Catcher in The Rye is very similar to the Odyssey I've…
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Catcher in The Rye is very similar to the Odyssey
I've been thinking a lot about Catcher in The Rye in terms of story structure and why it works. Most plots that have a meandering story structure fall flat on their face (usually due to a lack of narrative drive and pacing). Whereas Catcher, like it or not, is one of the most successful books of this type.
When watching the Odyssey, I suddenly realised that Catcher in The Rye is very similar in terms of story structure. In the Odyssey, the protagonist, overcoming an ordeal (Nolan admittedly plays this up more than the original), goes on a journey home, encountering various episodes that lead to a reconciliation of their inner world turmoil and their outer world reconciliation with family.
Holden's journey is very similar. He is struggling with trauma and the ordeal of being suspended, and he's grappling with this longing for childhood days before people put on the fake ("phony") rituals of adulthood. To reconcile these things, he goes on a journey home through a number of strange encounters, each contributing in some way to his end reconciliation with his family (his sister).
Catcher is in some ways more subtle and less explicit about some of this, but it's there in the text. If the book were rewritten for a modern audience there would be long traumatic scenes at the start, which would make us sympathise with him. These are absent in part due to the context when it was written, that mental health was poorly understood and stigmatized back then.
A reverse Odyssey (leaving home) with similar beats is the movie Goodwill Hunting. I think that the people who hate Catcher probably prefer Goodwill Hunting (at a guess). In that film, the protagonist is firmly established as the underdog cleaner at the start, pitted against elite professors, the NSA and college jocks. He also goes through a reconciliation of the self in order to leave home.
For a long time, I've been baffled by some negative views of Catcher. It seems that those who most benefit from our system understand it the least, whereas those in a troubled state (like many teenagers) understand it more.
There's also this weird thing with the book where some people love it as a teenager and hate it as an adult. And I think there's something very sad about that. It's almost like we can only empathise when in the same situation, whereas when we finish the journey, we lose our ability to care.
This strikes me particularly hard because I think it's a theme of modern literary criticism (if we can call it that) on tiktok etc. people basically read books of protagonists that look and sound like them, and then call those books amazing. Whereas I truly believe the best part of reading is learning empathy for someone radically different, who looks and sounds nothing like you, from another country, place, dimension or other realm even.
#entertainment
I've been thinking a lot about Catcher in The Rye in terms of story structure and why it works. Most plots that have a meandering story structure fall flat on their face (usually due to a lack of narrative drive and pacing). Whereas Catcher, like it or not, is one of the most successful books of this type.
When watching the Odyssey, I suddenly realised that Catcher in The Rye is very similar in terms of story structure. In the Odyssey, the protagonist, overcoming an ordeal (Nolan admittedly plays this up more than the original), goes on a journey home, encountering various episodes that lead to a reconciliation of their inner world turmoil and their outer world reconciliation with family.
Holden's journey is very similar. He is struggling with trauma and the ordeal of being suspended, and he's grappling with this longing for childhood days before people put on the fake ("phony") rituals of adulthood. To reconcile these things, he goes on a journey home through a number of strange encounters, each contributing in some way to his end reconciliation with his family (his sister).
Catcher is in some ways more subtle and less explicit about some of this, but it's there in the text. If the book were rewritten for a modern audience there would be long traumatic scenes at the start, which would make us sympathise with him. These are absent in part due to the context when it was written, that mental health was poorly understood and stigmatized back then.
A reverse Odyssey (leaving home) with similar beats is the movie Goodwill Hunting. I think that the people who hate Catcher probably prefer Goodwill Hunting (at a guess). In that film, the protagonist is firmly established as the underdog cleaner at the start, pitted against elite professors, the NSA and college jocks. He also goes through a reconciliation of the self in order to leave home.
For a long time, I've been baffled by some negative views of Catcher. It seems that those who most benefit from our system understand it the least, whereas those in a troubled state (like many teenagers) understand it more.
There's also this weird thing with the book where some people love it as a teenager and hate it as an adult. And I think there's something very sad about that. It's almost like we can only empathise when in the same situation, whereas when we finish the journey, we lose our ability to care.
This strikes me particularly hard because I think it's a theme of modern literary criticism (if we can call it that) on tiktok etc. people basically read books of protagonists that look and sound like them, and then call those books amazing. Whereas I truly believe the best part of reading is learning empathy for someone radically different, who looks and sounds nothing like you, from another country, place, dimension or other realm even.
#entertainment
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