Creation of Emptiness and Hopelessness: A Close Reading of The Catcher in the Rye Fan Liu 1,a, Yong-Zhi Liu 2,b,*

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1 2016 International Conference on Humanities Science, Management and Education Technology (HSMET 2016) ISBN: Creation of Emptiness and Hopelessness: A Close Reading of The Catcher in the Rye Fan Liu 1,a, Yong-Zhi Liu 2,b,* 1 No.1, Dongsanlu, Erxianqiao, Chenghua District, College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, Chengdu University of Technology, , Chengdu, P.R. China a @qq.com, b lyzhi@cdut.edu.cn *Corresponding author Keywords: Emptiness; Hopelessness; the Catcher in the Rye; Jerome David Salinger; American Literature Abstract: Through a close reading of the text it is concluded that the symbolic description of the protagonist Holden's context, clothing, use of language, and psychological state plays a crucial role in the creation of the hopelessness and emptiness of American youth after WWⅡ who were psychologically paradoxical owing to the troubles they met and the loneliness they felt, and that dirty words in the text, once making the novel controversial, merely represent the youth s hopelessness and emptiness. Introduction The novel The Catcher in the Rye was written by Jerome David (J.D.) Salinger, an American short story writer and novelist, whose life experiences were similar to those of the protagonist in the novel. The Catcher in the Rye is a success not only because it explores and artistically displays the psychology of post war American youth, but also because the unrestrained figure and empty mind of its main character strike a powerful and sympathetic chord among contemporary American adolescents. Many theses in a wide range of subject areas have examined the protagonist Holden Caulfield. From the point of view of psychology, G.S. Amur argues that Holden is thirsty for earthly paradise and love from others when he faces a spiritual crisis [1]. William Riggan contrasts The Catcher in the Rye with Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, making comparisons between Holden and Huckleberry from the point of view of sociology [4]. Donald P. Costello affirms that the records of the language features of post war American youth in the novel are valuable to linguistic research [3]. How does the author use words to describe the unrestrained figure and vacant mind of Holden, and how does he convey an atmosphere of emptiness and confusion? Through a process of close reading, this thesis will analyze Salinger's creation of a sense of emptiness and hopelessness in The Catcher in the Rye through his use of symbolism. The Creation of Emptiness and Hopelessness How to use words to successfully convey the complex psychology of a character is a challenge many authors faced. In a literary work, symbols appear in the form of words, images, objects, settings, events, and characters, and are often used deliberately to reinforce the theme of the work. Symbols, however, imply different things to different people, and different cultures may react differently to the same symbols. Thus, symbols are usually categorized as either universal symbols or private symbols, depending on the source of the associations that provide their meanings [7]. Salinger uses many symbols throughout the novel, various colors, a red hunting hat, the cold winter, a cliff, for instance, which indirectly provide a description of the figure and psychology of protagonist Holden. In The Catcher in the Rye, settings, scenario, colors and characters are endowed with special symbolic significance and serve to create an atmosphere of emptiness and confusion, just like a black-and-white film, occasionally dotted with a few bright colors, thus constituting a unique 102

2 artistic writing style. Using close reading to analyze the text according to four main aspects: the protagonist Holden's living environment, clothing, style of speech, and psychological state, this paper discusses Salinger's creation of a sense of emptiness and hopelessness. Environmental Description Implying the Atmosphere of Emptiness and Hopelessness The story takes place in the three days before Christmas. The protagonist, Holden, has been expelled from Pencey Middle School and is left to roam the streets of New York. The weather is very cold: "it was cold as a witch's teat" [5, 9], "it was icy as hell and I damn near fell down"(ibid:3), "It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road"(ibid:3). The weather is a metaphor for American reality. After World War Ⅱ, Americans were numb and confused. What the war brought America was not stabbing pain, but the joy of victory and future prosperity. However, people lost their self-control in the face of such abundance substance. They lost their spiritual life and became alienated, like slaves. In post war America people lived in the wasteland of spirit, the relationships among people were cold and detached, and the spirits of people were as hollow and poor as the winter