I personally feel as though Holden Caulfield is my alter ego, and if you read The Cather in the Rye by J.D. Salinger you'd probably feel the same way.

Teen angst doesn't even begin to describe 17 year old Holden, who's been kicked out of yet another school and delays going home to inform his parents. Holden's unsupervised days spent in the Big Apple will leave your jaw on the ground. Now you may say that you've never been kicked out of school, and that you have a perfect relationship with your parents and have never done anything slightly crooked, which I doubt but hey, say what you will. However, we ALL know that one guy who "thinks he's a real hot-shot" (Salinger 27) which could not be farther from the truth. Then there's those people that "just because they're crazy about themself, they think you're crazy about them, too, and that you're just dying to do them a favor" (Salinger 28).

The point is although some of us can't relate to Holden's situation, we all know that feeling when people ask you impossible questions that you can't answer without slightly disappointing them. "I mean how do you know what you're going to do until you actually do it?" (Salinger 213). Maybe even some of you have had that overwhelming, desperate feeling that you'd "just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me(you) again" (Salinger 197).

I've read the book, reread the book and have been tested on the book, and I still can't even begin to grasp the depth of Holden, but I feel so in tune to what he feels, especially about "a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours" (Salinger 18) and being "the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life" (Salinger 16).


If the character of Holden alone doesn't appeal to you, then his run in with Sunny the prostitute, her no-nonsense pimp Maurice, and his awful date with Sally should at the very least make you crack the book open. It's 214 pages of laughs, anxiety and a few tears here and there. You have nothing to lose but a couple hours well spent.