Chapman in the Rye

Almost immediately after I finished reading The Catcher in the Rye for the first time, a certain fact bubbled to the surface of my Beatles-aficionado brain: Mark David Chapman was carrying a copy of this very book when he murdered John Lennon. Before I had ever read the book, that fact didn’t mean very much to me. So what if the crazy dude who shot and killed one of The Beatles was a fan of a certain book? If anything, that gave me a reason not to read it. I was more preoccupied with the fact that he was obsessed with killing John Lennon.

Now that I’ve read The Catcher in the Rye, it is clearly more relevant than I had thought. A quick skimming of Wikipedia reveals that Chapman didn’t just like the book: he was obsessed with it. Especially fixated on Holden’s fantasy of literally being a catcher in the rye and saving children from falling off of a cliff, Chapman though he could be a “guadian angel” like Holden. Chapman thought Lennon was a “phony” and that killing him would make him a savior. He modeled his life after Holden Caulfield, and just three hours after shooting Lennon, he told the police, “I’m sure the large part of me is Holden Caulfield, who is the main person in the book. The small part of me must be the Devil.”

The question that those who believe The Catcher in the Rye should be censored are likely concerned with is how the part of him that was Holden related to the part of him that was “the Devil”. Unlike in the cases of Harry Potter censorship, this is a legitimate example of someone being influence by this work to commit a horrible and violent act. Obviously, Chapman had underlying mental issues that contributed to his actions, but the book and its message played an important role and those who wish to censor The Catcher in the Rye could easily use that to help their case. But one still has to consider whether the unfortunate effect the book had on this one individual are legitimate cause to keep anyone from reading it. I think most people would agree that this case was a most unusual one and that the book itself isn’t a dangerous one, but seeing the extreme way a book can completely take hold of someone’s mind really makes you think.