LUO Wan-ru
Hunan Judicial Police Vocational College, Changsha, 410000, China
Abstract： Through analyzing the Jewishness in The Catcher in the Rye, this paper focuses on Holden’s rebelling against American Christian culture combining with the discussion of Holden’s hidden Jewishness, and aims to find Salinger’s rebelling against the American dominate culture and his responsibility for the Jewish group.
Key words：The Catcher in the Rye 1; Jewishness 2; Holden’s rebelling 3
1 Preface
Born in a half Jewish family and living in the same time with other Jewish writers, such as Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud, Jerome David Salinger (1919-2010) is usually neglected by those critics of American Jewish literature.
Because of Salinger’s Jewish identity, recent years some critics discuss the Jewishness in the text. For example, in his essay, Leah Garrett analyses and briefly summarizes the Jewishness of The Catcher in the Rye. Garrett finds that Salinger actually challenge the dominant Anglo construct of Masculinity. Ning Yunzhong also discusses the Jewishness of Holden from his stereotype of the spiritual loafer and his belated habitual psychology. However, they just simply discuss Holden’s Jewishness without a deep analysis. This paper will focus on Hold’s rebelling against American Christian culture combining with the discussion of Holden’s hidden Jewishness, and aims to find Salinger’s rebelling against the American dominate culture and his responsibility for the Jewish group.
2 Jewishness in The Catcher in the Rye
Generally speaking, Jewishness is closely related to historical circumstance, religious thought, traditional values and the particularly social environment of Jewish people. It is essentially a manifestation of these cultural elements in literature. In his book, Toward Cultural Poetics Studies in American Jewish Fiction, Liu Hongyi defines Jewishness in literature from cultural level: it is a universal and inalienable spirit of Jews, a cultural complex fixed in the innermost being of Jews, a gathering of Jewish spirits and ethnic qualities sustained by generations of Jewish people, culture and history (22). Qiao Guoqiang subdivides Jewishness into two levels: the religious one and the cultural one. The former is presented more by the Jewish tradition, while the other is indirectly embodied in the personalities, behaviors or language of the protagonist.
Some hidden Jewishness can be found in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, especially in the protagonist Holden Caulfield. Leah Garrett believes that “Salinger created a iconic Jewish dangling intellectual” “of the type that shows up regularly in male Jewish American culture” (184). The term “Jewish dangling intellectual” originates in Saul Bellow’s Dangling Man, referring a Jewish protagonist who is funny, sarcastic, depressed, weak, empathetic, intellectual and well-read. Holden is a typical one among those Jewish dangling intellectuals. He reads lots of literary works, especially works of Fitzgerald and Thomas Hardy. Unbearable to the phony of the whole society, he is sarcastic to everything he sees. In order to keep both his and others innocence, he behaves sometimes childishly, which is ridiculous in others’ eyes. Knowing his failure of keeping innocence, he feels greatly depressed so as to totally collapse.
Holden’s Jewishness is also exhibited in other aspects, such as the potential Jewish identity of Holden and Holden’s wandering complex. Holden is in fact a potential Jew. He notes that his “parents are different religious, and all the children in our family are atheists” (Salinger 100). And later he tells that “my father was a Catholic one. He quit, though, when he married my mother” (112). Thus, there is a proof that Holden is potentially Jewish because his mother is, whereas his father possibly converted to Judaism. It should be noted here that according to the Jewish tradition, if the mother is not a Jew, her child is not a Jew, too. Holden’s determination to “go out west” and his studying from one school to another, as Qiao Guoqiang argues, reflect the wandering complex of Jewish people. Actually, Holden’s rebelling against his father’s life-style and value of money also shows the intergenerational conflict felt by many second-generation Jews against the world of their immigrant parents.
The Jewishness in Holden Caulfield is not so obviously expressed like works of Saul Bellow and Bernard Malamud. Thus, why did Salinger choose not to state outright that Holden might be Jewish?
Firstly, as Leslie Fiedler points, Salinger is doing what was commonplace at that time in the mid- and late 1940s: “conflating the alienation of the male Jewish intellectual in America with the general alienation prevalent in society” (qtd. in Garrett 184). After the World War Ⅱ, on one hand, the Jewish youths felt greatly alienated because of the Holocaust during the war when anti-semitism was extremely expressed; on the other hand, as part of the whole American society, they, simultaneously, suffered a general alienation prevailing in the whole American youth at that time. As result, postwar Jewish youths experienced a double alienation. They were marginal men in the American society. Holden’s potential Jewish identity just can well correspond to the double alienation of post Jewish youths.
Secondly, instead of placing Holden in the repressed Jewish minority, Salinger draws Holden with questionable Jewish identity as a member of the center culture, the American Christian culture. As a member of this power center, Holden is able to see and expose the foibles of that society from a seemingly insider’s position.
Finally, Salinger was born in a semi-Jewish family, because his father was a Jew but his mother was a Catholic. During his life in university, Salinger suffered a great deal of hardship from anti-semitism. This experience had a great influence on his later life and even his works that he did not want to assert his Jewishness. At last, he distanced himself from his Jewishness but turned to find religious affinity with Buddism. Therefore, it is seemed that Salinger’s hiding Holden’s Jewishness may be aimed at dissolving his worry: modeling a rebelling protagonist would encourage anti-semitism in such a special time just after the Holocaust.
