No More “Catcher in the Rye” When you hear the sentence “shut up and take your Prozac”, which character from the contemporary novels do you think the speaker is talking to? Although many adult readers might not believe this, this sentence was actually said by a fifteen­year­old boy to Holden Caulfield from ​
The Catcher in the Rye​
, representing the voice of a lot of teenagers today (Schuessler). As Schuessler states in her editorial “Get a Life, Holden Caulfield”, the popularity of this famous novel among the adolescent group seems to fall in the twenty­first century, despite the high status of it in the beginning of its publication in the 1950s. However, Schuessler might have overlooked the fact that beyond the natural gradual slip of this novel from the public view, the fall of the popularity of ​
The Catcher in the Rye ​
also embodies the change between the teenage culture of the mid­twentieth century and the contemporary time. However, what is surprising is that not only is there a change of teenage culture between today and fifty years ago, but an emergence of teenage. As Holden describes in his book, at his time, being a teenager in a boarding school by himself is not easy. The lack of communication between him and his parents, as well as his friends, eventually leads Holden to a psychoanalyst at the end of the book. However, why didn’t Holden’s parents realize Holden’s problem earlier? Why didn’t any teacher from his schools give him any psychological help ahead of time? True, the loss of Holden’s brother must have been a hard strike for him, but this fact can not diminish the answer to the questions above, which is the deficiency of the recognition on adolescence in the 1950s. According to the Independence Hall Association, by the twentieth century, the American world only consisted of “children” and “adults”, and the word “teenager” did not come into use until decades later. Therefore, it can be concluded that Holden grew up in the early stage of American adolescent culture, which did not become part of the popular culture in this country until the turn of the twenty­first century. Compared to children from Holden’s generation who had to go through the tribulations of adulthood as soon as they grew up, today’s teenagers have much more recognition from both their families and the whole society. In consequence, it is harder for today’s teenagers, who are reading this novel after the development of American teen culture, to think of growing up as a kind of “fall”, causing them unable to understand Holden’s struggles and anxiety like the generation who grew up with the same experience as Holden. Accordingly, the hypothesis from Schuessler’s editorial on this novel that “perhaps Holden would not have felt quite so alone if he were growing up today”, might sound reasonable if the tremendous growth of teen culture is considered. Even though the neglect of adolescence might not have been a critical issue when Holden is young, teenagers today who have experienced the rise of teen culture would not want to have the same experience as Holden. Therefore, as people’s recognition on teenagers changed over time, the loneliness of Holden is not a big issue that teenagers can relate to, reflected in the decrease of the popularity of ​
The Catcher in the Rye amongst teenagers today. Nevertheless, the rise of the teenage culture in today’s society is just a change on the outside recognition of the status of adolescents; what’s more essential is the change of teenagers’ inner self cognition of what adolescence means in the whole society. As Newt Gingrich, a critique of the current teen culture, says, long before the emergence of teenagers, people were considered as adults by themselves as soons as they got out of the world of childhood play. This concept is further revealed by the descriptions of people around Holden­­­­Phoebe possesses the one hundred percent purity of childhood; yet just a few years older than her, Stradlater tries his best to behave in his the premature adulthood. In Holden’s life, people were either mature as D.B. and Mr. Spencer or young and naive like his little sister, Phoebe. The only two people, who, in our society, might have been typical teenagers, Ally and James Castle, both died because of unpredictable accidents. Therefore, it should be considered that, not only did the outside society deny the existence of teenagers, Holden himself does not believe in a positive result of the experience of a teenager, eventually bringing himself difficulties caused by this non recognition. Although this omission of adolescence brought about celebrities like Benjamin Franklin and John Adams, who considered themselves as adults at the age of 13 (Gingrich), most people from the 1950s, who gave themselves the pressure of jumping from childhood to adulthood, experienced difficulties like Holden. In Schuessler’s editorial, an English teacher said that “Holden Caulfield is supposed to be this paradigmatic teenagers we can all relate to”. However, unlike Holden’s generation, who thought of the stage of adolescence as an instantaneous fall from a steep cliff and were able to relate to Holden in the non recognition of teenagers, today’s teenage readers regard their adolescence stage as a walk on a mild ramp and enjoy this period of their lives. No wonder it is hard for today’s teenagers to relate their belief of a transitioning adolescence to the denial of the teenage stage in ​
The Catcher in the Rye​
, resulting in the fall of the popularity of this book. Moreover, as the outside and inside recognitions on the adolescent group developed over time, the paradigm of teenagers changed simultaneously as well. Back in the 1950s, Holden Caulfield from ​
The Catcher in the Rye ​
was considered brave and heroic amongst people because of their relatable unconsciousness of the concept of teenagers and Holden’s perseverance on the naive childhood. However, as Schuessler describes in her editorial that “young people [today] ... are more enchanted by wide­eyed, quidditch playing Harry Potter of Hogwarts than by the smirking manager of Pencey’s fencing team”, the definition of the paradigms for teenagers, whether this term was publicly accepted or not, seems to shift from a dispossessed person who rejects the world to a winner who embraces it over the past several decades. Compared to Holden’s choice of the pure belief of an uncontaminated self in the 1950s, today’s teenagers tend to fit themselves in the given rules of the world first, making it hard for them to relate to Holden, who, in their minds, is just a dispossessed and immature boy, much over the fact that their recognition of teenagers today differs drastically from what Holden’s generation had. Consequently, the fall of the popularities of this novel is not surprising. Nevertheless, similar to most other changes, this shift of the definition of a paradigmatic model for teenagers has a lot of critiques likewise. In 2008, a book called ​
Excellent Sheep ​
was published. In this book, William Deresiewicz talks about the problem of the “elite colleges” today, which, he thinks, oppress the independent thoughts of teenagers and destroy the creativity of the society as a whole (Grafton). Interestingly, not only do the critiqued “excellent sheep” in this book, who go to Harvard and are born leaders, perfectly fit the requirements of a teenage paradigm in today’s world, but these people are also contempt by Holden Caulfield. Therefore, as much as people pay attention to the fall of The Catcher in the Rye and the change in the teen culture in America this fall embodies, the positivity or negativity this change brings to the society should also be considered. Whether it is an embodiment of the change in teen culture between the mid­twentieth century and the contemporary time or not, it is natural for ​
The Catcher in the Rye ​
to fade out of the public attention. What’s important today for the readers from younger generations to think about this book is not to just say “Shut up and take your Prozac”, but to consider whether we have the right to say this to Holden, or Holden has the right to say it to us, the “excellent” teenagers. Works Cited Grafton, Anthony. “The Enclosure of the American Mind ‘Excellent Sheep,’ by William Deresiewicz.” ​
The New York Times​
. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/24/books/review/excellent­sheep­by­william­deresie
wicz.html?_r=0>. The Independence Hall Association. “The Invention of the Teenager.” ​
U.S. History.org​
. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016. <http://www.ushistory.org/us/46c.asp>. Schuessler, Jennifer. “Get a Life, Holden Caufield.” ​
New York Times​
. N.p., 20 June 2009. Web. 24 Feb. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/weekinreview/21schuessler.html?ref=books>. “William Deresiewicz.” ​
Wikipedia​
. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2016. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Deresiewicz>. "Newt Gingrich: Let's End Adolescence." Bloomberg Business. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Feb. 2016. <http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2008­10­29/ newt­gingrich­lets­end­adolescence>.