The Burning Carousel and the Carnivalesque Subversion and Transcendence at the Close of the Catcher in the Rye

1、the burning carousel and the carnivalesque: subversion and transcendence at the close of the catcher in the rye author(s): yasuhiro takeuchi source: studies in the novel. 34.3 (fall 2002): p320. from literature resource center. document type: critical essay bookmark: bookmark this document full text

2、:beyond the controversy that has surrounded the catcher in the rye since it first appeared, and beyond contemporary assessments of the novels political/cultural relevance, j. d. salingers catcher merits ongoing consideration because of the subversion it conducts, a revolt against all fixed values. i

3、ronically, the comment of one editor who rejected catcher for publication is suggestive of the nature of this revolt: is holden caulfield supposed to be crazy? (hamilton 114). it is the sense of madness, often expressed in the novel through holdens characteristic humor, that-as mikhail bakhtin obser

4、ves in regard to carnival-makes men look at the world with different eyes, not dimmed by normal, that is by commonplace ideas and judgments (rabelais 39). this carnivalesque aspect of catcher has yet to be explored fully, but it is fundamental to the novels import and value. in addition to madness a

5、nd laughter, bakhtin identifies other principles of the carnivalesque that offer liberation from conventional values, principles that illuminate the essential concerns of catcher. these include a peculiar festive character without any piousness, and complete liberation from seriousness (rabelais 254

6、); free and familiar contact among people; behavior, gesture, and discourse . freed from the authority of all hierarchical positions (social estate, rank, age, property) (dostoevskys poetics 123); and disguise-that is, carnivalistic shifts of clothing and of positions and destinies in life (125). in

7、 the spirit of the carnivalesque, holdens story is set in the festive christmas season, yet it is far from pious. (1) holden himself delights in and encourages the liberation of a classmate who farts under his headmasters watchful eye during the speech of a respected alumnus. during holdens two day

8、stay in new york, he enjoys free and familiar contact with diverse people, regardless of social estate, rank, age, and property; these people range from a nine-year-old girl (his sister phoebes friend) to a married society woman in her forties (his classmates mother), and from a prostitute to a pair

9、 of nuns. finally, shifts of clothing are a recurring motif for holden and those around him, with lendings and borrowings of his hounds-tooth jacket, his turtleneck sweater, and his famous hunting hat. how these exchanges of clothing signify shifts of positions and destinies shall be considered at g

10、reater length below. it is worth noting first, however, that the received values that the novel aims to subvert encompass not merely prevailing social conventions but also fundamental binary oppositions, including self/other, body/mind, father/mother, heaven/hell, life/death, writer/reader, and nota

11、bly, savior/saved. this subversion of binary oppositions takes center stage at the novels ending, the ambiguity of which has long divided catchers critics. during the final carousel scene, holden has the following thought in reference to the children on the carousel: if they fall off, they fall off,

12、 but its bad if you say anything to them (274). holdens willingness to let his beloved sister fall has perplexed many readers because it seems to contradict his dream of becoming a catcher in the rye-one who saves children from falling (224). some critics have failed even to appreciate the ambiguity

13、 resulting from this contradiction. warren french, for instance, maintains that holden no longer sees himself as a catcher in the rye (121) at the novels conclusion. sanford pinsker argues that one thing is clear-holden, the narrator, no longer clings to the same desperate scenarios that defined him

14、 as a participant in his story (96). underpinning such views of the novels ending is the notion that to catch and not to catch are opposing, irreconcilable actions that cannot be taken (or aspired to) simultaneously. other critics have regarded the final carousel scene as less clear-cut, but have vi

15、ewed its ambiguity as cause for complaint. carl strauch calls the novels conclusion a blunted, ambiguous ending (29), and maxwell geismar derides it as belonging to the new yorker school of ambiguous finality (198). gerald rosen likewise concludes that ultimately, the problems faced by holden . have

16、 no answer that we can hold on to (561). such readings fail to appreciate that the ambiguity of the novels ending itself provides a kind of answer in its blurring of the binary oppositions through which we come to understand holden. critics sensitive to this quality of blurring have found insight in

17、to catcher in the perspective of zen buddhism, which according to zen master daisetz suzuki, takes us to an absolute realm wherein there are no antitheses of any sort (68). in their pioneering study zen and salinger, bernice and sanford goldstein observe holdens zen-like identification with the very

18、 people he criticizes, as well as the underlying unity (wherein there are no antitheses) reflected in the catcher holdens being caught by both phoebe and his deceased younger brother allie (322). (2) dennis mccort extends this perspective by considering the specific influence of suzuki on salinger,

19、maintaining that in the carousel scene, holden transcends the contradiction between permanence and change (266). in the readings of these critics, zen buddhism affords substantial insight into the ambivalence of catchers conclusion. yet the zen approach to catcher is less successful in explaining th

