Love Stories? Valentine’s Day and Literature

Catcher in the Rye // J.D Salinger

Catcher in the Rye is a book about adolescence; by default it almost has to be antithetical with regards to love. The book follows the protagonist Holden Caulfield on a melancholy New York night after his expulsion from boarding school. It is evidently inspired by Woolf’s stream of consciousness narrative which elevates our narrator to the status of “teenage icon” for many of those who have read the book. The prevailing theme of Holden’s longing to return to the golden age of his childhood is what makes this book question typical notions of love, sex and romance – and the increasingly blurred line between the trinity.

Multiple scholars have debated the state of mental health and there is definitely the idea that he is not a typical 17 year old boy. This is epitomised when he calls a prostitute up to his room – for a conversation. It’s a heart-rending sentiment; a boy so lonely and so disillusioned with his life reaches out to someone who he feels is as trodden down as he is. Marx would have turned in his grave when she essentially told him she was there to provide a service, and if he didn’t want sex then she had no time for him. In many ways, the book can be seen as anti-romance because of Holden’s child-like mental state, his cynicism and – ironically – his compassion, however it stretches much further than that. I for one would like to write forever on how Holden makes us challenge our own prejudices, the supply and demand culture in which we live and what we perceive love to be. Now that is a powerful sentiment coming from a misanthrope with a frightening penchant for deerstalker hats.

Words by Beth Chaplow

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