The Catcher In the Rye vs, A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man

So in this blog post I just wanted to compare the two books that we’ve been reading so far. I’m going to start out by saying that I was pleasantly surprised with both books, but if it came down to choosing just one, I would automatically have to say that The Catcher in the Rye is my favorite. It really came down to two major reasons though, which were readability and the main characters.

First of all, when it came down to it, The Catcher In the Rye was just so much easier to read than A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man. This had to do with the authors’ choices in writing styles, and both were very different from one another. Salinger wrote directly to the audience and he chose to be concise with how he depicted scenes through Holden’s eyes. Going along with that, Holden’s thought process was easy to follow, and he is so open and direct with the reader about his feelings. The majority of the books that I’ve read don’t directly address the reader at all, and the fact that Holden does so, so matter of factly, makes me feel like I’m one of his close friends. I loved the fact that Holden would say stuff like,“...oh, you’d like her..” or something along the lines of, “...you’d believe me if you saw him...” Joyce, on the other hand, chose to fill the pages with nuances and subtext, and because of that, I didn’t feel as big a connection with Stephen as I did with Holden. There would be times when I would read and get lost in Joyce’s extremely complex sentences, so much so that I wouldn’t even catch on to what was actually happening to Stephen in real time. Take Stephen’s epiphany scene on the beach, for example. It took me longer than it should have to differentiate Stephen’s thoughts and actions, because in Joyce’s writing style he kind of melds those together. Don’t get me wrong, it was a good chapter, but it was kind of annoying having to read over sections multiple times to make sure that I hadn’t missed any of Stephen’s actions or thoughts.

Another thing that I enjoyed more about Salinger’s book was the main character. Surprisingly, both Stephen and Holden are quite similar as they face some sort of inner turmoil and depression, but even then, I enjoyed Holden as a character more. Holden was more genuine, down to earth, and selfless than Stephen. And Stephen on the other hand was self-centered, caused problems for himself, and didn’t care about anyone. I know this might sound terrible, but Holden actually did have more of a legitimate reason for which to be sad. The fact that Allie died really took a toll on Holden, and we see him being depressed and referencing the days when he was happy, which was when he was with Allie. Another thing was that even during his low points, he still cared about his family and others. He wanted to help out those nuns, although they weren’t even asking for donations, and he always cared for and thought of Phoebe. I’m not going to discredit Stephen journey to self-realization, but, in the end, he really made a lot of problems for himself. Although Stephen’s family did have monetary issues, he chose to seclude himself, make bad decisions, and he thought way too highly of himself (more than he should have). Both didn’t make the wisest of choices, but I liked Holden more because he just seemed like a better person in general. 

Overall, both books were pretty good, but I was able to more fully appreciate The Catcher in the Rye because it was so much easier to follow and the connection with characters was more tangible than with A Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man.