Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Salinger, J. D. - Edwin Haviland Miller （essay date Winter 1982）

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Edwin Haviland Miller （essay date Winter 1982）

SOURCE: “In Memoriam: Allie Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye,” in Mosaic, Vol. XV, No. 1, Winter, 1982, pp. 129-40.

[In the following essay, Miller draws attention to Holden's conflict with his brother's death as a principal theme in The Catcher in the Rye.]

Although J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye deserves the affection and accolades it has received since its publication in 1951, whether it has been praised for the right reasons is debatable. Most critics have tended to accept Holden's evaluation of the world as phony, when in fact his attitudes are symptomatic of a serious psychological problem. Thus instead of treating the novel as a commentary by an innocent young man rebelling against an insensitive world or as a study of a youth's moral growth,¹ I propose to read Catcher in the Rye as the chronicle of a four-year period in the life of an...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Anne Marple （review date 18 September 1961）
   2. J. D. O'Hara （essay date Winter 1963-1964）
   3. Bernice and Sanford Goldstein （essay date Autumn 1966）
   4. Kerry McSweeney （essay date Spring 1978）
   5. Edwin Haviland Miller （essay date Winter 1982）
   6. Sanford Pinsker （essay date Winter 1986）
   7. Max F. Schulz （essay date 1987）
   8. Helen Weinberg （essay date 1987）
   9. John Wenke （essay date 1987）
   10. Terry Teachout （essay date September 1987）
   11. Joyce Rowe （essay date 1991）
   12. Peter Shaw （essay date 1991）
   13. Pamela Steinle （essay date 1991）
   14. Susan K. Mitchell （essay date December 1992）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. J. D. Salinger