Let’s talk about THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, a book that most people have read. I never heard of anyone who didn’t like it. It is considered a great work of American literature.
But will its place continue to hold up? After all, all of its characters are white, there is homophobia, and it shows a teenager drinking. Terrible, huh?
That is the problem with too much wokeness. If you are going to cancel THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, you might as well cancel all the great works of American literature. HUCKLEBERRY FINN has already been criticized for showing an enslaved man and the south’s general attitude toward slavery. Never mind that Huck, the hero, stands up to it and says “I’ll go to hell” rather than turn Jim in.
Yes, CATCHER has elements of which we don’t approve today. But it wasn’t written today. It was written more than 75 years ago, when such attitudes were very accepted. Drinking was cool, homophobia was common, and just about every novel or TV show or movie featured only white people. We can look back at that as a time of ignorance or oppression or very limited exposure. But for God’s sake, do not throw this book out the window. It is a masterpiece.
Every person lives in a time that will fade and go away. And after a while, no one will remember having lived in it. Today, we cannot ever really know what it was like to live in the U.S. (either north or south) during the Civil War, but it scarred the souls of everyone who experienced it. That’s for them to remember, but they are gone now. Some people still can remember what things were like during the time of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE. Maybe it gives them better insight to the novel, but nothing can detract from its ultimate message. It is the quintessential novel about adolescence. It is about the cost of growing up and the cost of refusing to grow up. That is universal, and despite the references or images that are now considered distasteful, it will always ring true.
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