Text to Text
Teaching ideas based on New York Times content.
When we choose a famous passage from a classic work like “The Catcher in the Rye” for an edition of our Text to Text series, there are literally thousands of New York Times articles with which we could profitably pair it. For instance, we might have chosen any of the appraisals and histories we link to on the J.D. Salinger page we made when the author died in 2010.
But when we read a recent article in the Sunday Review that made the case that the current trend of “delaying adulthood” might actually be good for some young people, we thought it might offer whole new way to think about the line between adolescence and adulthood — and about whether, and how, “Catcher” still has something to say to teenagers today.
Below, some ideas for putting the two together, but, as always, we would love to hear how you teach the novel.
Background
The author John Green on “Catcher” from his “Crash Course” series
In his obituary of J.D. Salinger, Charles McGrath writes about the initial reaction to “Catcher,” and about its enduring power:
Though not everyone, teachers and librarians especially, was sure what to make of it, “Catcher” became an almost immediate best seller, and its narrator and main character, Holden Caulfield, a teenager newly expelled from prep school, became America’s best-known literary truant since Huckleberry Finn.
With its cynical, slangy vernacular voice (Holden’s two favorite expressions are “phony” and “goddam”), its sympathetic understanding of adolescence and its fierce if alienated sense of morality and distrust of the adult world, the novel struck a nerve in cold war America and quickly attained cult status, especially among the young. Reading “Catcher” used to be an essential rite of passage, almost as important as getting your learner’s permit.
Although “The Catcher in the Rye” remains atop lists of people’s favorite books, some debate its relevance in 21st-century classrooms.
In “Get a Life, Holden Caulfield,” Jennifer Schuessler notes, “Some critics say that if Holden is less popular these days, the fault lies with our own impatience with the idea of a lifelong quest for identity and meaning that Holden represents.”
Does this novel still speak to the teenagers you teach? What can they learn from it about remaining sensitive to and challenged by the world around us as they grow up? How have notions of adolescence and adulthood changed since 1951, when the novel was first published? What are the reasons for the current trend of “delaying adulthood,” and why is everything from “boomeranging” back home after college to the popularity of brunch seen as a symptom of it?
Below are some ideas for connecting the novel to these bigger cultural questions, as well as options for going further to explore other aspects of the book with the help of Times and Learning Network resources.
Key Questions: Is ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ still relevant? If so, what can we learn from it about how to live today?
Activity Sheets: As students read and discuss, they might take notes using one or more of the three graphic organizers (PDFs) we have created for our Text to Text feature:
Text 1: Excerpt from ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D. Salinger
Note: We do not have the rights to excerpt the full passage we would like to use, but you can find it in Chapter 22, in the famous conversation between Holden and his sister Phoebe, when Holden talks about wanting to be the “catcher in the rye.” The passage begins with Holden saying:
“Anyway, I like it now,” I said. “I mean right now. Sitting here with you and just chewing the fat and horsing—”
And ends with the speech that begins this way:
“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.”
Text 2: Excerpt from ‘The Case for Delayed Adulthood’ by Laurence Steinberg
One of the most notable demographic trends of the last two decades has been the delayed entry of young people into adulthood. According to a large-scale national study conducted since the late 1970s, it has taken longer for each successive generation to finish school, establish financial independence, marry and have children. Today’s 25-year-olds, compared with their parents’ generation at the same age, are twice as likely to still be students, only half as likely to be married and 50 percent more likely to be receiving financial assistance from their parents.
People tend to react to this trend in one of two ways, either castigating today’s young people for their idleness or acknowledging delayed adulthood as a rational, if regrettable, response to a variety of social changes, like poor job prospects. Either way, postponing the settled, responsible patterns of adulthood is seen as a bad thing.
This is too pessimistic. Prolonged adolescence, in the right circumstances, is actually a good thing, for it fosters novelty-seeking and the acquisition of new skills.
Studies reveal adolescence to be a period of heightened “plasticity” during which the brain is highly influenced by experience. As a result, adolescence is both a time of opportunity and vulnerability, a time when much is learned, especially about the social world, but when exposure to stressful events can be particularly devastating. As we leave adolescence, a series of neurochemical changes make the brain increasingly less plastic and less sensitive to environmental influences. Once we reach adulthood, existing brain circuits can be tweaked, but they can’t be overhauled.
You might assume that this is a strictly biological phenomenon. But whether the timing of the change from adolescence to adulthood is genetically preprogrammed from birth or set by experience (or some combination of the two) is not known. Many studies find a marked decline in novelty-seeking as we move through our 20s, which may be a cause of this neurochemical shift, not just a consequence. If this is true — that a decline in novelty-seeking helps cause the brain to harden — it raises intriguing questions about whether the window of adolescent brain plasticity can be kept open a little longer by deliberate exposure to stimulating experiences that signal the brain that it isn’t quite ready for the fixity of adulthood.
For Writing or Discussion
1. In this section of “Catcher,” Holden tells Phoebe about a “crazy” idea of who he would like to be when he grows up. What is the metaphorical cliff to which he refers? Why do the children need to be saved?
2. How does the subject of Holden and Phoebe’s conversation suggest, as Mr. Steinberg does, that adults are less plastic than children and adolescents? Do lawyers have to be as rigidly defined as they are by Holden?
