Catcher In The Rye : By J.D Salinger

'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.' - Wilhelm Stekel




There are times in every one's life where one could relate to 'Holden Caulfield', the main character and the narrator in the book. Though through his point of view one can see the how the world which is so progressively supposed to be dependent on elite and full of ivy league people is actually composed of nothing but mere phonies which is what Holden repeatedly refers to them as, which surprisingly never seems incorrect. The book is full of very emotional moments experienced by Holden.
    

The narrator tells us about his experience after being kicked out from a reputed school, though he is a brilliant student, he is just not interested. He is frustrated with the people around him and their phony behavior. He is sick of people being fake to each other. For him the idea of the basic society human behavior in which one person has to behave in a particular manner to other is somehow unacceptable. He is a rebel and is thus unacceptable to the society.

But what you find so adorable about him and makes you totally relate to him is the fact that deep down at some point of time we feel the same way, we feel rebellious at times, don't like the way we are supposed to be in the society, at times the way the society portraits itself to you, it just wants to makes you want to puke your guts out, this it the extent to which 'Holden' is frustrated. 

I particularly liked two parts one where he comes to his teacher Mr Antolini and he preaches him about how he is not the first person has failed and not necessarily the person who have failed in their past were failures, and also that they have kept records in the form of journals as books and poetry which are famous today from which people like him should learn and then again there's a conflict about the character of Mr. Antolini which I will leave unexplained here but was quite intriguing to me.

The most satisfactory part of the whole story was about the narrator's ten-year old sister Phoebe, because she was among the only few people the narrator really admire in the whole world and that was not because of the mere fact that she was his sister, it was because she was a kid and unlike others she was not phony and was more sensible than any person he knew.
I just loved the way the he wrote after anything he described about phoebe...."good old Phoebe, you would have liked her." :)