A Pedophile Fantasy in the Rye
Source: postflaviana.org
In a prior article available on this site, J.D. Salinger’s book The Catcher in the Rye was shown to contain a hidden symbolic level that depicted Holden Caulfield’s initiation into the Freemasons. The article also showed that Salinger described a kind of Freemasonry that did not shy away from violence to protect its secrets.
Will Weaver, blogging at the Huffington Post, noticed another disturbing fact about JD Salinger’s literature:
As we pass the two-year anniversary of J.D. Salinger’s death, why is it that no one remarks on the obvious? In his life and in his fiction, Salinger had a predilection for young girls and women that, at least from a 21st century lens, does not seem all that healthy.
The first story in Salinger’s collection, Nine Stories, includes a scene at a beach with a “young man” (in his twenties) and a little girl. She is described as wearing a two-piece bathing suit that she would “not be needing” for nine or ten years. That’s slightly creepy coming from a grown guy. But he knows her by name, and our inner parent lets out a sigh of relief — until he compliments her again on her bathing suit. Soon he is holding her hand as they walk further down the beach where they go swimming together, and, in an intensely described scene, he helps her float by holding her ankles.
A story or two later in the collection we find a soldier in World War II, who, after reading some letters from his wife, goes out for tea. He encounters a governess and her ten-year-old charge. The little girl is quite friendly, and wears anklets and has “lovely” feet. When it’s certain they’ll talk, the soldier becomes concerned about the gap in his teeth, and the color of his mustache. Weirdness Alert: why, when about to talk to a young girl, would a grown man be concerned about his looks?
And if you look closely at Catcher In The Rye, there are odd moments of Holden watching the skater, or sitting in his young sister’s bedroom — Holden with his gray hair, remember. But an Existentialist reading, in full critical flower when Salinger was publishing and still fragrant in his work today, forgives almost everything. It’s all about “alienation,” his fans maintain. Okay. But these facts remain: about 75 percent of Salinger’s fiction centers on characters under the age of 21, and of that, about half on girls under the age of twelve.
Unfettered by any Existentialist pleasantries, we would like to put Salinger’s “alienation” into a more Postflavian context. Our suggestion is that Salinger’s encrypted message needs to be understood as a consequence of his being a member of military intelligence during WWII.
MK-Ultra, the CIA, and the Counter Culture
Following the war the OSS transitioned into the CIA and began a secret program called MK Ultra. As shown in our article “Manufacturing the Deadhead“, this program was instrumental to the creation of what was called the counter culture – the cultural force that caused America’s youth to abandon their middle class values and embrace sex, drugs and rock and roll as freedom. This was presumably done at the direction of some hidden power that wished to debase the morals and intellect of the baby boomer generation to make them easier to control. In fact, MK Ultra intended to place them within a kind of mental slavery.
We ask the reader to consider whether Salinger created The Catcher in the Rye as part of this project. Culture moves slowly, and the book seems to have been intended to operate as a precursor to the more destructive ideas about sex, drugs and music that would follow. The book helped to – among other things – began the process of isolating teen-agers from their parents in order to break down the family structure. The trend started by Holden Caulfield’s lonely teen-age angst, would end up in Woodstock with drugged out baby boomers experiencing casual sex in the mud while their rock idols – many of whom were the children of military intelligence– played music designed to diminish their intellect.
Furthermore, we contend that part of Salinger’s attack against America’s youth was directed against their subconscious. By 1951 and the publication of Catcher in the Rye, the CIA had already begun to study the subconscious to learn how to use it for control. Specifically, Gregory Bateson had established a scholarly relationship with hypnotist Milton Erickson as early as 1932. (As we will be demonstrating in a new article to appear shortly, Bateson was another key figure in the early development of the OSS and the CIA and their program to create the counter culture.) Bateson would have been fascinated with Erickson’s research, which involved the idea that hypnotically effective trance states could be established in the course of ordinary life activities such as reading, talking to a therapist, or watching motion pictures, especially if intense and traumatic emotional states could be evoked by the experience. During such trance states, Erickson believed, the subconscious mind of the the target could be accessed by means of hypnotic suggestion.
Neuro-Linguistic Programming
This idea was later taken up by Bateson proteges Richard Bandler and John Grinder, who commercialized it as the system of “Neuro-Linguistic Programming”, described in their 1975 work “The Structure of Magic“. They drew on Noam Chomsky’s theory of transformational grammar to explain that the subliminal messages could be formed within a deep linguistic structure lurking beneath the surface interpretation.
An interesting example of this is found on the cover of the Life Magazine that described Gordon Wasson’s 1957 article which began the public’s awareness of psychedelic drugs.
