Without peeking or googling, do you know the meaning of the title, "The Catcher in the Rye"?

Do you mean how we took the characters general feeling of what he wanted to do with his life or what that actually was? Was that a real thing?

It reminds me of ’‘eye of the beholder’’ for some reason. So even if I might know what this is, I’m now just thinking about Dungeon&Dragons.

Having read it, yes I do. lt is clearly explained by Holden Caulfield in the story.

@Imadethisupwithnoforethought: No. I mean “Do you know the author’s intent?” Salinger, like all good authors, choose his titles very carefully.They are an integral part of the novel, novellas, and short stories.

Salinger originally called his famous story about Muriel and Seymour Glass, “The Bananafish.”

Salinger embarked upon a major reworking of the piece, adding the opening section with Muriel’s character, and crafting the material to provide insights into Seymour’s tragic demise.
Salinger… revised the story numerous times throughout 1947, renaming it “A Fine Day for Bananafish”.

The New Yorker published the final version as “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” one year after Salinger had first submitted the manuscript. Details here

Um… he also choose verb tense, too. I don’t know how he felt about being pluralized.

Yes.

^^^ça va sans dire.

I do know the story behind the title. The description is one of my strongest memories of the book.

I know the passage well, but I’ve never been certain exactly what I think of it. I don’t know what Salinger’s intent was, but could make a few guesses.

Yep!

No. I haven’t read the book. I always thought it had something to do with an old Scottish song, but I also inferred a possible connection with the story of Ruth gleaning in the grain fields of Boaz.

It’s really very simple, it refers to the masked individual on a baseball field that’s in dire need of a good mow.

It’s about a brand of rye bread with baseball figures baked into them, and how the catcher is the rarest figure to get and unappreciated that position is.

In honesty, I cheated and looked it up, but I had a feeling I was close to the answer, and didn’t want to act as a spoiler for any possible future answers. I was right in what it meant in Holden’s more literal sense but missed the more figurative sense. Not too bad for a book I last read over a decade ago and I was unimpressed by.

Yes, it’s a key part of the book.

The ‘bottom’ during gay sex?

No, and I have read the book.

I knew once, but it’s far down in my memory bag and I can’t get to it. If you tell me, I’ll probably say, “oh, yeah. That was it.”

Yes, for both the literal meaning and the intent behind it.

(Side note, my English teacher totally kicked ass. He was sort of like a pied piper, giving us little clues here and leading us almost to the conclusion there until we figured out the meanings behind things ourselves. And he always wore those tweed jackets with the leather patches on the sleeves, which I think is proper & fitting English teacher attire.)

Yes. We went over that in junior English.

No, so if it’s been long enough now, can someone please post the answer here? Pretty please?

@augustlan Ok, answer is below. Keep in mind, it’s been ages since I read this and I have a pretty vague and fuzzy memory. Anyone who doesn’t want to know the answer, scroll past?

So in Holden’s speech at the end of the book, he tells his younger sister how he wants to be the catcher in the rye. He stands in a field of rye by the edge of a cliff, watching a bunch of kids play there. Just when they’re about to fall, he catches them and saves them.

He got this image from a line of poetry, “if a body catch a body coming through the rye.” Only Holden’s sister says he got the line wrong, and it’s actually “if a body meet a body.” Holden spends most of the book going through one shitty and traumatizing experience after another, and seeing the worst sides of adult life. His favorite person is probably his little sister Phoebe, who’s a really smart kid and to Holden represents an ideal version of childhood and innocence that he’s lost. Holden himself is in a transitional period, because he’s a troubled teenager who’s been kicked out of school. He doesn’t exactly fit into childhood or adulthood, and to me this not fitting in and transition is what the book is really about.

But back to the line of poetry and Holden’s fantasy. Holden’s ideal role for himself is as a protector of childhood and innocence. He has all these unpleasant experiences with the adult world in downtown Manhattan, like seeing weird sex acts through open windows or getting beaten up by a pimp. And he thinks everyone he meets is a “phony,” except for the kids. And then at the end of the book, watching his sister play on the playground is pretty much the only thing that makes him happy; it’s the only thing during the whole weekend that seems right to him. He can’t be a kid again himself, but he still wants to preserve what innocence and goodness is left in the world.

In a lot of ways, Holden’s sister is the more mature out of the two of them. When she says he got the line wrong, it seems like really subtle way to tell him that he’s living in a fantasy world.

My English teacher also said that “caul” is old-timey slang for a woman’s genitals. “Hold in caul” means that he wants to stay in the womb. This might be a case of epileptic trees,, but people tend to do that with English literature.

Thank you, @Haleth!

@Haleth Actually, caul was another word for the placenta, not a woman’s genitals, but the interpretation still makes sense.