中国矿业大学外文学院09 级读书报告姓 名 王家邓 学 号 12095162 专业班级 英语09-3班 读书报告题目 The Catcher in the Rye指导教师 李灏 职 称 副教授 2011 年 6月 徐州The Catcher in the RyeI. Introduction1、 Title: The Catcher in the Rye2、 Author: Jerome David Salinger3、 Writing background:The Catcher in the Ryas published in 1951. At that time America took advantage of the huge accumulation of capital which comes from the two world wars to begin the big economic development. With the development of living standard, there is an explosion in the population of middle class, just as the protagonist in the book, who comes from a middle-class family. However, the affluent material life can’t bring along substantial in spirit, resulting in a widening gap between rich and poor and emptiness of the broad masses ’ spiritual life. One reason is due to the shadow of war fear, which roots to world war II, making the American people feel confused about future. Another reason is that the America government pursued Truman Doctrine and McCarthyism. What’s more, economy, military affairs, and science were the most important fields that America government focused on at that time. Synchronously, as a result, the moral education would be neglected. Lacking in moral education, people lived disconcertedly with an attitude of funk, doubt and discontentment. Therefore the America modern historians regarded the 1950s in America as silent 1950s.In this atmosphere, the cultural field had been directly affected. Novels, poems, films and magazines were all affected by McCarthyism. At this moment, with the effort of Norman Mailer, existentialism went the rounds in America.Affected by this kind of philosophy, some people abandoned the traditional ethics and choose another mode of existence, forming the so-called fallen generation, if we can say, and the leading character in the novel is a member of the fallen generation. They don’t exactly accord with who we think they should be. They just appear dissatisfying with the society, being wild oats, and adopting negative attitude to fight against the society. But they are sincerity, bluffness and they still have pursuit of dreams, however, they are incapable to fight or change the actuality. What they can do is to abandon all the things, just like money, duty, status and obligation, they can’t get out of their own heart, so they seek satisfaction from drinking, smoking, taking drugs and so on.The writers of ‘ fallen generation ’ school of literature are mostly young cynical intellectuals, they and their works reflects the confusion at that time in America and produce far-reaching effects o later western literature.4、About the author:Jerome David Salinger was born in 1919 in a very rich Jewish family, in New York City. When he was 15 years old, Salinger’ parents sent him to a military school in Pennsylvania and he graduated from there. Salinger began writing short stories for money while in secondary school, and published several stories in the early 1940s before serving in World War II. World War II prevented him from writing in 1942, for he was sent to the European battlefields.The war made Salinger so afeard that he wrote a lot of books about wars later. In 1946, Salinger was released from the army, and came back to New York, beginning to attend to writing. In 1951 Salinger released his novel The Catcher in the Rye, which became an immediate popular success all over America. His depiction of adolescent alienation and loss of innocence in the protagonist Holden Caulfield was influential, especially among adolescent readers. The novel remains widely read, selling around 250,000 copies a year. After the success of The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger became more and more dissocial. He led a cloistered life in the countryside of New Hampshire. He never gave up writing, however, since 1951, he seldom published his works in public. He later became more and more inclined to oriental philosophies and zen.H. The Story of the BookThe story takes place in December 1949, the book's leading character, Holden, studying in Pencey Prep, was born to well-off middle-class family. Though he is only 16 years old, he always wears a raincoat and a cap. Hating schools, teachers, students, homework and so on, he criticizes all of them for being superficial. Another semester is over; he fails 4 courses except writing. Due to his poor academic performance, he had to be expelled from the school. Holden packs up and leaves the school in the middle of the night after a physical altercation with his roommate. He went to New York by train, but dare not rashly go home and instead checks in to Edmont Hotel. In his hotel Holden sees people who are dubious, the men wearing women's clothing, a men and women spraying wine to each other, he feels surprised and disgusted. He has a clumsy encounter with a young prostitute named Sunny. His attitude toward the prostitute changes the minute she enters the room, the prostitute becomes annoyed with him and leaves. However, he still pays her for