3. How does the writer’s claim — “As a result, adolescence is both a time of opportunity and vulnerability, a time when much is learned, especially about the social world, but when exposure to stressful events can be particularly devastating” — capture Holden’s journey? What event in the novel devastates him? What does he learn about the social world as he travels around New York?
4. In the original Times review of the novel, Nash K. Burger paints Holden Caulfield as “bewildered, lonely, ludicrous and pitiful.” He goes on to observe: “His troubles, his failings are not of his own making but of a world that is out of joint. There is nothing wrong with him that a little understanding and affection, preferably from his parents, couldn’t have set right. Though confused and unsure of himself, like most 16-year-olds, he is observant and perceptive and filled with a certain wisdom. His minor delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with adult delinquencies with which he is confronted.” As readers, are we meant to castigate Holden for his reluctance to grow up? Or are we meant to sympathize with it as a rational response to social changes?
5. In what ways can prolonged adolescence be a good thing?
6. Salinger and Mr. Steinberg are writing about two very different worlds — those of 1951 and today. In your view, how has adolescence changed? How has adulthood changed? Can you relate to Holden? How? Is reading “Catcher” still a “rite of passage”?
Going Further
The Adolescent Brain
Explore the many resources in The Times and on the web to learn about the emerging science about the adolescent brain. How does it shed light on Holden’s experiences in the novel?
Print copies of the articles that follow and assign them to groups of students. Then you might engage in a Socratic Seminar in which students use them as lenses for discussing Holden and his behavior.
- Sunday Review | Why Teenagers Act Crazy
- Room for Debate | Do We Need to Redefine Adulthood?
- Frontline | Inside the Teenage Brain
- NPR | The Teen Brain: It’s Just Not Grown Up Yet
Adolescence Through the Ages
This NPR piece contends that our definition of manhood is changing as America changes. But what about adolescence? How has it changed? Are older generations impatient with the idea of a protracted coming-of-age period (wonderfully satirized here in The Onion), or do they wish they had had this time to soul-search and discover themselves?
To investigate this idea, ask students to create a list of interview questions they can pose to their parents, their grandparents, their peers and themselves about what it means to be an adolescent. Have them conduct and record their interviews, edit them and compile them into a podcast that examines adolescence through the ages. For examples of such interviews, have students listen to these, compiled by The Times, which we used as the inspiration for a lesson plan in 2007.
Coming of Age on Film
In a letter written to a Mr. Herbert in 1957, J.D. Salinger explains why he doesn’t want to sell the rights to his novel so that it can be made into a movie. Although the entire letter is no longer archived online, what do you make of his rationale in the excerpt? If you were to make a movie of “Catcher,” what would it look like? Who would you cast as Holden and why?
A YouTube search turned up a school-project trailer, as well as a few other amateur attempts (like this one and this one) to do just this. (Teachers: Be sure to preview content to make sure it is appropriate for your class.) Do they succeed? Why or why not?
While “Catcher” has never made it to the big screen, movies reflect plenty of adolescent angst. This article compares Holden’s experience in “The Catcher in the Rye” to adolescent experiences portrayed on film, namely in a movie called “Igby Goes Down.” Watch clips from films that portray coming-of-age experiences — from John Hughes movies like “The Breakfast Club” to “Mean Girls” or “Juno” or “Superbad” — or choose one to watch in its entirety. What do films have to tell us about what it means to be a teenager? What are the clichés? What do they get wrong? How have portrayals of this period in life changed?
What do you make of newer movies such as “Bridesmaids,” “The Hangover,” “Knocked Up” and the like that portray adults seemingly stuck in adolescence. Do they, as the Times movie critic A.O. Scott reflects, show the “death of adulthood” in American culture? Is Holden a precursor to such adolescent grown-ups?
Censorship and the Novel
“The Catcher in the Rye” has been challenged since it was first published, and in this Time magazine slide show, you can read some of the reasons.
Do you think it belongs in the curriculum and on school library shelves? If so, consider championing “The Catcher in the Rye” and other banned books via our many ideas for celebrating Banned Books Week.
Helping Holden
Imagine you are a pediatrician specializing in adolescent medicine. Is Holden simply exhibiting some of the symptoms of what some have called the “temporary insanity of adolescence”? Or has his grief developed into something else? Is he depressed? Anxious? Suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder? Is there evidence in the novel that he is suicidal? Using Times resources like the Health Guide alongside symptoms you identify in the text, attempt to diagnose what is wrong with Holden.
Then, as a few teachers we know do, identify the resources in your school where he might get the help he needs. Interview these people — the school nurse, a social worker, a guidance counselor and/or a school psychologist, for example — to see how they would help a teenager like Holden.
Related Resources
- Learning Network | Ripped From the Headlines and Applied to the Classics: Ideas for Pairing Fiction and Nonfiction
- Learning Network | Resources on J.D. Salinger and ‘The Catcher the Rye’
- 2010 Times Essay | An Appraisal | J. D. Salinger: Of Teen Angst and an Author’s Alienation
- 1951 Times Article | Original Book Review
- 2010 Interactive Map | Walking in Holden’s Footsteps
- Colbert’s Book Club | Better Know a Salinger
- The Onion | Bunch Of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger
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