This rich source of social, cultural, and historical documents and commentary will illuminate the reading of The Catcher in the Rye, a novel that has become an important rite of passage for many young adults. In addition to a literary analysis, this casebook acquaints students with the larger world in which Holden Caulfield moves: Hollywood films, Broadway plays, and jazz musicians. It also presents a detailed account of the censorship challenges to the novel, and provides primary documents on child development and psychology that illuminate Holden's contradictory behavior.Each chapter contains a wide variety of primary source material, from reviews of the novel at the time of its publication and excerpts from censorship arguments to materials on the culture of the 1950s, to interviews with a number of prep school students of the 1950s and selections from a 1950 prep school catalog. Primary documents are paired with explanatory introductions. Each chapter concludes with topic ideas for written and oral discussion based on the materials presented in the chapter. This casebook is ideal for student research and for interdisciplinary teaching of the novel.

 

 

This book is part of a book series called The Greenwood Press Literature in Context .

There are 200 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 1999 by ABC-CLIO .

SANFORD PINSKER is Shadek Professor of Humanities at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books on American literature and culture.

This book has the following chapters: Introduction Literary Analysis Censorship of The Catcher in the Rye America's Post-War Culture Preparatory Schools Holden Caulfield at the Movies Holden Caulfield on the Analyst's Couch Index