ground. In this strange and cold adult world, it was difficult for Holden, only sixteen to pursue truth, tender feelings and true love. At the end of the novel, he sees that in Phoebe's school and, even in the museum, "Somebody'd written "Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy" (ibid: 108). So Holden thinks "I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I'd smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and goddam dead and bloody"(ibid:108). But he also admits "I wouldn't have the guts to do it" (ibid: 108). Then he tries his best to wipe away these dirty words. Unexpectedly, he realizes "If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "Fuck you" signs in the world. It's impossible" (ibid: 109). In another scene, children are running in a field of rye which lies on the edge of a cliff and they are in danger of falling off the cliff at any moment. Even though Holden, "The catcher in the rye", tries to save them from danger, all his efforts are in vain. Salinger uses the metaphor of "the cliff" to show readers that Holden and his contemporaries are confused and have lost themselves to the irresistible social force, and it is no use for them to try to escape. Children of sixteen inevitably grow up and become adults. It is no use for them to revolt and try to change society. There is no hope for them in pursuing something. When they step off the cliff, what is waiting for them is at bottomless chasm. Of course, there is no shelter for them either. With this subtext, The Catcher in the Rye, "has the dubious distinction of being at once the most frequently censored book across the nation and the second-most frequently taught novel in public schools"[2],. The frigid weather thus represents the cold and indifferent relationships between people and conveys this emptiness to readers. Salinger's intended meaning of the cliff is obviously a representation of the dangerous boundary between the world of children and of adults. The children playing with joy in the rye may cross the boundary at any time and fall into the chasm and die. If Salinger uses the "ducks" to represent Holden's personal difficulties, the "cliff" reflects the crisis of the whole of American society, a crisis which threatens millions of children. Garment Description Reflecting the Atmosphere of Emptiness and Hopelessness With regard to symbols involving clothing, one notable example is the use of Holden's hat. Whenever Holden puts on his hat, he is either around people he does not like or in an environment he is unfamiliar with. When Ackley is horsing around in Holden's dorm and interrupting his reading, he puts on the hat, so that he cannot see Ackley, who is a sort of "nasty guy". Wearing the hat, Holden says: "Mother Darling, everything's getting so dark in here Mother darling, give me your hand. Why won't you give me your hand?"[5, 9] In general, "mother" is equivalent to warmth and safety. Holden lacks parental love. But he mentions "mother" here, indicating that he is longing for parental love and that he can only feel the warmth and care when wearing the hat. When he has a fight with Strad later and loses, his nose is "bleeding all over the place" (ibid: 25), and he starts looking for his hat. "Finally I found it. It was under the bed. I put it on and turned the old peak around the back, the way I liked it and I went over and took a look at my stupid face in the mirror" (ibid: 25). He gets hurt in reality, so he decides to put on the hat to feel protected and comforted. Moreover, when he starts writing the composition for Ackley, he puts on this hat. Though Ackley is 103

3 a "nasty guy" (ibid: 11), Holden is still willing to help him; in other words, purity and innocence remain in him. Later when he is leaving school, he is "sort of crying" (ibid: 29); because he is lonely; and because the school has rejected him. Then he puts on his hat, letting go of his disappointment with the outside world. Therefore, the hat serves as a comfort and a spiritual shelter; he can find satisfaction in this hat, rather than in the world he lives in. He hides himself in the hat, in a world that he creates. Walking back to the hotel, he is alone, feeling freezing cold. He dons his hat, even putting the earlaps down in order to keep warm. Throughout the novel, he always has the hat on when he is walking outdoors alone. "I took my old hunting hat out of my pocket while I walked, and put it on. I knew I wouldn't meet anybody that knew me, and it was pretty damp out" (ibid: 66). At the end of the novel, the sudden rain get him soaked, "I got pretty soaking wet, especially my neck and my pants. My hunting hat really gave me quite a lot of protection, in a way" (ibid: 114). The hat serves as a protection, keeping him from the false world. The symbolic meaning of Holden Caulfield's hat in The Catcher in the Rye is comfort, "I didn't want to look a screwball or something". Moreover, when he goes back to home, he takes off the hat "so as not to look suspicious or anything" (ibid: 