20、e novels blasphemous, carnivalesque aspect. in concluding that holden is caught by love (322), for instance, the goldsteins privilege a static principle (love/hate) that, in a larger sense, catcher overturns (3)-a typical reversal of binary oppositions upon which bakhtin, perhaps, casts a clearer li

21、ght than zen. however, both eastern and western thought inform the novels ultimate ambiguity, and a third perspective-that of carl jung-offers an initial vantage from which zen and bakhtinian readings resolve to be complementary. (4) through jung, a zen-informed bakhtinian perspective (5) affords a

22、reassessment of holdens ideal of becoming a catcher in the rye. more specifically, jung and bakhtin-neither of whom have figured prominently in previous studies of salinger-afford a deepening of the zen understanding of why holden, in the end, accepts falling (death). finally, these critical perspec

23、tives expose seemingly negative values, such as phoniness, as essential to the process of catching, or salvation, leading us (as catchers readers) toward the goal of all legitimate religious study, as seymour glass put it in salingers zooey: unlearning the differences, the illusory differences, betw

24、een boys and girls, animals and stones, day and night, heat and. cold (67). the identity between the hunter and his prey salingers catcher-related imagery is paradoxical: holden is both savior and saved; holdens younger siblings phoebe and allie, as shall be shown, represent the caught even as they

25、act to catch holden. the image of jesus christ that jung develops in aion embodies a similar paradox, and will prove helpful to a discussion of the identity between the savior and the saved in catcher. (6) jung considers christ as being both fisherman and fish, remarking that the christian ichthys i

26、s a fisher of men par excellence (aion 112). jung observes that as christ wants to make peter and andrew fishers of men, and as a miraculous draught of fishes (luke 5:10) is used by christ . as a paradigm for peters missionary activity (89), jesus is himself a fisher of men. yet as jung notes, the f

27、ish has become a universal symbol of jesus christ because ichthys or ichthus, an abbreviation of iesous christos theou uios soter (greek for jesus christ son of god savior), means fish (fish). jungs conception of the identity between the hunter and his prey (112) thus poses a challenge to convention

28、al notions of the hunter (savior) and the prey (saved) as existing in an overdetermined hierarchical relationship. salinger explores a similar conception of the hunter (savior)/prey (saved) relationship through similar imagery. in his later story, seymour: an introduction, narrator buddy glass refer

29、s to the unity of fisherman and fish directly: the hazards of fishing in general were themselves a favorite subject of seymours. our younger brother walt was a great bent-pin fisherman as a small boy, and for his ninth or tenth birthday he received a poem from seymour-one of the major delights of hi

30、s life, i believe-about a little rich boy who catches a lafayette in the hudson river, experiences a fierce pain in his own lower lip on reeling him in, then dismisses the matter from his mind, only to discover when he is home and the still-alive fish has been given the run of the bathtub that he, t

31、he fish, is wearing a blue serge cap with the same school insignia over the peak as the boys own; the boy finds his own name-tape sewn inside the tiny wet cap. (143-44)clearly, the fisher boy has caught himself as prey. considering the fish as a symbol of jesus christ, the two identical caps in seym

32、ours poem not only suggest the identity of savior and saved, but also bring to mind the case of holden caulfield in particular, who as savior/catcher, wears a hat-the red hunting cap that he both gives to and has returned by phoebe (exchanges to be considered in detail below). in light of the cap in

33、 seymours poem, the significance of holdens calling his cap a people shooting hat is clear. if the hat were a deer shooting hat, as holdens dormitory neighbor ackley suggests, it would represent the conventional binary opposition of hunter and prey. however, holden firmly states that this is a peopl

34、e shooting hat . i shoot people in this hat (30), an assertion that resonates with the jungian identity of hunter (savior)/prey (saved). furthermore, although holdens cap confers a hunter identity, holden often imagines himself as a wounded, suffering gunshot victim (135, 195). holden is thus at onc

35、e the shooter and the shot, an ambivalent hunter akin to jungs fisherman, jesus. the nature of catching in the novel lends nuance to its representation of the identity between the hunter and his prey. imagining a catcher in the rye, holden dreams of preventing children from falling off a cliff, a no

36、tion of catching that presupposes the conventional binary opposition of life and death, in which life is preferable to death. but holdens dream (like this conventional notion of the life/death opposition) is informed by the many acts of picking up the fallen-as opposed to catching the falling-that o

37、ccur throughout the novel. (7) a particularly resonant instance of picking up concerns a phonograph record that holden buys as a present for phoebe but drops and breaks before giving to her. the fictional song on this record, little shirley beans, concerns a girl who has lost two of her front teeth.

