Breaking The Code To The Catcher In The Rye discussion

In Chapter 16 there is a scene of a family coming out of church:

"They looked sort of poor. The father had on one of those pearl-gray hats that poor guys wear a lot when they want to look sharp. He and his wife were just walking along, talking, not paying any attention to their kid. The kid was swell. He was walking in the street, instead of on the sidewalk, but right next to the curb. He was making out like he was walking a very straight line, the way kids do, and the whole time he kept singing and humming. I got up closer so I could hear what he was singing. He was singing that song, "If a body catch a body coming through the rye".

So I looked up rye.  " It serves as the main bread cereal in most areas east of the French-German border and north of Hungary."  " On the side of the Axis Powers, Hungary also suffered great damages in World War II. "

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_P...

" They described their goals as breaking the hegemony of plutocratic-capitalist Western powers and defending civilization from communism.[1]"  (interesting that the first picture is from "Zoo Street" and Phoebe goes toward the zoo...remember?  before she get on the merry-go-round.

So I believe that The Catcher in the Rye is about catching men before they went to war and died...Like the Allies...I mean Allie

UPDATE MARCH 10,2014:
The place Rye is mentioned in this short story by Ring Lardner, referred to on page 18 of The Catcher In The Rye, called
"There Are Smiles." I think it was originally from his 1929 book "Round-Up," but it's also in "The Best Short Stories of Ring Lardner." I was able to find the story online. Here's a link:

http://www.unz.org/Pub/LardnerRing-19...

This note is to add to the discussion. Maybe this is a pointer to the idea that yes, it is a place to die.

Please see update above

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_L...

In the unpublished short story of Salinger we see that war was the subject of the Catcher in The Rye. This short story has a lot of the same elements and even Holden himself in it.

I believe this short story makes a good case for the argument that The Catcher in the Rye is about war not teenage angst.

"The story centers on a conversation between Vincent Caulfield and his mother. His mother, an actress named Mary Moriarity, has hidden his draft survey. He finds it in the utensil drawer, and becomes angry at her for hiding it. As the conversation goes on, it is apparent his mother is just looking after his best interest. Her other son, Kenneth, was killed in the war and she wants to prevent this from happening again. Another sibling, a teenage boy named Holden, is mentioned. Interestingly, Vincent references his baseball mitt that is covered in poetry, similar to that of Allie in The Catcher in the Rye.[2] At the close of the story, Vincent understands his mother's concern, but feels sorry for her solicitous behavior, and expresses depression over the fact she worries so much, particularly over kids who are about to fall off a cliff."


I found lut about this book from reading J.D. Salinger: A Life Raised High

I found this article in the Telegraph:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/cu...

I think it is interesting that he took 6 chapters of the Catcher with him to d-day.


"That rejection appeared to drive his writing as he started work on The Catcher in the Rye and according to some reports he carried six chapters of the unfinished book with him during the D-Day operations.

"But the war also dragged him down with what would now be diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “I dig my foxholes down to a cowardly depth,” he wrote in one letter to a friend."


Also this really points to the fact that The Catcher is about WW2 and war in general:

(I quote)
....following the screening, Mr Salerno, a Salinger aficionado who has also been working on a sequel to the blockbuster movie Avatar in his “day job”, discussed the challenges of researching such a secretive individual.
“Salinger was the hardest thing that I’ve ever done in my life,” he said. “It consumed ten years. Having people speak for the first time was a huge challenge… doors just slammed in your face for the first couple of years, but I was very grateful to finally have people come forward and share their stories.”
He also spoke at length about Salinger’s PTSD. “World War II really was the transformative trauma of JD Salinger’s life,” he said. “It made him as an artist, but it broke him as a man. He was living with PTSD throughout his life. This is something that we believe in very strongly.

“I do think that that is an area that is not associated with Salinger—that shell-shocked tone is directly from his experiences in WWII, and it really is the ghost in the machine of all his stories. When you re-read the work with that in mind, you even realize that The Catcher in the Rye is a disguised war novel.”

That's amazing, Cosmic. How rewarding this must feel for you in your efforts.

Your funeral’s tomorrow
While you’re coming through the rye.
Diddlediddle dumdum
Diddlediddle…

Ulysses
Lestrygonian

In Ulysses Hades the theme as the professor says Joyce's Ulysses

The theme is that "in the midst of death we beget life." Just the opposite of what one might think of when in a cemetery.

What was "born" out of WW2?

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/...

The 1948.