The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye debuted six years after World War II. During the war, the future was uncertain, patriarchal gender roles were subverted as women took on a wider range of jobs, and many veterans returned injured or traumatized. Following a period of war and, before that, economic depression, dominant American culture moved toward the reinstatement of normalcy and uniformity. Women were pressured to return to domestic roles and leave men to be breadwinners, and there was an economic boom. This led to a period characterized by pressure to conform. The rise of the television led to the homogenization of popular culture as people consumed the same media; new techniques in mass production led to people using and wearing the same items; and identical middle-class housing was built in growing suburbs as more people could afford to move out of cities and buy homes, due in part to the GI Bill providing benefits to veterans.

Holden Caulfield in the novel detests this culture of conformity. He accuses people of being “phony” and sees The Lack of Authenticity in Adult Society, and he notices the way society privileges people who conform. His red hunting hat represents his desire not to conform, as he does not wear the same mass-produced clothing as his peers. The Catcher in the Rye has therefore become a manifesto for misfits in modern history. However, Holden is a white teenage boy, and the text does not explore the fact that several groups in postwar America resisted conformity. The civil rights movement took root as African Americans opposed discrimination at home after having fought for their country. Many women resisted being displaced from their jobs, while many African American women continued to work due to economic necessity. Furthermore, America’s first gay rights organization, the Mattachine Society, was founded in 1950, whereas Caulfield expresses anti-gay prejudice in the novel, particularly toward Mr. Antolini.

Amid these cultural conflicts and an accelerating sense of suspicion among people who didn’t conform, particularly due to the development of the Cold War and the fear of espionage and subversion, teenage life was put under a microscope and became a more widely discussed cultural phenomenon. During this period, adolescence began to be viewed as a period of development separate from childhood and adulthood. In popular culture, people began to either document the lives of teenagers or attempt to teach teenagers to behave. Films such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955) captured the growing fear that teenagers disillusioned with their conforming parents’ lives would rebel and change the status quo. Salinger explores the psyche of such a disillusioned teenager in The Catcher in the Rye.