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The 1951 J.D. Salinger novel The Catcher in the Rye has long been one of the most controversial literary tomes, inspiring films and criminal conspiracies. John Lennon’s murderer, Marc David Chapman, carried the book at the murder and continued reading it while Lennon lay bleeding at his feet. He has said that he wished to model his life after the novel’s protagonist, Holden Caulfield, identifying with Holden’s misanthropic world view.

John Hinckley, after his attack on President Ronald Reagan, was found to have a copy of Rye, but the book did not have anything to do with his psychosis. Nevertheless, his attack has been lumped with the many conspiracy theories that emerged after Lennon’s murder.

The 1997 Mel Gibson film, Conspiracy Theory, introduced the possibility that a secret code in the novel triggered political assassins who are compelled to buy the novel to complete missions.

“The allegation directed at Salinger is that he (and/or his publisher) craftily implanted into the book neurolinguistic passages, or coded messages, that act as post-hypnotic suggestions or mind control “triggers.” In turn, these triggers enabled CIA handlers to activate Manchurian Candidates for assassinations. Some conspiracy theorists also believe the novel was part of the CIA’s now mostly-declassified mind control program MK-Ultra, and that while assassins were being brainwashed they were forced to read the book over and over until it was embedded in their minds.” (The Catcher in the Rye Enigma: by James Morcan, Lance Morcan

There have been numerous books, podcasts, and lectures positing even more outlandish schemes emanating from the pen of Jerome David Salinger. One of the most amusing was a three part video on YouTube showing the hidden ‘Catcher’ symbols in Stanley Kubrick’s film The Shining. 

When I was 16, I read The Catcher in the Rye and loved it for all the wrong reasons. After a discussion about the book with my husband who wasn’t a fan,  I decided to reread it as an adult and found it overwhelmingly relevant to today and understood finally why it’s a classic.

As a teenager, I could not identify with the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, and his angst-driven search for life’s answers. I was in my 12th year of  an all-girls Catholic education and had all the tools I needed to deal with trauma and the vicissitudes of urban strife. Poor Holden had nothing to stop his depression and painful search for relevance in his scary impending adulthood. What we did have in common was the fact that  we were native New Yorkers and what I loved about Catcher was the description of Holden’s trek into the Manhattan sites I had also escaped to from life in the barrio.  I lived in the museums of Art and Natural History. I rode the carousel in my beloved playground of Central Park.

Reading the novel now as a mother and grandmother, I was struck with the overwhelming epiphany of what Salinger meant to convey. Catcher in the Rye, I believe, is a cautionary tale warning us that we must guard the innocence of children.

Many of the reviewers, pundits and educators have expressed the opinion that J.D. Salinger is Holden Caulfield, but I disagree. Holden is a fictional character created by Salinger with some similar traits, but one must remember that Holden is a teenager and Salinger was in his thirties when Catcher was published. The impetus behind their behavior, however, was a form of post-traumatic stress syndrome in both lives.

The death from leukemia of his brother Allie when Holden was 13 exacerbated his feelings of alienation and loneliness. Salinger, on the other hand, had been on a boat on D-Day and witnessed the slaughter of the first troops landing on Omaha Beach. He had seen the horror of  the concentration camps and had also been involved with the interrogation of Nazis.  Salinger once told his daughter, “You never really get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter how long you live.”

The horror of war can, at times, stir the souls of the creative witness to it, and Salinger was not the only one to produce works of artistic merit. A.A. Milne served in both WWI and WWII and from his tortured mind sprung Winnie the Pooh. More recently, singer James Blunt, a British captain in the Bosnian war, wrote haunting songs of his experiences.

The war probably confirmed Salinger’s conclusion that the world was a bad place for the young and innocent. Holden believes fervently that the adult world will corrupt the innocence of children, In the novel, it is Holden’s growing sexual urges that he represses that has him equate sex and adulthood as the enemy. He sees profane writings on a bathroom wall and erases it so that children won’t see it, but he also realizes that he can’t erase the filthy words that will be written on more walls.

He, not Salinger, mistakes the words of Robert Burns poem Coming through the Rye. The actual first words are: “When a body meets a body coming through the rye.” Holden remembers the words as: “When a body catches a body.” He tells his beloved sister Phoebe that he imagines seeing children in a field of rye playing too close to a cliff and if they fall off, he will be the catcher in the rye. 

This, I believe, is the theme behind the novel. A warning to protect the innocence of children by not exposing them to the sins of adults. I may be wrong, but considering how today’s children are being groomed to be sexualized as young as kindergarten age, with drag queens reading to them in libraries or Netflix and Disney cartoons showcasing what was once considered deviance, Salinger must be turning over in his grave.

 aliciav.colon [at] gmail.com