84). This apparently displays his ambivalent attitude. On one hand, he wears the hat to show that he is not part of the phony world, and that the world full of indifferent people and worldly pursuit should be rejected. On the other hand, he recognizes that the hat is quite conspicuous and peculiar when he is out in society, and that he should avoid wearing the hat so as not to look rebellious and cynical. While he despises this corrupted world teeming with material concerns and emotionless people, he unconsciously conforms with the expectations of adulthood by attempting to buy liquor, flirting with women and even inviting a prostitute to his room. He is caught between rebellion and weakness, resistance and compromise. The hat is with him wherever he goes, but later he gives it to his sister Phoebe. Holden holds a favorable impression of her all the time, and in fact idealizes her as: a child of purity and innocence, which he attaches great importance to. He wants to protect Phoebe from the corrupt adult world. His taking off the hat deliberately gives full expression to this contradictory attitude towards society and the process of growing up. Linguistic Description Mirroring the Atmosphere of Emptiness and Hopelessness In the novel, the youth use colloquial speech, vulgar expressions, slang, and incorrect grammar to express his confusion and frustration with the emptiness of society. By any reckoning of sales, critical respect, or cultural influence, J. D. Salinger is recognized as one of the most popular, widely read and most influential contemporary authors after World War II [6]. In general, Holden's words in the novel are crude and informal, showing his rejection of formal education and confusion over his present and future life as a middle-school student. For instance, there are always some extra and almost meaningless words adhering to the end of Holden's sentences, such as "and all" [5, 9], "or something" (ibid: 1) and "or anything" (ibid: 2)". Even at the beginning of the novel, these cohesive devices are common. "They're nice and all I'm not saying that but they're also touchy as hell", "I'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything" (ibid: 1), such expressions have no grammatical function and the use of them is purely arbitrary. Meanwhile, Holden prefers to repeat these words. It was not unusual for post-war American teenagers to struggle with psychological issues such as despair loneliness, anxiety and social pressure. They tried various means to alleviate their psychological pain by using drugs when they were in despair living in groups, when they felt lonely, scared and pessimistic, they became confused and empty. Some, such as Holden, even turned to psychologists. In order to exaggerate his feelings to compensate for his emptiness, like other teenagers, Holden often uses phrases like "I really do" (ibid: 5), "they really can" (ibid: 40), "it really is" (ibid: 48) and "if you want to know the truth" (ibid: 50). After World War II, many slang words began to be used among American young people. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden uses a lot of such words, including "messy matter" (ibid: 35), "merely miscellaneous matter" (ibid: 78), "foolishness" (ibid: 89), "and untrue things" (ibid: 24). Holden repeatedly uses other slang words such as "crazy" (ibid: 40) and "kill" (ibid: 40). 104

4 Another slang word that Holden uses most frequently is "old". He calls his phony headmaster "old Hass" (ibid: 8), the disgusting history teacher "old Spencer" (ibid: 3), his most beloved sister "old Phoebe" (ibid: 36), and headmaster's daughter "old Selma Thurmer" (ibid: 2). Holden comes from a well-off middle class family and has attended a very good school. He has read Hardy and Shakespeare and he writes papers for other students. We can conclude that Holden makes these mistakes deliberately because he hates following all kinds of rules in both language and life. In doing so, he is struggling to break the rules and reject the standard to demonstrate his dissatisfaction with society. By using these particular words and phrases during conversation in the novel, Salinger gives us a vivid picture of Holden. Through his use of symbols, Salinger expresses emptiness of Holden's pervasive feeling of emptiness. Through this, we can gain a deeper understanding of the lives and psychology of post-war American youth. Psychological Description Conveying the Atmosphere of Emptiness and Hopelessness In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield is afflicted with severe psychological trauma caused by the death of Allie, his younger brother, and in response to this, he strongly resists society. As early as 1996, Luo[8] pointed out that the reason why Holden is different from others is that he is young and he has been pushed out of the relatively ordered world of children and must step into the adult world to seek his future. He is confused by this transitional life stage. As we all know, adolescence is the stage