“It’s ‘If a body meet a body coming through the rye’!” old Phoebe said. “It’s a poem. By Robert Burns.”
“I know it’s a poem by Robert Burns.”
She was right, though. It is “If a body meet a body coming through the rye.” I didn’t know it then, though.
“I thought it was ‘If a body catch a body,’” I said. “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around— nobody big, I mean— except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff— I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”
When I was 12 I picked up The Catcher in the Rye for the first time. Bored of the children’s section in the library, I wandered down the stairs to the small young adult section. The book was a small plain paperback. Nothing about the unassuming cover would normally make me want to read it. But I picked it up and put it in my pile anyways. At this stage in my life all I did was read. I would go to the library and come back with bags bursting with books. I didn’t much like being around people, and found it hard to relate with a lot of the kids my age. So I shut myself up inside of worlds created by others. I remember being engrossed in Holden’s world. I was young still, so some of the themes or phrases didn’t make perfect sense to me. But that was fine, because I felt like I truly understood Holden. I understood his frustration of not being heard, of not knowing how to make yourself heard. I understood his fear of growing up, his lack of being able to identify with others and his preference to escape into his own ideal world instead of facing the world head on.
Catcher made me want to write. It inspired me to try and capture the fears and confusions that one feels during a crossroads in their life. I know I want to write for young adults. I know this partly because of Catcher. Salinger captured a generation, he put to words the feelings so many have trouble finding words for. Everything Salinger did for me through my young adult life is what I can only hope to do for someone else someday.