The Life Magazine cover highlights a box and inside the box are the words:
Great Adventures in The Discovery of Mushrooms That Cause Strange Visions
—————————–
Teen Age Allowances
Gordon Wasson’s ‘discovery’ has now been shown to be part of MK Ultra. His trip had the official MK Ultra designation of sub project 58. Wasson’s story has also been shown to be a lie. See the article on this site, “Manufacturing the Deadhead“, for a description of the evidence.
What we are seeing on Life’s cover seems to be an early example of neuro-linguistic programming, or NLP. On the surface, it appears that the items in the box refer to two different articles on two different subjects. However, considering that this was the grand initiation of the MK Ultra project that intended to move teen-age culture to accept psychedelic drugs, it stretches the bounds of credulity to argue that this breathless invitation to “Great Adventures” could have been juxtaposed to the words ‘Teen Age Allowances’ by accident. Bert Lahr, the “Cowardly Lion” and “Bumbling Lover”, seems to be part of the tableau in the role of a clown. Real men and teenagers go boldly, not bumbling, into the great adventure. Every citizen should study the cover of the May 13, 1957 edition carefully. It reveals the sad and horrible truth that there is some organization with destructive intent hidden within our government and media.
As a member of military intelligence, Salinger may well have been aware of science that Bateson and Erickson were developing to influence the subconscious. Our view is that he intentionally used an early form of neuro-linguistic programming in a subtheme within Catcher in the Rye. Salinger designed the theme to operate subconsciously and break down his reader’s résistance to inappropriate sexuality.
Holden and Phoebe, best of friends?
On a surface level, the relationship between the sixteen-year-old Holden Caulfield and his ten-year-old sister Phoebe appears to be a strong and affectionate brother-sister bond which has generally been praised by critics. For example, see this commentary at LitCharts.com:
Though only ten years old, Phoebe is considerably more mature than Holden. She is a voice of reason throughout the novel, both in Holden’s thoughts and in the advice she gives to him in person. Phoebe is also unusually perceptive: her insight into Holden’s misanthropy, his hatred of almost everything, is a key turning point in the novel. It’s no coincidence that perhaps the most level headed and intelligent character in the novel is a child. Holden idealizes childhood and values children’s ideas and opinions more than those of adults. Phoebe’s intelligence and wise counsel offer a strong contrast to the lectures he receives from the various teachers and headmasters that he despises.
However, under closer scrutiny, Holden and Phoebe express feelings and actions for each other which are well along the slippery slope that leads to incest and pedophilia. This would help set the stage for the baby boomers’ acceptance of the free love (and no marriage) culture of the sixties.
The “Sex Maniac”.
Salinger begins his assault on his male readers’ subconscious by having his anti-hero state that he is a “sex maniac” and describing sexual activity designed to open his reader’s subconscious to such behavior. Holden admits that he would do some “very crumby stuff ” if the opportunity came up. What teenage boy wouldn’t?
The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don’t want it to be. For instance, that girl that was getting water squirted all over her face, she was pretty good-looking. I mean that’s my big trouble. In my mind, I’m probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn’t mind doing if the opportunity came up. I can even see how it might be quite a lot of fun, in a crumby way, and if you were both sort of drunk and all, to get a girl and squirt water or something all over each other’s face. The thing is, though, I don’t like the idea. It stinks, if you analyze it. I think if you don’t really like a girl, you shouldn’t horse around with her at all, and if you do like her, then you’re supposed to like her face, and if you like her face, you ought to be careful about doing crumby stuff to it, like squirting water all over it. It’s really too bad that so much crumby stuff is a lot of fun sometimes. Girls aren’t too much help, either, when you start trying not to get too crumby, when you start trying not to spoil anything really good. I knew this one girl, a couple of years ago, that was even crumbier than I was. Boy, was she crumby! We had a lot of fun, though, for a while, in a crumby way. Sex is something I really don’t understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away.
Although, in fact, Holden’s “crumby” squirting fetish seems relatively harmless, incest and child abuse are definitely not in the same category. Although Egyptian royalty may have engaged in brother-sister marriages to preserve the purity of the bloodline, this behavior is well known to lead quickly to expression of maladaptive recessive genes causing monstrous birth defects. Avoidance of such relations seems to be instinctive among many mammalian species as well as humans. Accordingly, the near-universal human taboo on incest (that is, aside from Egyptian royalty) is highly functional and in accordance with natural law; the same cannot be said for Salinger’s work.
Furthermore, of course, prepubescent children are not physically or psychologically ready for sexual activity with adults, and such activity often leads to trauma and to a sort of post-traumatic stress disorder which is very difficult to overcome later in life. This is an extremely widespread problem in America today; one estimate claims that as many as 28% to 33% of all American females were subject to childhood sexual abuse.