that everyone must experience. It has the universality of biology. Holden appears to be a normal adolescent who wants to feel love, care, and understanding from others. Holden wants to protect the young children who are in danger of falling over the cliff, which is interpreted by Warren French as the border between the carefree innocence of childhood and the inauthentic world of adults. This view may find its support in Holden's effort to catch the person who wrote "Fuck you" on the wall and to smash "his head on the stone steps till he was good and Goddamn dead and bloody" [5, 9]. "I knew, too, I wouldn't have the guts to do it, I hardly even had the guts to rub it off the wall with my hand, if you want to know the truth. I was afraid some teacher would catch me rubbing it off and would think I'd written it" (ibid: 261). In fact, Holden sees himself in the boy as he wishes himself to be noticed and cared by someone. This desire becomes clearer when he wants to leave his parents' apartment. "I didn't give much of a damn any more if they caught me. I really didn't. I figured if they caught me, they caught me. I almost wished they did, in a way"(ibid: 97). As for his perception of himself, Holden kept saying, "I'm crazy. I swear to God I'm a madman" (ibid: 111). In the novel, Holden uses the word "crazy" and its variants mad, madman, and insane over fifty times and he even pretends that he is suffering from a brain tumor. When his brother D. B. wants to ask him about his thoughts towards "all this stuff," he replies, "If you want to know the truth, I don't know what I think about it" (ibid: 115). Every detail in this novel suggests that the protagonist is lost in this world like a stray dog. Critics view this story as a picaresque or an initiation novel, or, to some, a work of Beat literature with the major themes of alienation as a form of self-protection, the painfulness of growing up, and the phoniness of the adult world [6]. The above analysis reveals that Holden is indeed a stray dog who does not know what to do and where to go in this three days wandering in New York. No one he contacts is willing to make any effort to offer him a way out or even give him some care and guidance. Though his own dear younger sister Phoebe might be an exception, she can only act as a good listener and companion. However, she is too young to offer any solution for Holden's spiritual predicament. Conclusion Throughout close reading, the creation of an atmosphere of emptiness and hopelessness in The Catcher in the Rye has been analyzed. Through the use of descriptive elements related to Holden's environment, clothing, speech, and psychology, J.D. Salinger vividly conveys a sense of emptiness and hopelessness in the novel. In this way, readers gain further understanding of not only the nature, circumstances, and psychology of the protagonist but also post-world language patterns of American youth at that time. Salinger successfully employs many symbols War II American society. This paper aims also to give readers a better understanding of Salinger's writing style. He gives the 105

5 readers detailed knowledge about the psychological struggle and as an integral part of the narrative to stimulate readers' imagination and convey the impact of these feelings of emptiness and hopelessness. By exploring the profound psychology and life state of American youth, Salinger's novel has come to typify the theme of preclusion and stands as one of the peak works of world literature. Moreover, the language used by the protagonist in the novel has had a profound influence on both American and world literature. Acknowledgement This paper was financially supported by the Shanghai Natural Science Foundation ( ), Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission (060000) and Shanghai Leading Academic Discipline Project of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission ( ). References [1] Amur G.S: Theme, Structure & Symbol in The Catcher in the Rye, edited by London & New York Gale Research Inc (1989). [2] Harold Bloom: Bloom's Bio-Critiques: J.D. Salinger, edited by Philadelphia Chelsea House. (2001), p.78 [3] Donald P. Costello: The Language of The Catcher in the Rye, edited by London & New York Gale Research Inc (1989). [4] William Riggan: In Contemporary Literary Criticism, edited by London & New York Gale Research Inc (1989). [5] J.D. Salinger: The Catcher in the Rye, edited by Boston: Little, Brown and Company (1951). [6] Zhuo Wang, Quan-wen Li: American Literature, edited by Hubei Central China Normal University (2010). [7] Jian WeiI: A Guide to Appreciating English Literature, edited by Zhejiang University Press.56 57(2008). [8] Shi-ping Luo: Study in Mental Disorders Holden in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, submitted to Journal of Sichuan International Studies University (1996). [9] Cambridge International Dictionary of English with Chinese Translation, edited by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press. 1413(2004) 106