John Lennon had information that tormented his murderer

When Mark Chapman murdered John Lennon He was 25 years old and Lennon was 40. It was four decades ago, on December 8, 1980, and the killer was still serving his life sentence at Green Haven Correctional Center, a maximum-security prison in the town of Beekman, New York. His lawyers applied for parole 14 times, but were always denied.

The December 8thdoes 45 yearsChapman had been hanging around the house all day.

In the morning he disguised himself among his fans and spoke to the manager of the Dakota building where it was located former Beatle lived with Yoko Ono and Sean, their 5-year-old son. Then when he saw him leaving with his wife, he walked up to him and asked him to sign the cover of his latest album. Double fantasy. Lennon shook his hand and then got into the limousine that would take him to Record Plant Studios.

“At that moment the good part of me won and I wanted to go back to my hotel, but I couldn’t. I waited for him to come back. He knew where the ducks go in the winter and I wanted to know,” Chapman explained enigmatically to police.

After the murder he didn’t even try to escape. He sat on the cord wounded with the blood of the man who imagined peace in the world and began to read The Catcher in the Ryethis novel by Jerome David Salinger which has been reviled, controversial and successful since it appeared in bookstores in 1951.

Chapman, who had attempted suicide three years earlier, walked into the police station with the novel under his arm. On the first page he had written: “This is my statement”; and signed by Holden Caulfield.

To investigate the causes of the murder, law enforcement authorities had to visit a library. And then think about the society in which you grew up in the 1950s.

Holden Caulfield – who revives some of Salinger’s autobiographical experiences in fiction – is the protagonist of The Catcher in the Rye. He’s the 16-year-old boy from the wealthy middle class, skinny, irresponsible and clever, who would rather be a precocious lumberjack in Vermont than a lawyer like his father.

Chapman had attempted suicide three years earlier; At the police station, with the novel under his arm, he wrote on the first page: “This is my statement”; and it was signed by Holden Caulfield.

Holden, whose behavior is inexplicable to society, tells his story of a Neuropsychiatric Hospital, in California. In his horizon of insecurities, with an absent father and a verbal and superficial mother, only a 12-year-old sister manages to get him to pull a cable to the ground. When she wants to accompany him on the run, she feels responsible for the minor and then cancels her plan. Moral: Instead of treating a teenager like a child, give him responsibility and see what happens.

If the British JK Rowling managed to get young people at the end of the century to read wonderful stories that distanced them from reality, the American JD Salinger turned the real problems of mid-century teenagers into real literary material.

And between passions and prohibitions, The Catcher in the Ryewhich merited two different translations into Spanish (The hidden hunter and then, The Catcher in the Rye) continues to be inspiring, especially among teenagers who feel misunderstood.

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But be careful: a brilliant novel cannot be measured by the misconduct of its readers.

As with any enigma police, psychiatry would have to ask why Chapman killed Lennon after hating and admiring him in equal measure. But in the riddle there is a key sentence that “justified” his act in the eyes of the murderer: “Because he knows where the ducks go in winter.”

The Catcher in the Ryewhich merited two different translations into Spanish (The hidden hunter and then, The Catcher in the Rye) continues to be inspiring, especially among teenagers who feel misunderstood.”

This is precisely the obsession of Holden, the anti-hero who runs away from school before being kicked out for poor grades. The boy who sees a Student jump from the balcony instead of retreating; the one who hates pimples and spies on his roommate’s shapely body; that of a thousand questions about his own sexuality; the one who hates an ambiguous situation in front of his favorite teacher; one who admires a brother who sold his talent to Hollywood and secretly talks to Allie, the other dead brother

In his escape plan, Holden Caulfield isn’t going anywhere. He leaves and remembers how many times he stood in the flood in front of Allie’s grave. In the cemetery, during a storm, people leave the cemetery in fear, but the dead remain behind, alone and cold as ducks. Or do they disappear? Or are they waiting for the rebirth of spring?

Holden Caulfield walks through New York and sinks into the snow with every step depression.

Life and death in all their glory; This is what teenagers think about when they make us believe that they are not thinking about anything. And Salinger was one of the first to expose it. Or suffer it.

In it CemeteryWhen it storms, people leave in terror, but the dead remain alone and cold as ducks. Or do they disappear? Or are they waiting for the rebirth of spring?”

In the mid-20th century and just five years after the end of World War II, the United States tried to recover from so many losses – even if it won, a war is never free – by entrenching itself in the typical family, stereotypes, parental roles and consumerism.
Americans revived the economy at breakneck speed, but they were unable to stop racial protests or the rise of psychoanalysis.

In I love LucyMeanwhile, Lucille Ball introduced her brand new devices Dory’s day intoned What will it be? At the same time as the books by Alfred Kinsey They exposed the sexual behavior of men and women, conservative society raged like Mount Etna.

Aldous Huxley had already described it 18 years earlier, in A happy world: For a society to progress, eradicate the mind and eradicate all desires.

In 1944 he became a psychiatrist Robert Lindner had written Rebel for no reason: the story of a criminal psychopath who starred in the James Dean film eleven years later. In 1953, after Salinger’s success, Lindner said that therapies that attempted to redirect people to society’s expectations were wrong and dangerous.

Tormented by melancholy and pre-Christmas weather“Holden is fragile, he invents a love he doesn’t feel, he wallows in torment, he hides in his own house.”

Robert Linder suggested instead “transforming the patient’s negative protest into a positive expression of the urge to rebel.”
Overwhelmed by the hypocrisy of a consumer society, hollow and devoid of real affection, Holden – whom everyone in the novel sends to the psychiatrist – talks to everyone who gets in his way; He is just as cynical as his classmates at Pencey College and wants to be accepted but does the same things he criticizes. He lies, he invents a future, he fakes love stories, but only one obsession runs through his mind: In winter Where do the ducks go in Central Park??

Plagued by melancholy and the pre-Christmas weather, Holden is fragile, he invents a love he doesn’t feel, he wallows in fear, hides in his own house and evades a rational dialogue that would have made everything right. Strangely, the only passage in the novel where the protagonist feels happy is when he visits the zoo with his sister and rides around on the carousel.

“I’m sure most of me is Holden Caulfield, the rest of me must be the devil,” said Mark Chapman.”

Holden is a teenager and as such he doesn’t find his place. Your problems growing up are in the eyes of the Companyan emotional disorder, psychiatric material. To defenders of consumer society, it seems unlikely that their method could be offensive. Harmful?! Never.

“How do you know what you’re going to do until you do it?” Holden wonders in the final paragraphs, locked up.

“I’m sure the biggest part of me is Holden Caulfield, the rest of me must be the devil. At that moment the good part of me won and I wanted to go back to my hotel but I couldn’t. I waited for (Lennon) to come back. He knew where the ducks go in winter and I wanted to know,” said Chapman, already at the police station.

In 1981, John Hinckley attempted to assassinate the then-President Ronald Reagan. In 1989, Robert John Bardo molested and killed the actress Rebecca Schaefferwho was only 21 years old. During the police investigation, both stated that they were obsessed with Salinger’s novel.

Mark Chapman murdered John Lennon from behindlived with Yoko Ono and little Sean.

a written: “That is my statement”; and signed by Holden Caulfield.

Holden Caulfield – who revives some of the author’s autobiographical experiences in fiction – is the protagonist of “The Catcher in the Rye“He’s the 16-year-old wealthy middle-class boy, scrawny, irresponsible and smart, who would rather be a precocious Vermont lumberjack than a lawyer. And Salinger was one of the first to expose that. Or suffer from it.”