Looking For Love And Beyond

The Catcher in the Rye is both a classical and controversial novel. There are as many praises as there are many criticisms. It is very hard and rather disturbing trying to make a different voice heard among so many. But in spite of the huge amount of praises and criticisms lavished upon the novel, very few critics have spoken with the actual literary object before their eyes, and their critical insights are almost always about the various parts and aspects of the novel instead of about the whole novel itself.This paper is a general thematic study of The Catcher in the Rye in the perspective of love's redeeming power and social value in the modern society and to the modern man. It points out that love as a theme is of basic and structural importance in the novel, and it argues that Holden Caulfield, the novel's narrator and protagonist, is essentially looking for a love but eventually transcends that love. It follows from there that Holden has achieved through love his identity and purpose in life and by having so achieved he has given his writing its meaning and style. So the paper concludes that, for Holden and for Salinger, love is the style of life and the style of writing. And that is what they are trying to convey to us.Of course, few critics have already talked about love in The Catcher in the Rye, but to them it is either too obvious a matter of fact, or technically too sexual a matter, or philosophically too abstract, or even just absurd. This paper contends that love in The Catcher in the Rye is neither technically just a rose nor metaphysically just a warm heart from a cold God. It argues that it is also a red, red rose growing up naturally and rationally in the warm heart of a real man...