As we grow up, we forget some of the most valuable things in our lives.
Before this writing, I want to emphasize my affinity for Holden Caulfield, the narrator and main character in this bitter novel. Holden tells the presumably most depressing three days of his whole life in an honest but acrid prose in an institution whose name is unrevealed. I guess it is the mental hospital. He reveals the corrupted, dark side of the society and its people hidden behind the hypocrisy of the people. He laments the harsh reality in which innocence is no more a virtue while cruelty, deceit, debauchery is.
Holden Caulfield had been expelled from his third school, Pencey prep. He detested almost everything there. The only subject he could be good was English. He failed all the other subjects. He liked his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, but his ��phony�� behavior eventually made him disgust him. He uses the word ��phony�� quite frequently to describe people being hypocrites, liars and contradicting themselves. His roommate, Stradlater, was a sex maniac and his other roommate, Ackley, had sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails and most importantly had absolutely no manners. Ackley complains that Stradlater has a superior attitude and does not appreciate his words but he actually does not listen to any of Holden��s requests to keep the floor clean or brush his teeth once in a while. Stradlater asks Holden to finish his English composition and dates a girl, Jane Gallagher Holden once knew and worries that her innocence would be adulterated in a car. The car which Stradlater borrowed from his teacher hints the exclusive cliques and groups. Holden expresses hatred, fabrication as a common notion among the students. While Pencey claimed to mold their boys to be ��clear thinking gentlemen��, they were doing the right opposite by beleaguering them with term papers, exams and other ��phony�� factors. The same thing happens in the city of New York in which he was heading for. The boys forgot their innocence and finally got corrupted in Pencey, and Holden loathes it. The disgust he holds made him passive and eventually forced the school to expel him. Anticipating the anger of their parents, he decides to roam in New York for a while where his house is.
In his train to New York, he meets a poor mother of a disgusting boy called Ernie Morrow who thinks that her son is the top student in his school and was a unanimous choice amongst the students in the election. Holden thinks it is funny in a way. He thinks that she was nice and beautiful, but he stresses the fact that she was a narcissist and that he is not fond of such people. Once he got off New York, he got a taxi and heads for a hotel. In this taxi, he expresses his innocence and sensitivity by asking the driver where the ducks in the lagoon at central park go if the water freezes. The driver nearly ignores him, though. After arriving at the hotel, he gets a room, and is sickened by the scene he gets to watch across the hotel building through the windows in which people where spurting alcohol all over their face, a presumably achieved man wearing a woman��s corset and more. Each respectively shows the real voluptuousness and fraud that is concealed behind the name of privacy.
Disgusted and bored by the scene, Holden goes to a night club located in the hotel. In his way to the club, he looks at the middle aged men with girls, probably prostitutes. In the night club, he complains that he is a minor and that he cannot drink liquor. Dancing and talking with three women in there whom he is not even attracted to, and later recollecting the time with Jane Gallagher, he makes the reader contrast them and points out a strange sense of sadness. Still not tired, he gets a cab and heads for Ernie��s, a night club in Greenwich Village. Depicting the people there as jerks and appraising Ernie��s piano performance as phony, he particularly criticizes Ivy Leaguers. He also sees a woman being necked while being told a man committing suicide by eating aspirin. He thinks it is funny in a way. After meeting his brother D.B.��s ex-girl friend, he departs the voluptuous place.
In his elevator to his hotel room, an elevator boy, Maurice, offers him to buy a prostitute. Holden says yes and the elevator boy says he would send the girl up to his room. After a while, a girl knocks on the door and Holden opens it. To Holden��s surprise, she was young, and he thought she was a virgin. Holden tries to be sentimental and wants to talk with the girl, but she takes her dress off and gets ready for sexual relationship. Holden wanted to establish any kind of conversation with her since he was lonesome all the time, but she would not comply. After giving her five dollars, she was gone. And the morning after that day, Maurice, the elevator boy, and the prostitute broke in to his room and claimed for a total of ten dollars. Maurice nearly tortured him, punching him in the stomach and all while the prostitute stole his money. Holden screams in wrath, but feels more hate in him that cannot even manage the situation.
