Finding My Voice in High School English.

At the age of 26, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on high school English class, specifically the literature I’ve read during those times and the lessons it taught me. One of the “classics” many students are forced to read is a novel called “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger.

It isn’t a book that stands out or delivers a smooth narrative. On the surface, it comes off as a messy, continuous stream of thoughts. However, having finished it recently, I realized it has taught me something retrospectively about the English classes I took back then, how they taught us to think originally and to be confident in our own ideas. Unpacking that lesson made me take a hard look at myself, why I used to miss the point of English class, and how it made me a less complete person.

In the novel, a student named Holden Caulfield drops out of high school and spends his time aimlessly wandering around New York City, unsure of what to do. It’s a conglomeration of events showcasing Holden’s cynical view of life, his hypocrisy, and scattered thoughts. As a reader, you really learn to hate the character. Yet, beneath all that cynicism, he’s really capturing something universal: the brutal, unpredictable transition from childhood to adulthood and the confusion of navigating the world.

Looking at the title itself, “The Catcher in the Rye”, my interpretation places Holden as someone lost in a field of rye. As you walk through a field of crops, you can never see far off into the distance, parting aside the stalks in front of you will only reveal more stalks a couple feet away. Just like daily life, it’s easy to get lost in what to do next; it can seem limitless, but also overwhelming.

Instead of seeing him as the savior, I see someone lost in that field, hoping for someone to rescue him. But traditional interpretations position him the other way around, as the catcher, saving kids from loss of innocence. My interpretation is just as valid as anyone else’s, as long as I have proof to back it up. There is no single correct answer; English class was about how correct you can make your correct answer, as long as you supported your argument and stood firm in your perspective. It taught us to be original in our thinking, teaching us how to support those points, not just as an academic exercise, but also as people, to not only follow others but to construct your own world view based on your research, experiences, and feelings.

I tackled English just like I would with Math: searching for a single right answer. I would write an essay and then check online to see if my point was supported by others or labeled ‘correct’. I now see that doing that was a mistake. Just like life, I shouldn’t seek correctness for something that doesn’t have a correct answer or seek validation from others. If I have the support to back up my claim, then it is as correct as anyone else’s. Even if the author didn’t write something with the intent you thought of, your interpretation can still be correct, because at the end of the day, it is YOUR interpretation.

My high school English class course syllabus always said “English fosters Self-Confidence, articulates self-expression, and builds personal voice.” It was something I never understood until now.

References

Long, L. (2024) “What is reader response?,” Critical Worlds. College of Western Idaho.

Salinger, J. D. (2019). The catcher in the rye. Little Brown and Company.