Story of Holden Caulfield with his idiosyncrasies, penetrating insight, confusion, sensitivity and negativism. The hero-narrator of "The Catcher in the Rye" is an ancient child of sixteen, a native New Yorker named Holden Caulfield. Through circumstances that tend to preclude adult, secondhand description, he leaves his prep school in Pennsylvania and goes underground in New York City for three days. The boy himself is at once too simple and too complex...

Includes a brief biography of the author, thematic and structural analysis of the work, critical views, and an index of themes and ideas.

Examines the controversies over the censorship of J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" in post-war America and provides an understanding of how and why people across the country objected to its inclusion into public schools