As I was reading The Catcher in the Rye, one thought that kept popping into my head was how similar this book was to another book I read over the summer, The Pigman by Paul Zindel. The Pigman was published in 1968 just 17 years after Catcher and has also become a staple of middle school and high school English classes.
The first similarity that struck me was the tone. By now we are all familiar with Holden Caufields narrative voice and the extremely conversational tone he uses. In The Pigman, the two protagonists John and Lorraine alternate narrating chapters, but both use the same casual style that gives the feeling they are talking to you rather than writing. Also, both Salinger and Zindel do a good job of writing it so it sounds like Holden and John and Lorraine are actual teenagers, not adults. But neither book has them talking quite like teenagers today since the books were written over 40 years ago, and the outdated slang makes the tones sound even more similar to me.
The tones probably sound even more similar because the ideas they are expressing are so similar. John and Lorraine approach life with the same cynicism as Holden, quick to shoot everyone else down for being fake or for just not agreeing with them. Perhaps because of this cynicism, they are quick to pass judgement on others and make broad generalizations. They are also quick to use others for their own ends. Rather than making me hate them, this way of approaching life makes them very charismatic and draws me into the book.
This cynical approach to life in both books derives mostly from family problems. Holden seems to still be in pain from the death of his brother Allie. Lorraine is suffering in a single parent household where her mother is mean and spiteful to her and everyone else. John's father is a drunk and his mother doesn't know what to do about it, and John feels constantly pressured to become a banker like his father and brother. The cynicism of these three characters seems to be a way of protecting themselves from the pain of their family life.
Even though the content of the book is very different, the plot still feels somewhat similar. In both books, the protagonist(s) start out very confident and defiant at what they are doing, but then events quickly get away from them and spiral out of control. I don't think I am giving to much away about The Pigman when I say that John and Lorraine lose control of things and their erstwhile confidence has deserted them by the end. Also similar to Catcher, there is a final conclusive event and when the two narrators are telling the story about a year later, they are not sure what they learned from it.
So if you were someone who enjoyed Catcher and are looking for a book with a similarly engaging narrative voice but thought-provoking material, The Pigman would definitely be a good book to try. (As a note, I listened to The Pigman as an audiobook and it was really good. I bet Catcher would make a great audio book.) If you have read The Pigman, I would love to hear your comparisons in the comment section. I have been trying to find someone else who has read both and I could talk to about it, but nobody (including Mr. Mitchell) seems to have read The Pigman.
Ah! I remember reading The Pigman for my 7th grade Language Arts class, a long time ago, in a galaxy far far away. (The Outsiders was another good book.) I don't have a detailed memory of the narrators' voices, though I do remember the plot outline and John and Lorraine's general characters.
ReplyDeleteI'm having a hard time drawing meaningful connections between the books. I guess I could say The Catcher in the Rye, The Pigman, and The Outsiders are all about teenagers going through some meaningful life event(s), but I was not reminded of the latter two at all while I was actually reading Catcher.
I would have to reread them to be sure, but I would hesitate to deem them "coming-of-age novels" because they don't have the same caliber of introspection as Catcher. I daresay that the books we are reading in class focus on the protagonist's own development, while these others focus more on the plot, catering to a "Young Adult" audience.
I look forward to discussing these books some more! (Also, thanks for sparking my memory of The Pigman, which I don't remember thinking about for years.)
An interesting book to compare to Catcher, and from your summary of The Pigman (which I haven’t read) would be White Boy Shuffle which we read last semester for African-American Lit. In a way Gunnar Kaufman struggles with similar issues that Holden presents, even though he is a poor black kid growing up in the fictional Hillside neighborhood of L.A. I remember when I first started reading Catcher I instantly thought of White Boy Shuffle because I found the tone and rhythm of both books were strikingly similar. White Boy Shuffle offers a more recent version of teenage speech (though it is still outdated by about fifteen years), but at least to me, is in the same spirit as Catcher and The Pigman, with similar narration styles and plot patterns.
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