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Beyond the controversy that has surrounded The Catcher in the Rye since it first appeared, and beyond contemporary assessments of the novel's political/cultural relevance, J. D. Salinger's Catcher merits ongoing consideration because of the subversion it conducts, a revolt against all fixed values. Ironically, the comment of one editor who rejected Catcher for publication is suggestive of the nature of this revolt: "Is Holden Caulfield supposed to be crazy?" (Hamilton 114). It is the sense of madness, often expressed in the novel through Holden's characteristic humor, that-as Mikhail Bakhtin observes in regard to carnival-"makes men look at the world with different eyes, not dimmed by `normal,' that is by commonplace ideas and judgments" (Rabelais 39). This carnivalesque aspect of Catcher has yet to be explored fully, but it is fundamental to the novel's import and value.
In addition to madness and laughter, Bakhtin identifies other principles of the carnivalesque that offer liberation from conventional values, principles that illuminate the essential concerns of Catcher. These include a "peculiar festive character without any piousness, [and] complete liberation from seriousness" (Rabelais 254); "free and familiar contact among people"; "behavior, gesture, and discourse . . . freed from the authority of all hierarchical positions (social estate, rank, age, property)" (Dostoevsky's Poetics 123); and "disguise-that is, carnivalistic shifts of clothing and of positions and destinies in life" (125). In the spirit of the carnivalesque, Holden's story is set in the festive Christmas season, yet it is far from pious.1 Holden himself delights in and encourages the "liberation" of a classmate who farts under his headmaster's watchful eye during the speech of a respected alumnus. During Holden's two day stay in New York, he enjoys "free and familiar contact" with diverse people, regardless of "social estate, rank, age, [and] property"; these people range from a nine-year-old girl (his sister Phoebe's friend) to a married society woman in her forties (his classmate's mother), and from a prostitute to a pair of nuns. Finally, "shifts of clothing" are a recurring motif for Holden and those around him, with lendings and borrowings of his hound's-tooth jacket, his turtleneck sweater, and his famous hunting hat. How these exchanges of clothing signify shifts of "positions and destinies" shall be considered at greater length below. It is...