He arranges a date with Sally Hayes to see a matinee. She says yes, and he finds a place to kill his time and eat breakfast. He talks with two nuns in he eats his lunch. Looking at their straw baskets and thinking about his mother and aunts, he feels empathy and pity for them. He walks through the park to see Phoebe by any chance, but fails and decides to go to the Museum of Natural History and falls into his times with Phoebe in the museum. However, he turns around once he arrived at it. He goes to meet Sally. After attending the matinee with Sally, he skates with her and tells his dreams and at that moment, he feels that he wants to share that dream with her. She thinks that he is crazy and does not deal with him. She gets sore and Holden leaves the place. He did not have anything to do so he called an intellectual friend of him and chattered for a while in a bar. He was a sex maniac. The only difference was that he was an intellectual and knew a lot of things. He suggests Holden to cut the sexual conversations and go see a psychoanalyst. Holden does not mind. He plans to meet Phoebe, his younger sister, and sneaks into his home. Phoebe is at first glance glad to see him but gets angry about the fact that he was kicked out of school. Holden explains his opinion about Pencey and appeases her. He dances, tells his dreams to Phoebe. They enjoyed their time until their parents came into the house. Holden hid in a closet and after his mother was gone, he came out and got some money from Phoebe with reluctance. He got out and headed for a teacher��s house he called in his house. Mr.Antolini, the English teacher in Elkton Hills, welcomed him and gave him some advice about how he should manage his life. He said that Holden should find out his size of his mind. Holden listens, but yawns, and Mr.Antolini makes him a bed. Few hours later, Holden finds himself being patted on his forehead by the teacher. He was astonished and literally ran out of there.
Planning to escape the cruel urban life and establish another career in the west, he decides to leave Phoebe a message that he will leave and that he wants to meet her. She appears with a big suitcase with all her clothes in. She wanted to be with Holden. He says no, and she gets sore. He takes her to the zoo to appease her anger. Looking her ride the carousel, in a middle of buckets of rain, with pleasure, he ends his story. Telling the reader, ��Don��t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.��
This novel is depicting the hatred, frustration and hope of a sixteen year old boy. It has numerous motifs and allusions hidden in the characters and events. I would like to discuss three of those parts.
First, it is portraying the debauchery and loss of innocence of American society. Stradlater, the prostitute��s acquiescing behavior, the man wearing a corset and dancing, the couple that were spurting highballs, the three women Holden encountered in Lavender Room, the night club in the Hotel, John Castle, who committed suicide due to the verbal abuse and alienation of his classmates, numerous cliques such as Catholics, Athletes and Ivy Leaguers that exclude and ostracize everything that is discordant with their thoughts are some of the examples. They do not try to listen to Holden nor appreciate his thoughts. Holden is eager to know whether Jane is still putting her kings in the back but Stradlater would not listen. He wants to know where the ducks go if the water of the lagoon freezes. He is depressed by a young girl that had to give up her virginity and earn money. He wants to communicate with a prostitute, not have sexual relationships with them. He calls himself fond of sex, but he did not even lose his virginity. He wants to be with Phoebe and Allie, reading books and be free from the debauchery. He wants certain things such as the pleasant nostalgia of his childhood kept in a cage just like in the museum so that they would not escape from you. He feels unlimited anger and hate towards the corrupted society where only money and sex talks, lamenting himself being influenced by that force. He is pouring that anger in the form of numerous insults and curses.
Second, it is revealing the hypocrisy American society holds. Figures such as Thurmer, the head master of Pencey, and other headmasters of his previous schools try to shine their reputation by shaking hands with only the achieved, wealthy ones and even naming a part of the school��s name after those ��phonies��, serving rock hard steak only the day when parents visit. A mother that takes her child with her to the show and being sentimental, filling her eyes with tears watching the phony content of the show, while ignoring and scolding her child begging to urinate, autocratic Ivy Leaguers or intellectuals that want to only lead the talk and would not listen to anybody else��s opinion, Mr.Antolini, giving Holden many advices and acts as if he is altruistic while he is a homosexual and wants him would be people covering their savage nature with their decent external appearance. Holden absolutely abominates them and calls them phonies. My opinion is that he is corrupted as well, in a way, but at least he does try to be innocent and is not willing to be a ��phony.��
Finally, Holden talks about his hope and dreams. He wants to pretend as a deaf mute and earn some money in the west, if he gets a certain amount of money, he wishes to go to the woods and build a cabin that will still have the sunshine. He wishes to be uninterrupted by anyone or anything urban and voluptuous. He is sick and tired of the society destroying the genuine, crystal clean hearts of people and adulterating them with sex, violence and greed. He desires emancipation.
Some might, and I initially did consider Holden Caulfield as a thoughtless maverick to the society that only knows curse words and is voluptuous himself, thus, contradicting himself. In some points, they are right. They are right in that he is contradicting himself. However, the claim that he is thoughtless needs correction. Holden has his own world of philosophy. It is quite easy to find it. He reads numerous books, analyzes the Bible, Shakespeare��s work and others. Both criticizing and praising the writer��s good points and bad points, he shifts his thoughts and memories to clarify his point and elucidate his logic. The society he deals with is corrupted, and he is gradually assimilated to it. His thoughts are trying to conserve and protect his childhood, but the world would not let him. It would ostracize him, calling him an outsider, maverick, and a psycho. He realizes it, but does not mind. He does not mind being a scientist or a lawyer, but what he really wants to do is something else. He wants to let the kids enjoy their childhood in the rye of innocence, guarding them from the cliff of depression, debauchery, and greed, keeping them from the frustrating society.
He truly wishes to be the Catcher in the Rye.
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