The Catcher in the Rye: Newly relevant?
STILL WRITING….
I’m not going to lie, as an English teacher, I haven’t had much use for The Catcher in the Rye in the last few decades. Although I definitely revered it as a teenager, as a teacher working toward a more equitable — and ethical — literary canon, I have come to think of Catcher as just another “classic” novel written by a certain kind of author about a certain kind of life that my students have certainly read enough about. Instead my book choices have tended toward diverse and female authors, with characters and ideas that speak to my students’ multitude of identities and experiences.
Maybe because I ran across a couple of boxes of new copies in the book closet last spring, or maybe because I was already thinking about my goal to go a little bit more old school this year (less chromebook, more pen and paper) I decided to give ol’ Catcher a try for the summer reading assignment for my incoming seniors.
Now, let me start by saying what I know to be true about summer reading: Some kids do it and some kids don’t. The trick as a teacher is to both signal the importance of independent reading and reward the efforts of the kids who did it, but also understand and acknowledge that there are many reasons kids don’t do it and some of those reasons are conflated with the kinds of socioeconomic factors that often influence education outcomes. My pedagogy, then, favors a democratic approach in which even the kids who did not read the book still have something to gain by becoming familiar with the ideas explored in the book.
To that end, I decided to lean into a conversation about the book as both a piece of important literature and a cultural artifact. For the past week, I’ve urged my students to take notes as we talk about the style of the book, the big ideas Salinger explores and the unique place this novel has occupied in our collective imagination for more than 75 years. It’s been a good week and honestly, I’ve been a little shocked at how much this book resonated with my students. In each of my five classes, students have consisently identified themes of lonliness, alienation and grief and have noted Holden’s despair about the pervasive phonieness he sees in the world. Students have researched the context of the book and have easily made connections between how teenagers might have felt in the early 1950s and how teenagers might feel now. Even though some of the language seemed a little archaic, students were quick to grasp the idea of what Salinger meant by the word phony and it wasn’t long before my students were able to apply it to the confusing world we live in now.
Now, as my students shuffle through their notes to write their first major essay of the year — with pen and paper — I feel like it’s a good time to do a little writing of my own and maybe reflect on some of my takeaways from this unit.
Although I really didn’t plan it, the fact that the main theme of this book happened to coincide with the main theme of my class this year was a major win. Like many educators, this year, I am emphasizing authenticity, especially as it pertains to student writing, and I have spent the first week of school convincing my students that there is no place for AI in my classroom. The book gave me an opportunity to talk at length about the importance of being authentic — not only in their lives and relationships, but also in their writing and thinking.
First, kid
emphasize the process. privilege note taking. conversation. writing on paper.
