Posted by Mark Chapman claimed he murdered John Lennon following the message of The Catcher in The Rye, but Holden Caulfield would never kill anyone: Murder Without Trial, the TV series on Apple TV+, covers the hidden aspects of that story.
“The phony must die, says the Catcher in the Rye.”
A sentence believed to be used in a government-led brainwashing process to convince Mark Chapman to murder John Lennon
“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it.”
J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Who has never wanted to be able to compare themselves with their favorite writer? Yet, despite J.D. Salinger said it through the mouth of his protagonist Holden Caulfield, if he had received a call from a fan, he would certainly have thrown down the phone.
His first novel became so popular, in fact, that he was forced to retire to private life. The story of Holden Caulfield unfolds over a weekend: the protagonist is a sixteen-year-old New Yorker who dropped out of school after being expelled and loiters around the streets of Manhattan, waiting for the Christmas holidays. A lot happens to him these days, from an encounter with a prostitute who blackmails him to an attempted sexual approach by his English literature professor who had offered him hospitality.
It might seem like the typical coming-of-age novel: the perspective is ironic, irreverent, and declaredly unreliable. “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life,” says Holden, who makes it clear right away. We have all felt, at least once, in tune with the thoughts of the protagonist of this cult book who hates almost everything and everyone; we have all shared with him the contempt for the hypocrisy of society, and sometimes we would have liked his red hunting hat to take aim and “shoot people.”
Unless someone takes what Holden Caulfield said literally, more than he himself did in the pages of the novel: that’s what happened when Mark David Chapman murdered John Lennon, apparently.
On the evening of December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman was found by the New York police sitting on the edge of a sidewalk near the Dakota Building, holding a copy of The Catcher in the Rye. The frontispiece reads: “This is my statement,” signed Holden Caulfield. A few minutes earlier, he had exclaimed, “Mr. Lennon,” and the shot him five times. Then he had confirmed, “Yes, I just shot John Lennon.”
Chapman had totally identified with the antisocial anger of the protagonist of the cursed novel (even John Hinckley, the delusional man who had shot U.S. President Ronald Reagan because, had said, “If you want an explanation, all you have to do is read The Catcher in the Rye“). Chapman had convinced himself that he was living in Holden’s universe. For Chapman, John Lennon was the ultimate “phony,” a fake or hypocrite in Salinger’s book jargon. He sang about poverty while living in wealth.
But the truth is that Holden Caulfield would never have killed anyone because he was too much of a “coward.” Chapman instrumentalizes him to mask the real reason for his actions, which is to become famous by killing a celebrity.
Can a novel or a song really push you to commit a crime? John Lennon was the victim of novel emulation, but a few years earlier Sharon Tate had also been killed in the name of a war that took its name from a song on The Beatles’ White Album: Helter Skelter. A racial war that Charles Manson read between the lines of the text: “Look out, ’cause here she comes”.
It looks like a short circuit. Every work of fiction can push an already problematic person to commit violent acts in reality: “But this reality and fiction stood before the Dakota building”, said Chapman, taking part of the responsibility for what he had done. If only he had called J. D. Salinger (and Salinger had answered him) we would have had a completely different story.
This article was written by Ambra Scuderi for the Italian version of Auralcrave
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