I think I need to be put down. Like maybe do the thing they do in Canada where they choose to euthanize you instead of giving you healthcare \u2190 Something Holden Caulfield would say, probably.<\/p>\n
The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> is a\u2026 Confusing book? Yeah. See, when I first heard about it, no one would tell me what it was about. I just heard the name over and over again. And then I got older, and it made even less sense. How was it a banned book and just another teen indie film and also, \u201cOh my God Don\u2019t Mention Catcher in the Rye<\/span> To Me<\/em>\u201d? Then I read it. And what people said about the book versus what the book actually is is so far out of left field it\u2019s picking trees in another plot of land.<\/p>\n I mean what was going on half the time? It\u2019s one of the most banned books in the country, it\u2019s a bunch of gibberish, it\u2019s one of the most important texts of our generation, it\u2019s enough to kill John Lennon?? It\u2019s an indescribable book about a spoiled teenager who thinks the world is phony while coming to grips with growing older (maybe that one\u2019s true.)<\/p>\n And well, it\u2019s actually pretty good. I would in fact call it over<\/i>hyped. Like I would say it deserves an adequate amount of hype. It\u2019s pretty good! I just think people oversell it. It\u2019s not the communist manifesto, and I mean, Holden\u2019s pretty messed up, but I think it\u2019s pretty rude to say he\u2019d kill John Lennon (I mean I just don\u2019t think he would do that.)<\/p>\n So then. What is The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>?<\/p>\n \u2026Slightly complex with a straightforward narrative. but I really like it so I\u2019m gonna talk about it!<\/p>\n Holden is deeply traumatized. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s very hard to say. His narrating style dissuades you from thinking he is when he talks very by-the-breeze. He is incredibly sardonic, judgemental, and rude, making comments on people\u2019s looks and habits just because he can. But when you peel back the layers, you notice how\u2026 Scary, the aspects of his story are.<\/p>\n He handwaves all of these aspects and frequently lies to you about how they affect him, but the passing mentions are deeply disturbing. He recounts witnessing another student kill himself from the fifth story, describes how his body looked on the pavement and how gruesome it was. He brings up death constantly, writing about it for the most part, on accident. This could very easily be attributed to his dead brother, and yeah, having a dead younger brother who died when you were children is. Disquieting. Not easy. In fact, when the end of the book comes, there Holden is, begging Allie not to let him die.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I have to spell it out that someone\u2019s who\u2019s mentally well. wouldn\u2019t do that. Holden basically has a severe mental breakdown at the end of the book (and you can really see it coming if you read the book close enough.) JD Salinger himself pointed to the traumas of war when writing this story, and you know what? A story about an adolescent approaching adulthood slowly coming to terms with the horrors of grief, death of companions, and an apparent feeling of being cut off with the world? Searching for understanding while condemning the world? Yeah.<\/p>\n Holden is in constant search of companionship. Every chance he gets, he thinks about calling someone, his friend Jane Gallagher, an author he\u2019s never met who \u201cseems friendly\u201d, and even people he doesn\u2019t like, just for someone to talk to. After he leaves Pencey, he hires a prostitute just to talk to her, even asking that she doesn\u2019t take her dress off.<\/p>\n The first taste of Holden’s loneliness really starts at Pencey. Not even the two people he talks to there really connect with him. When it comes to Stradlater and Ackley, it comes off they only really talk to Holden because he’s there. But it\u2019s also almost the only companionship Holden really finds at Pencey, making them the closest thing he has to friends at the moment. And he’s not even very good at keeping them.<\/p>\n One of the best written relationships in the novel is his relationship with his little sister, Phoebe. It’s very loving and adoring, and I think humanizes Holden the most. She\u2019s the most real thing to him. He spends pages talking about her: “You would love her.” As soon as he gets home, she immediately starts talking about school\u2014And he listens. Fully pays attention to the conversation, rather than just having it for small talk.<\/p>\n And then loses it when she finds out why he\u2019s home early.<\/p>\n Holden does a very-many stupid things across the novel. In fact, when he wakes up Phoebe, he plans to take more money from his parents after burning through the money he had at the beginning. Finding out he’s home practically drives Phoebe crazy. She’s furious.<\/p>\n He brushes it off, in a way that he genuinely believes It\u2019s None of Her Concern. This is interesting to me about Holden Caulfield. It\u2019s a very familiar response: his actions don’t involve others because they’re his actions. When other people are worried for him or mad at him, it\u2019s not their problem because he faces the consequences for it. He doesn’t really understand what consequences are or what they might be, which is where most of the accusations of him being spoiled come from.\u00a0 And you know what? Yeah. It makes for a really good use of the first-person narrative.<\/p>\n It’s not enough that Holden doesn’t understand consequences, he’s also. Just a bit of a mess otherwise. He\u2019s a very emotional type. He loses his mind whenever he finds out Stradlater might\u2019ve had sex with Jane Gallagher, a girl from his town he likes, and gets into a fight with Stradlater about it within seconds<\/i>. Then goes into his neighbor\u2019s room, still bloody, to get some company. He does a lot of crying too, bursts into tears at multiple points. He doesn\u2019t mention it much after or describe it in the way a third-person structure would, but it\u2019s also hard not to notice. As soon as he starts to lose the fight with Stradlater, he\u2019s in tears. He\u2019s in tears when the prostitute\u2019s pimp threatens him, and pretty much through most of the story. I think noticing the crying is where it changes the perspective of the novel for me.<\/p>\n Edit after the fact, Allie is dead. Allie is Holden\u2019s dead younger brother. It\u2019s important to note how close in age Allie and Holden are, while Holden is six years older than his little sister, Allie was eleven when he died making him eleven when he died. Like.. The amount of stuff to cover with that is mental. To be two years older than your brother and spend eleven years with him to end up with leukemia\u2014and then miss the funeral. There\u2019s no analysis there, that\u2019s just. Sombering. He calls out to him at the end of the novel. Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n Holden tells you absolutely nothing about his mental health, but it\u2019s. Depressing? Fascinating? To realize what\u2019s going on? He never really thinks too hard about it, so it’s more of you putting those pieces together. Or more of me putting those pieces together because I wrote this goddamn neverending thing.<\/p>\n The word count is at almost 1400. and I\u2019m not done discussing it. The modern interpretation of The Catcher in the Rye<\/em> is gonna put ME in a sanatorium. How did it kill three people? How did it nearly kill Ronald Reagan? You wanna hear the baseball glove? The carousel? I\u2019m still not done!! How am I still not done?!<\/p>\n No wonder there\u2019s so many interpretations of this book. No wonder. Maybe the only solution to this problem is to read the book yourself. Or don\u2019t. Or finish the book if you only got through half of it. I don’t know. 1400 words..<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I think I need to be put down. Like maybe do the thing they do in Canada where they choose to euthanize you instead of giving you healthcare \u2190 Something Holden Caulfield would say, probably. The Catcher in the Rye is a\u2026 Confusing book? Yeah. See, when I first heard about it, no one would … Continue reading “An Essay About Holden Caulfield”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,5,3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20073"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/89"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20073"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20073\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20257,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20073\/revisions\/20257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.msabrookhaven.org\/literary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}