Interpretation Of Salinger’ The Catcher In The Rye In The Light Of Lacan’s Three Orders

J.D. Salinger is an American writer whose only novel The Catcher in the Rye isconsidered as one of the most classic works in American literature in20thcentury.With it, he is pushed onto the worldwide literary platform. The novel depicts asixteen-year-old boy Holden’s three-day spiritual pilgrimage when wandering in NewYork streets after he is dismissed by the school the fourth time. It makes a vividportrait of the teenager’s rebellion in adolescence, rejection against the phonyadulthood and desire for the love and purity.As to the novel, the critics have done much research on it from variousperspectives, especially the interpretation of Holden’s psychological predicament.However, few critics have interpreted it in light of Lacan’s psychological theories, letalone the theory of Three Orders.Based on the fact above, this paper attempts analyze the causes for Holden’spsychological predicament in The Catcher in the Rye. According to Lacan, the threeorders refer to the Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real. In the Mirror Stage of theImaginary, the subject constructs an unreal self with the image of the mirror. When itrealizes the difference between the image and itself, the self-splitting happens andself-formation fails. When entering the Symbolic in the Oedipal Stage, under thethreats of the Name-of-the-Father, the subject fails to establish its subjectivity andproduces the sense of lack or loss. Despite of constant failure, the subject keepspursuing its subjectivity. The Real is impossible to obtain as Lacan claims. However,the subject sticks to struggling for it so that it could acquire the transient remedy forthe sense of lack or loss, namely, the transient construction of subjectivity.The body of the paper consists of three chapters. Chapter one discusses Holden’sself-splitting in the Imaginary. Holden identifies himself with his pure little brotherAllie who is loved by his mother. But when he has found the gap between pure Allieand degenerate himself, the self-splitting inevitably occurs to him and hisself-construction fails. Chapter two mainly analyzes Holden’s entrapment in the Symbolic. He is threatened by the Name-of-the-Father while he refuses the law of theFather, which makes him entrapped between the Imaginary and the Symbolic. His failto construct his subjectivity result in his final psychological predicament. Chapterthree reveals Holden’s desire for the Real after the failure of self-formation in theImaginary and the failure of constructing subjectivity in the Symbolic. He has finallyreconstructed subjectivity in illusion at the cost of suffering the neurosis.From the above exploration, the paper draws a conclusion that Holden’sabnormality is actually his struggle for his subjectivity. His neurosis is due to hisrepressed self-formation in the Imaginary and his rebellion to the law of the Father inthe Symbolic. So, fail to achieve his subjectivity inevitably leads to his psychologicaldesperation for the whole world.