The overall picture created by The Catcher in the Rye is like a big mural or montage with many seemingly unrelated scenes juxtaposed. The gifted J. D. Salinger deliberately created a confused adolescent hero who is lost—or who has lost something and is trying to find it without knowing what it is. One of the main scenes in this impressionistic mural or montage is a boy standing in a field of rye wheat and watching children at play in the distant background. Salinger creates his patchwork effect by using a viewpoint protagonist who has motivation but lacks a goal. Phoebe admonishes him for not having any sense of direction, but Holden is like many adolescents both then and now: sailing the seas without a compass; going out with girls he despises; going here, there, and everywhere without any plan or purpose; wasting his one life as if he had a dozen others to squander. The novel may be even more relevant today than it was when it was published.
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