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 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.
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
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PS my verification word is untswear. Is that something your Untie Jane has on?
jbhat
For sooo many years I WAS the "catcher". Then I realized, some of the children didn't want to be caught and some of them wanted to grab me and pull me over the "crazy cliff" with them.
I re-read Catcher In The Rye during the holidays, AGAIN. The older I get the more meaning I find in that book...and the more I argue with it.
Holden thought that to be a "catcher in the rye" meant to save children from losing their innocence, to keep them from "being exposed to the evils of adulthood." Of course he thought only children had the qualities of innocence, kindness, generosity, and spontaneity, not adults.
Remember, in the end, Phoebe (his much adorded little sister) and Holden exchange roles as the catcher and the fallen. He becomes the fallen as Phoebe becomes the catcher.
Salinger closed the book with Holden's advice, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."
Bad advice.
These days I'm much more selective about where I stand and who I "catch."