Andrew Genova
TH 300-6
22 August 2007
Carousel in the Rye
“faith, [fāth], n.,
confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, place, or thing
belief that does not rest on logical proof...”
—The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Although Holden Caulfield may have complained and moped and sulked himself into depression by the final pages of Catcher in the Rye, he still was a person of faith. That faith may not have been in himself, or in God, or in anything that seems “important” to us, but his faith was invested into the little things in life, those minute details that gave him such a thrill to observe. His sister Phoebe, the artifacts in the museum, his old school building, and the park near his home are all things he had faith in. He loved all those things that stayed the same. They were comforting to him, and these things were the basis for his faith and love of life.
Holden's beliefs started to become tainted when he began finding “fuck you”'s in a few of these havens. He is offended when his sister Phoebe tells him, rather cruelly, to “shut up.” He seems to get very upset when he sees his little havens disrespected and corrupted. It seems that the changing world has invited itself into everything, even those things that aren't supposed to change. The changing corruption of the world is like The Blob, the old movie from 1958. It invades from another planet, and as it “eats” more and more people it grows larger and larger until it becomes so large, it begins oozing through every nook and cranny available to it in the movie-theater climax. The Blob is the corruption tainting more and more people and places, Steve McQueen and his girlfriend are like Holden, just trying to keep the corruption away from them. It is like having friends and siblings and parents sift through your private journals or sketchbooks, marking them up with “fuck you”s or “shut up”s. I think most people would feel the same way Holden does when he sees these little things creeping into his sister and his little microcosm.
Holden's beliefs, his religion to an extent, is crumbling right in front of him, and he cannot do anything to stop it, so he reacts by griping. He moans, or should I say mourns, himself into a steep depression, so deep in fact that he has to get away. If the very basic principle of your religion, government, or just your own set of beliefs was being visibly and vividly destroyed by your surroundings, wouldn't you be upset? Does that mean you should stop believing?
I believe that Holden Caulfield is the most faithful of us all. Every time he found an unholy mark upon his temples, he would search for something else; another altar to praise. He moved on and on comforting himself with places that never were supposed to change. The school building? Tainted. The museum? Tainted. Even his sister! Tainted! Everything was tainted! But even through that miasmal haze, he cleared that all away in the final image of the story. The biting cold, yet cleansing rain, pouring down from the heavens upon a Holden Caulfield who learned to let go of all of his pains and invest himself into the carousel; a carousel that is always moving, always turning, but never changing. As long as that carousel stands, it will keep turning and playing the same songs, maybe some new ones, but the fact of the matter is that it has been there, it is there to stay, untainted by the vandalism and corruption of the real world. It is the symbol of not-growing-up, the symbol of Holden Caulfield.