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Our book club's 'Catcher in the Rye' meeting turned into a 2 hour fight
It was last Thursday night. We had 12 people there, a full house. One guy, Mike, said Holden Caulfield was just a whiny rich kid. Another member, Sarah, got really mad and said he missed the whole point. Voices got loud. Someone brought up their own teen years in Chicago. It went on forever. Has your group ever split that hard over a main character?
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the_lucas1mo ago
Does it matter if Holden is rich? The money just lets him wander, so we see more of his world. Gibson.robert is right about the pain under the noise. That's what gets lost in calling him whiny. He's not asking us to like him, he's showing us a broken kid who can't find a single safe place to land. That feeling, not his bank account, is what makes people fight about him.
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oliver_fisher1mo ago
Honestly that Mike guy has a point though. Holden really is a rich kid from a fancy school who just wanders around complaining. Tbh I get why it's a classic but the character can be super grating. My group almost came to blows over whether we were supposed to like him or not. Some books just hit a nerve like that.
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Pencey Prep kicked him out right before Christmas, so maybe he had a reason to be lost. The book's power is how it shows pain hiding under all that teenage noise.
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