her time. Sunny and Maurice, later return to Holden's hotel room and demand more money than was originally agreed upon.The next day, Holden calls up sally, his old friend, to invite her to see s musical. After the play Holden went ice-skating. Sally sees it leave just leave the situation as it stands; Holden and Sally went to go skating. While drinking coffee, Holden impulsively Sally to run away with him, but she declines. Sally’s response deflates his mind, he is not happy so that they had a quarrel. Although he has pleaded with her to accept his apology, finally Holden gives up and leaves her there.Holden secretly returns to his home, but fortunately, his parents are away. He woke up Phoebe to tell her his own boredom and ideals. He pictures himself as the sole guardian of numerous children running and playing in a huge rye field on the edge of a cliff. His job is to catch the children if they wander close to the brink, to be a catcher in the rye. He wants to do all day long on such a thing. Later, the parents returned, Holden scared to hide in the closet. When his parents go to bedroom, he quickly slipped out of the house. Then he goes to Mr. Antoine’s home. But Holden is upset when he wakes up in the night to find Mr.Antolini patting his head the middle of the night sleep, he found that the teacher may be a gay; they had no choice but to escape secretly.Holden does not want to go home and decides to make a living to the west, to be deaf and dumb, but he would like to say goodbye to his little sister before he leaves. He mentions these plans to his little sister, but she decides to with him. Holden declines her offer and refuses to have her accompany him. This upsets Phoebe, so Holden does her a favor and decides not to leave after all. Holden tries to reverse her saddened mood by taking her to the Central Park Zoo. He realizes his mistake as she rides the carousel that lies within the zoo. While watching Phoebe, Holden realizes that he can’t be the “Catcher in the Rye" and that he is in need of help. The last words of the novel are, don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.HI. Comments and My Views on the BookThe Catcher in the 跄 the only long novel of Salinger’s, though it is not too many words, but it made great influence in American society and literatus. When the novel was published in 1951, it immediately caused a sensation. The experience and mind of the leading character caused strong resonance in the public, especially the teenagers. They imitated the protagonist’ toilette and language style one after another, for this novel recognized their mind, reflects their ideals and pang. Though some parents and literatus consider it as a bad books, for the leading character don ’t study , smoke, drink, make women and say dirty words, it should be forbidden, I think it is a modern classic novel in the Contemporary American Literature. It can increase the youth’s understanding of life alert the ugly reality and choose a self-love road.The Catcher in the Rye is written in a subjective style from the point of view of its leading character, Holden Caulfield, following his exact thought processes. There is flow in the seemingly disjointed ideas and episodes - for example, as Holden sits in a chair in his dorm, minor events such as picking up a book or looking at a table, unfold into discussions about experiences. Critical reviews agree that the novel accurately reflected the teenage colloquial speech of the time.[1] This book uses the tone of Holden to tell us the several days’ experience and heart feeling after being expelled from school. It not only gives a vivid and detailed description of a restless and depressed middle class youth, but also criticizes the hypocrisy and artificiality of adult world. What makes this book produce such a great influence is since the author created a kind of new are style. Through the first person, the whole book describes the boy’s own thoughts with a youth tone, and also criticizes the hypocrisy of adult world with a youth’s vision. The author anatomizes the leading character ’s complex psychological state of mind with the exquisite and deep analysis, not only caught his conflict— —ideal and reality to analyze, but also hold teenagers’ psychological characteristic in adolescence to perform the leading character’s pureness and absurd indulgence.This book also develops its own style of the use of language, it is written in a simple and straight way with a youth ’s tone, using a lot of oral English and slang. All these factors add the appeal of the story, so that readers can arouseresonance and thinking, and its association and response.[1] Donald P. Costello (October 1959). "The Language of 'The Catcher in the Rye'". American Speech (American Speech, Vol. 34, No. 3) 34 (3): 172 -82. doi:10.2307/454038. JSTOR 454038. "Most critics who glared at The Catcher in the Rye at the time of its publication thought that its language was a true and authentic rendering of teenage colloquial speech.".。