Madonna-Whore Complex
In the passage above, Caulfield is also expressing a madonna-whore complex, which is defined as “the inability to maintain sexual arousal within a committed, loving relationship… this psychological complex is said to develop in men who see women either as saintly Madonnas or debased prostitutes”. Holden’s problem is only compounded by the fact that he sees himself as sexually aroused primarily by his fetish for squirting “water or something”. Accordingly, Caulfield engages in “necking” and “horsing around” with characters like Sally Hayes and Anne Louise Sherman who he does not respect, while he idealizes Jane Gallagher, who he can hardly bring himself to touch aside from genteel hand-holding. The thought of Jane behaving sexually with his roommate Stradlater drives Caulfield into a frenzy. Ironically, Caulfield hires a prostitute, Sunny, and winds up placing her on this same Madonna pedestal. Thus, he remains endlessly virginal and sexually frustrated. We aren’t even sure Holden would understand how to go about having sexual intercourse if the opportunity presented itself, much less whether he understands what “crumby” behavior really might entail.
Holden Caulfield’s sister Phoebe is also idealized as a sort of Madonna, most saintly and yet most desirable. Salinger described Phoebe as “nice skinny” and “roller skate” skinny”. With his descriptions, Salinger is connecting the subconscious mind of his young male readers to the idea of a sexually desirable but underage girl. At the same time, because of the Madonna-Whore complex, Holden Caulfield is blinded to his sexual attraction towards his sister; as is the casual reader.
But you ought to see old Phoebe. She has this sort of red hair, a little bit like Allie’s was, that’s very short in the summertime. In the summertime, she sticks it behind her ears. She has nice, pretty little ears. In the wintertime, it’s pretty long, though. Sometimes my mother braids it and sometimes she doesn’t. It’s really nice, though. She’s only ten. She’s quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. I watched her once from the window when she was crossing over Fifth Avenue to go to the park, and that’s what she is, roller-skate skinny. You’d like her.
Salinger then describes Phoebe as dressed up as an adult. This is done to create the sense of Phoebe as a sexual being in the minds of his readers. But, at the same time, the imagery of white gloves maintains the illusion of her purity and inaccessibility.
Old Phoebe. I swear to God you’d like her. She was smart even when she was a very tiny little kid. When she was a very tiny little kid, I and Allie used to take her to the park with us, especially on Sundays. Allie had this sailboat he used to like to fool around with on Sundays, and we used to take old Phoebe with us. She’d wear white gloves and walk right between us, like a lady and all.
Salinger mentions Holden’s touching of his sister. Notice that Salinger is creating a parallel between Holden’s touch, with that of a slightly older adolescent girl’s tentatively sexual touching of Holden.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, in this movie, Jane did something that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or something, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my neck, and it was Jane’s. It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of somebody’s neck, they’re around twenty-five or thirty and usually they’re doing it to their husband or their little kid–I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl’s quite young and all and she does it, it’s so pretty it just about kills you.
Salinger goes on to describe a record Holden buys for Phoebe. He sexualizes this gift by noting that he bought her the “whorehouse” version of a child’s song for his sister. The reference to “Little Shirley Beans” may represent Shirley Temple, the prepubescent Hollywood idol who remarked in her 1988 autobiography that she was also ashamed of her missing teeth. The scene precedes and foreshadows Holden’s fantasy of catching children falling off the cliff as they are playing in the rye field, which takes on an even more creepy pedophiliac tone in the context of imagining the nubile little Shirley (Temple) Beans in semantic juxtaposition to the whorehouse:
I started walking over toward Broadway, just for the hell of it, because I hadn’t been over there in years. Besides, I wanted to find a record store that was open on Sunday. There was this record I wanted to get for Phoebe, called “Little Shirley Beans.” It was a very hard record to get. It was about a little kid that wouldn’t go out of the house because two of her front teeth were out and she was ashamed to. I heard it at Pencey. A boy that lived on the next floor had it, and I tried to buy it off him because I knew it would knock old Phoebe out, but he wouldn’t sell it. It was a very old, terrific record that this colored girl singer, Estelle Fletcher, made about twenty years ago. She sings it very Dixieland and whorehouse, and it doesn’t sound at all mushy. If a white girl was singing it, she’d make it sound cute as hell, but old Estelle Fletcher knew what the hell she was doing, and it was one of the best records I ever heard. I figured I’d buy it in some store that was open on Sunday and then I’d take it up to the park with me. It was Sunday and Phoebe goes rollerskating in the park on Sundays quite frequently. I knew where she hung out mostly.
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