He had just been expelled from his fourth school. He did not tell anyone. Instead of going home, he left early and wandered New York City alone for three days. He hated almost everything about the adult world. He called it phony. He saw it everywhere. In his teachers. In strangers. In everyone he met. But he was not simply angry. He was grieving. His younger brother had died of leukemia years earlier. He had never processed it. He carried his brother's old baseball glove everywhere, covered in poems his brother once wrote on it. The only person who still made sense to him was his ten year old sister. She asked him what he actually wanted to do with his life. He told her. He imagined a field where children played, running close to the edge of a cliff. He imagined himself standing at that edge, catching any child who got too close to falling. He wanted to protect innocent children from falling into the adult world he despised so much. She pointed out something he had not considered. That is not a real job. He could not explain what he actually meant. He could not admit he was not talking about saving children. He was talking about saving himself. He never wanted to grow up. He never recovered from losing his brother. So here is the question this novel has asked for over seventy years — how much of the anger we call rebellion is actually grief that nobody taught us how to carry? #TheCatcherInTheRye #ClassicBooks #JDSalinger #Storybit #MustRead