Understanding the Catcher in the Rye: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents

This rich source of social, cultural, and historical documents and commentary will illuminate the reading of The Catcher in the Rye, a novel that has become an important rite of passage for many young adults. In addition to a literary analysis, this casebook acquaints students with the larger world in which Holden Caulfield moves: Hollywood films, Broadway plays, and jazz musicians. It also presents a detailed account of the censorship challenges to the novel, and provides primary documents on child development and psychology that illuminate Holden’s contradictory behavior.

Each chapter contains a wide variety of primary source material, from reviews of the novel at the time of its publication and excerpts from censorship arguments to materials on the culture of the 1950s, to interviews with a number of prep school students of the 1950s and selections from a 1950 prep school catalog. Primary documents are paired with explanatory introductions. Each chapter concludes with topic ideas for written and oral discussion based on the materials presented in the chapter. This casebook is ideal for student research and for interdisciplinary teaching of the novel.

SANFORD PINSKER is Shadek Professor of Humanities at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He is the author of many books on American literature and culture.

ANN PINSKER teaches in the Social Studies Department of J. P. McCaskey High School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She is coordinator of McCaskey’s International Baccalaureate Program.