38、 considered in light of catchers christmas setting, this song is surely patterned on the 1949 hit all i want for christmas (is my two front teeth), sung by spike jones and his city slickers. this real song tells us how the little girl lost her teeth: she slid down the banister just as fast as . she

39、could (jones), and was injured. like the fictional fallen record, the girl in the real song falls and is not caught. given this parallel, it follows that the broken pieces of the record can be understood to represent the fallen. significantly, holden picks up these broken pieces and gives them to ph

40、oebe despite their condition. phoebe responds, im saving them (212, emphasis added); the fallen girl can be understood to merit the same treatment: to be picked up and saved. another fallen figure, james castle, is also picked up after having hit the ground. (8) james falls to his death after an inc

41、ident of bullying, and as holden recalls, his body is picked up by holdens former teacher mr. antolini: he was the one that finally picked up that boy that jumped out the window i told you about, james castle. old mr. antolini felt his pulse and all, and then he took off his coat and put it over jam

42、es castle and carried him all the way over to the infirmary. he didnt even give a damn if his coat got all bloody. (226-27, emphasis added)in holdens eyes, mr. antolinis heroism in this scene qualifies him as the best teacher . he ever had (226), and even after antolini attempts to seduce him, holde

43、n retains his respect for his teacher because of antolinis treatment of james: i mean i started thinking that even if he antolini was a flit he certainlyd been very nice to me. i thought . how he was the only guy thatd even gone near that boy james castle i told you about when he was dead (253). giv

44、en holdens reaction to antolinis advances-and his casual use of the epithet flit-holden clearly ascribes conventional notions of corruption to antolini, yet nonetheless holden views him as a savior. finally, it bears mentioning that another james, the oldest half-brother of jesus christ, was martyre

45、d (and thus saved) by being thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple (eusebius 125). james castles suicide (221-22) thus deeply informs the development of the theme of falling in catcher, and indeed, holden conceives of his ideal of the catcher in the rye almost immediately after relating this ep

46、isode (224-25). considering how falling (death, corruption, and betrayal) thus fuse into the process of salvation, it is significant that at the time of his fall, james is wearing holdens sweater as if he were disguised, in a sense, as holden. because of this sweater, many readers have identified ja

47、mes with holden, seeking psychological and other similarities between the two characters, (9) but the greater significance of the sweater lies in the differences between the characters positions. that is, the fallen (james) and the catcher (holden) are unified through the sweater, which thus represe

48、nts a bakhtinian disguise in that it transposes the characters positions and destinies in life. bakhtins view that birth is fraught with death, and death with new birth (dostoevskys poetics 125) provides further insight into the fusion of jamess death and holdens salvation: death gives rise to its o

49、pposite, life or birth, and indeed the two principles interpenetrate. (10) aspects of salvation or new being can also be discerned in falls that holden himself experiences later in the novel. during his visit to mr. antolini, whom holden has presumably sought out in the hope of being caught, antolin

50、i tells holden that he may soon experience a fall: this fall i think youre riding for-its a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. the man falling isnt permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. he just keeps falling and falling (243). as holden wanders about town the following day, he feels like

51、 he is just going down, down, down (256). at this point, a fall is indeed something horrible for holden, as antolini foresaw. soon after, however, falling takes on a positive aspect when holden faints and falls to the floor in the museum lavatory. although holden narrates, i couldve killed myself wh

52、en i hit the floor, he is physically restored by the fall, thinking, i felt better after i passed out. i really did (265). bakhtin offers further insight into this particular fall, insofar as holden has diarrhea immediately before collapsing. bakhtin regards images of feces as presenting at the same

53、 time the death of the old and the birth of the new world (rabelais 149), and that feces and urine are ambivalent. they debase, destroy, regenerate, and renew simultaneously. they are blessing and humiliating at the same time (151). (11) from this perspective, the proximity of feces to this moment o

54、f falling allows us to view the episode as prefiguring the subversion of positions in the subsequent scene, in which a debased holden moves from being a catcher of children (savior) to one of the fallen in need of being saved. in this, the novels climactic scene, holdens savior (catcher) is herself

55、a child-holdens sister phoebe-a reversal that reflects a subversion of values best appreciated in view of the scenes setting: the carousel in central park. this fictional carousel offered salinger a fitting locale for consummating his exploration of the ambivalence of life and death because it is ba

56、sed upon a real carousel that itself fell-in a fire on november 8, 1950, eight months before catchers publication (carrousel burns). in a manner of speaking, the carousel experienced death, or in the novels chronology (the novel is set in 1948 or 1949), faced imminent death. salinger, born in 1919 a

57、nd brought up in new york, surely rode on the central park carousel, which went into service in 1922. news of its destruction saddened many new yorkers (a day of disappointment), no doubt including salinger. however, by rendering the carousel within his novel as the site of the great joy that holden

58、 finds while watching his sister (275), salinger locates renewal and rebirth within destruction, changing the news from sad to happy. (12) significantly, salinger represents the fusion of binary opposites in this scene, as in others, through a pairing of elements of the novel with elements that have foundations in the real world. as the fallen phonograph record in the novel is paired with the fallen girl of the real song on which it is based, and as the fallen james castle of the novel is paired with the fallen martyr of the bible, this s