Thus, all the three reasons serve Salinger’s intention to create a figure that is surrounded by the American dominant culture. Wherever he goes, Holden will be disturbed by it. In it, Holden as a Jew can not help himself out. A sense of loneliness occupies him spiritually and physically. Therefore, he has to seek way out through his resistance against the Christian culture.
The world Holden lives in is flooded with the air of Christian culture. The wandering experience of Holden was just happening before the Christmas Day when the Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. When he walked on the street, it was fairly Christmasy. People were preparing for it and expecting its coming. However, for Holden, he did not expect it so eagerly. Firstly, it is because before Christmas vacation his parents would know he was dismissed from school. He felt upset and worried. Secondly, the more important is that he was born in a Jewish family; therefore, Christmas Day was not so valued as in other Christian family. When the lonely Jew walked on the street where it was pretty Christmasy, such a scene can be understood as lonely Jewish people surrounded by Christian culture walking their way to the future. The strong atmosphere of Christian festival and the loneliness in the Jew form an obvious comparison. Holden’s loneliness reflects his resistance to integrate into the dominant culture.
In the text, Holden mentioned two scenes of meeting Catholics. One is his meeting with two nuns at the station; the other is his remembering a Catholic boy who was once his classmate. Holden found a same habit in Catholics, “Catholics are always trying to find out if you are a Catholic” (Salinger 112). When he talked with the two nuns, he was afraid the whole time that they would all of a sudden try to ask if he was a Catholic. As result, he did not enjoy their talk too much. That reminded him of talking about tennis with one Catholic boy. Holden thought he really enjoyed the conversation. However, after the boy knew he was not a Catholic, Holden sensed that the boy “would’ve enjoyed it more if I was a Catholic” (112). Holden hated that kind of stuff which drove him crazy. As a Jew, Holden seems to fear of it. Catholics’ habit asking whether Holden is a Catholic or not can be interpreted as an action of Christians’ intention to assimilate other minorities, such as the Jewish. Holden’s escape from and anxiety of such a question reflect his protest against assimilation into American Christian culture.
If we say Holden’s rebel against the American Christian culture is in a indirect and mild way, his opposite to Christianity and Christians is in a direct and sarcastic way. For example, at the beginning of the novel, Holden described the lecture of a wealthy donor to his prop school in the following way: “He told us we ought to think of Jesus as our buddy and all. He said he talked to Jesus all the time. Even when he was driving his car. That killed me. I can just see the big phony bastard shifting into first gear and asking Jesus to send him a few more stiffs” (Salinger 17). Holden leveled his sarcastic attack on a phony Christian. Not only did he attack ironically on the common Christians but also the monks in monastery. He just called those monks as “stupid bastards”.
He also verbalized his hatred of the Disciples in the Bible directly and claimed that he “don’t care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible” (99). In fact, that implies his dislike for most of the New Testament. Though he directly told that he liked Jesus, his favorable impression on Jesus was only based on his belief that “Jesus never sent old Judas to Hell” (100). In Christians’ belief, as one of the twelve Disciples, it is the Jewish, Judas who betrays Jesus and leads to Jesus’ death in crucifix. Jesus’ suffering causes the historical animosity against the Jewish among Christians. For them, the soul of Judas must go to the Hell and the Jewish have to be responsible for Jesus’ death. The belief has embedded into the mind of Christians. Therefore, Holden is actually fighting for justice with Christians at the point. That also indirectly reflects Salinger’s criticizing of Christian doctrine and his questioning who should be responsible for Jewish sufferings.
Though Salinger hides Holden’s Jewishness, from these details, we can still find evident to prove Holden’s Jewish qualities and his opposite to American Christian culture as a member of the minority Jew, which in fact reflects Salinger’s own attitude toward the American Christian culture and Christianity.
3 Conclusion
For American Jews, they are surrounded by the dominant American Christian culture and find them outsiders in it, experiencing a construct sense of alienation and a crisis of assimilation. In order to keep their Jewish culture and tradition, they have to resist against assimilation of American Christian culture. Holden is such a representative who dares to challenge it. However, Holden’s loneliness and helpfulness throughout the whole text also shows how hard it is for the Jewish to find a place in the dominant American culture.
Bibliography
[1] Garrett, Leah. “Just One of the Goys: Salinger’s, Miller’s, and Malamud’s Hidden Jewish Heroes.” AJS Review, 34 (2010): 171-194.
[1] Salinger, Jerome David. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Bantam Books, 1989.
[1] 刘洪一。《走向文化诗学：美国犹太小说研究》。北京：北京大学出版社，2002。
[1] 宁云中。《麦田里的守望者》中隐晦的犹太性。《华东交通大学学报》，（4）2010，92-95。
[1] 乔国强。《美国犹太文学》。北京：商务印书馆，2008。
作者简介：骆菀如（1989-）， 女， 湖南省株洲市人，助教，文学硕士，主要研究方向为英美文学、英语教学。