Books: The Catcher in the Rye

In high school, I had a pretty hipster English teacher. He always assigned his classes interesting books that were controversial in their time. One of the books he made us read was The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. This book was very controversial at the time of its publishing. A schoolteacher in Ohio was fired for assigning the book to his class (but later retained his job after winning his appeal). A community of people protested against the book in Ohio, calling it "antiwhite", and protested for the banning of the book from school curriculum. Later in 1980, the murderer of John Lennon showed this book as evidence and reasoning for his crime. Personally, I really enjoyed this novel. The story's protagonist is a teen boy coming into adulthood. He runs away from his private school and his predetermined future to spend three days exploring the streets of New York discovering along the way the true nature of the world around him which he had been so sheltered from. I think this book is a perfect read for students in high school, but I can understand why it was so highly protested because there are certain "discoveries" the protagonist finds on his journey that I think children would not quite understand the concept of. Also, there's like one F-bomb in the entire novel which of course protesters latched onto and allowed them to slap a vulgar language label on the novel. For me, going through the typical rebellious phase of my life in high school, the novel really connected me with the protagonist and I often found myself thinking about what I would do or say in the situations he was put into. I think the book is great because it underlines the motifs of self discovery, teen angst, etc. that many high school-aged people can relate to. Overall, I'm really glad my teacher assigned this book for me to read and I recommend it for people who have not read the novel yet.

amazon link (the book's super cheap): The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger