麥田守望者

Original Passages

"You know that song 'If a body catch a body coming through the rye'? I'd like---"

"It's 'If a body meet a body coming through the rye'!" old Phoebe said. "It's a poem. By Robert Burns."

"I know it's a poem by Robert Burns."

She was right, though. It is "If a body meet a body coming through the rye." I didn't know it then, though.

"I thought it was 'If a body catch a body,'" I said. "Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around---nobody big, I mean---except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff---I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy."

"你知道那首歌「如果一個人在麥田抓到另一個人」嗎？我想 - -"

"是「如果一個人經麥田遇到一個人」！"老Phoebe說。"這是一首詩。Robert Burns寫的"

「我知道那是Robert Burns的詩」

她說得沒錯。是 「如果一個人在麥田遇到另一個人」 之後的我都不知道。

"我以為是'如果一個人抓到另一個人,'" 我說。"總之，我一直在想像這些小孩子在這一大片黑麥地裡玩遊戲的情景。成千上萬的小孩子，四處空無一人--我是說，沒有大人--除了我。我站在瘋狂的懸崖邊上。我必須做的是，如果每個人都開始往懸崖邊跑，我必須抓住他們--我是說，如果他們跑的時候不看路，我必須從某個地方跑出來抓住他們。這就是我整天要做的事。我就像麥田裡的捕手一樣。我知道這很瘋狂，但這就是我唯一想做的事。「我知道這很瘋狂」。

Analysis

Holden’s fantasy about becoming “the catcher in the rye” is rather abstract and surreal (超現實的), but it spotlights his desire to preserve what little innocence he believes is left in the world. To him, children represent the purity of youth, but he recognizes that this purity inevitably recedes as they grow older. For this reason, he wants to protect this purity from corruption (腐化墮落), and wishes he could spend all of his time keeping the hardships of the adult world at bay. In and of itself, this is a rather innocent and naive thing to want, and this naivety becomes even more pronounced when readers consider the song Holden is quoting. Indeed, “Comin’ Thro’ the Rye” is an old poem set to a folk melody that has extremely sexually explicit implications—implications that Holden completely misunderstands. When he quotes it, then, he not only exhibits his attachment to innocence, but inadvertently demonstrates that he himself is still quite innocent and immature when it comes to adult matters.

https://www.litcharts.com

Holden 對於成為「麥田守望者」的幻想頗為抽象和超現實，但卻突顯出他希望保留他認為世界上僅存的一點純真。對他來說，孩子代表著青春的純潔，但他意識到這種純潔不可避免地會隨著年齡的增長而消退。因此，他想要保護這份純潔不被蠶食，並希望自己能將所有的時間都花在遠離成人世界的艱辛上。這本身就是一件相當天真無邪的事情，而當讀者考慮到Holden所引用的歌曲時，這種天真無邪的想法就更加明顯了。事實上，"Comin' Thro' the Rye "是一首以民謠旋律為背景的古老詩歌，具有極為露骨的性暗示---Holden完全誤解了這種暗示。因此，當他引用這首歌時，他不僅表現出他對純真的執著，也在不經意之間證明了他自己在成人事務上仍然相當天真和不成熟。

Translated by DeepL and edited