menand reads the ending as hopeful. Bruce Brooks, on the other hand, says Holden does not change at all. Both readings come out of the book. A novel being able to carry two opposite readings is, I think, a strength.

Weak points and criticism

The middle part of the book repeats itself. Holden goes somewhere, gets angry at someone, calls them phony, leaves. You can read this as a flaw, or as the exhaustion of a state of mind. I think both are true.

In 2004, Jonathan Yardley wrote that rereading the book was painful and that he could not understand why teachers still assign it. I do not find him unfair, but I think the reason the book is still taught is exactly that it can give a name to the feeling of "nobody understands me" when you first have it as a young person.

The female characters also appear only through Holden's eyes, in a limited way. Jane, Sally, Bernice and Sunny do not speak in their own voices. Phoebe is the exception here.

For years there were attempts to ban the book in America. According to Wikipedia, it was the most censored book in US high schools and libraries between 1961 and 1982. The grounds were profanity, sexuality and encouraging rebellion. A darker side: when Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon, was arrested, he had a copy of the book in his hands. Holding a novel responsible for what one reader did seems unfair to me; still, this event is the heaviest shadow that has fallen on the book's name.

Diagnosing Holden

I am not writing this article to give a fictional character an ADHD diagnosis. A fictional character cannot have a diagnosis, and readers finding themselves on a page does not count as a diagnosis.

Still, as an adult with ADHD, I can say this: failing four classes and being expelled from school, getting dragged into a fight over a composition, no plan for the next day holding up, could be scenes a reader with ADHD will recognize. But the same scenes can also be explained by grief, depression, trauma or an ordinary adolescent crisis, and the book says nothing about this. I described this distinction in more detail in the ADHD or trauma article on the site. The ADHD in adolescence article is also there for those who want to recognize the signs in the teenage years.

I think the book's real value for a reader with ADHD lies somewhere else: seeing how harsh the story you build about yourself after an exam, or after leaving school, can be. Holden does not call himself a phony, but he calls everyone else one. For that harsh story built right after a failure, you can also look at the recovering after an exam article on the site.

Who it is for, and who it is not for

If you did not read it when you were young, or read it and did not get it, reading it as an adult is a different experience. There will be places where you cannot stand Holden's anger; that is part of the book too.

If you are looking for a novel written about loneliness, it is a good place to start. Few books describe being lonely in a crowd as simply as Holden does.

Not for someone looking for plot. Very little happens in three days.

If you are right in the middle of grief and do not want to touch it right now, you can open it another time. The book does not describe grief directly, but grief keeps circling between the pages.

Where it sits on the shelf

On the same shelf it can be read side by side with Tutunamayanlar (The Disconnected). In both, the narrator knows he does not belong to his surroundings, and both carry this feeling with humor. The difference, I think, is this: Atay builds the maladjustment of an adult intellectual, while Salinger speaks in a teenager's own language.

There is also a connection with Camus's The Stranger. Both are written in the first person, and in both the narrator does not show the emotion his surroundings expect. Meursault is judged for his lack of emotion, while Holden drowns himself in too much of it.

On the diary side, there is the Philia entry, where I wrote about what Aristotle said on friendship. Holden being unable to make real contact with anyone during those three days makes the book worth reading together with that entry. And there is the Shame and self-compassion article: I think the best thing anyone could say to Holden is this: be a little gentle with yourself too.

My take

I find the question of whether I love this book hard. You do not have to like Holden. But I do not know another novel that tells so quietly how a child was left alone after his brother's death, and how he could not say this to a single adult. Salinger holds this back until the carousel scene, and even then does not explain it. If you are going to read it, do not start out expecting an answer. The book does not give an answer; it leaves you with a question you will keep asking.