Simon Stern is Professor of Law and English at the University of Toronto. This article was originally published in 2009. Nevertheless, Catcher in the Rye is widely regarded as one of the most important contributions to American literature since the end of World War II. In recent years, the novel has also been blamed for promoting alienation among students responsible for high-school shootings. Antolini, who gets drunk and makes what Holden interprets as a sexual advance. These include an episode with a pimp and a prostitute (with whom Holden does not have sex) and a visit to an old teacher, Mr. School boards and parent-teacher associations have been hostile toward the novel because of Holden’s profanity-laden speech and his sexual adventures following his expulsion from prep school. 1978), a high school English teacher was dismissed for insubordination when he refused to drop the book from his curriculum.
Mechanicville Central School District (N.Y. In some instances, school boards banned the novel, while others removed it from school reading lists or “restricted” it, requiring students to obtain parental permission to read it. School boards have restricted the novel for its profanity and content For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one: ). Since the early 1960s, disputes over Catcher in the Rye have arisen in more than seventy communities across the United States. The The Catcher in the Rye quotes below are all either spoken by Holden Caulfield or refer to Holden Caulfield. Salinger’s Bildungsroman about sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield, is one of the most controversial novels in recent U.S. Published in 1951, The Catcher in the Rye, J. Since the early 1960s, disputes over Catcher in the Rye have arisen in more than seventy communities across the United States.