hating the catcher in the rye is actually very understandable. nothing happens and it’s miserable and if the narrative voice annoys you you will not have any fun. but people who shit on it don’t say that they just make up a holden caulfield to get mad at
like first of all it's a book about sexual violence. so jot that down. but even on a level of text-not-subtext, holden caulfield calling other people phonies and fakes is not because he’s some hipster who thinks he’s the only #real person on earth it's because he’s a teenager who has learned from incredible trauma (the death of his eleven-year-old brother with cancer + implied CSA) that the world is often hard and cruel and nobody protects kids. and yet every adult around him and half his peers are pretending this isn’t true and spitting out empty platitudes and doing nothing to soften or reduce any of that cruelty. literally nobody is trying to make it easier or protect anyone, or at least if they're trying they're not succeeding. but when you are a teenager with no rights you can't call bullshit so he just has to nod and thank people for their meaningless cliches about life as they fail to do anything to make anything better for anyone. because being a teenager sucks and nobody cares what you think or how much it hurts! bitch! i’d be a judgy little dickhead too! i was!
i was going to reblog this again and elaborate on the sexual assault point but actually everybody just read this article
If Holden’s anger derives not just from petty vendettas against his prep school classmates but as a terrifying glimpse into a world of perva
