You’re half right. Holden has something to teach us, but through empathy, not admiration.
Holden is defensive, irresolute, neurotic, etc., but it’s quite clear that those are secondary consequences of his vulnerability. He uses the word “sort of” 179 times in the book, he is constantly beginning his sentences with the word “Listen”, but usually to no avail. The only adult who does listen makes a sexual advance upon him, something which has happened to him “about 20 times since I was a kid.”
At the end of the book, Lucy does listen to him, and hands him the red hat which he relies on as a talisman to give him strength. And we know this isn’t just a fleeting moment because the book is written in first person from one year in the future. Holden has found the courage to express his vulnerability, and The Catcher in the Rye is the story of how he struggled and eventually succeeded in finding that courage.
As readers, we are not left with any promises that Holden improves, but we are at least shown what Holden needs. If he can find people to empathise with him, ie, you the reader, he may become less neurotic and more admirable. But if he goes to war as Salinger did, he is unlikely to achieve Salinger’s heroism.
As economists, we may conclude that it is not worth our time and resources to ensure that someone listens to Holden. It is also understandable that the adults in his life are repulsed by Holden’s whining and intransigence. But what we learn from The Catcher in the Rye (ie, from Holden-as-first-person-narrator) is that those same adults could have done a lot better at little cost to themselves by just crossing the street to walk alongside him for a little while. Perhaps they would have been more inclined to do so if Holden had been more admirable or agreeable, but then he probably wouldn’t have needed them in the first place.
I think what is great about that book is that it made me empathize with Holden - a person I would find absolutely unbearable in real life. Yes, he's screwed up, that's the point. Many of us went through similar things as teenagers. If Holden had met me when I was 16, he would have hated me, too.
1000% agree. I always thought Holden Caulfield was one of the worst protagonists in American literature. So bad that I've been asking myself ever since, "what am I missing about this guy?"
CITR is a 'coming of age' novel and we have to understand Holden as liminally balanced between the rigid orthodoxies of childhood and the multi-polar, confusing and dangerous world of adults. As I've aged, particularly as I've raised and taught children, I've developed more sympathy for Holden. People are fake but it's not merely a choice, it's a demand placed upon us via a world that expands beyond our ability to map it. It's a coping mechanism, a defense strategy and a limit upon our empathy and understanding. Sometimes, you just gotta shake a crummy guy's hand and smile like a hyena.
It's been many years since I've read (and re-read) that book. Maybe it's time for a third read--through the eyes of a professorial older man. I suppose it's fairly quick...that said, I'm not so sure it maps very well onto a world with the Internet and social media in it; a world more fake and pretentious than anything Holden could have dreamed of.
As Holden describes it, the "phony" conduct of Headmaster Haas that irked him could more aptly be called snobbish. Semantic precision was not Holden's strong suit.
Fiction usually has better, more satisfying stories than nonfiction because the author is not constrained by reality. Additionally, being able to set up the circumstances in fiction allows idea to be demonstrated without complicating factors, like a controlled experiment.
It's pretty much impossible to write a character-centered story that focuses on internal drama as nonfiction. Even if your characters were real people, what they were thinking at the time is pure speculation.
I had basically the same reaction when I first read CITR, but there was a strange phenomenon where the character lingered with me long after. I think you're being a little too dismissive (as was I), directionally like calling Hamlet "simply a confused teenager" because he demands authenticity from the royals around him and mourns his father too long as his first close experience of loss (until, of course, he remembers Yorick).
The way you've described the character, I would be very surprised to hear him say, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." And yet he does. Worth thinking about.
Also, could you expand on 2)? I don't know what you meant by his personality traits don't "google" - did you mean that Holden exhibits a very odd collection of the 5-traits?
You’re half right. Holden has something to teach us, but through empathy, not admiration.
Holden is defensive, irresolute, neurotic, etc., but it’s quite clear that those are secondary consequences of his vulnerability. He uses the word “sort of” 179 times in the book, he is constantly beginning his sentences with the word “Listen”, but usually to no avail. The only adult who does listen makes a sexual advance upon him, something which has happened to him “about 20 times since I was a kid.”
At the end of the book, Lucy does listen to him, and hands him the red hat which he relies on as a talisman to give him strength. And we know this isn’t just a fleeting moment because the book is written in first person from one year in the future. Holden has found the courage to express his vulnerability, and The Catcher in the Rye is the story of how he struggled and eventually succeeded in finding that courage.
As readers, we are not left with any promises that Holden improves, but we are at least shown what Holden needs. If he can find people to empathise with him, ie, you the reader, he may become less neurotic and more admirable. But if he goes to war as Salinger did, he is unlikely to achieve Salinger’s heroism.
As economists, we may conclude that it is not worth our time and resources to ensure that someone listens to Holden. It is also understandable that the adults in his life are repulsed by Holden’s whining and intransigence. But what we learn from The Catcher in the Rye (ie, from Holden-as-first-person-narrator) is that those same adults could have done a lot better at little cost to themselves by just crossing the street to walk alongside him for a little while. Perhaps they would have been more inclined to do so if Holden had been more admirable or agreeable, but then he probably wouldn’t have needed them in the first place.
I think what is great about that book is that it made me empathize with Holden - a person I would find absolutely unbearable in real life. Yes, he's screwed up, that's the point. Many of us went through similar things as teenagers. If Holden had met me when I was 16, he would have hated me, too.
1000% agree. I always thought Holden Caulfield was one of the worst protagonists in American literature. So bad that I've been asking myself ever since, "what am I missing about this guy?"
CITR is a 'coming of age' novel and we have to understand Holden as liminally balanced between the rigid orthodoxies of childhood and the multi-polar, confusing and dangerous world of adults. As I've aged, particularly as I've raised and taught children, I've developed more sympathy for Holden. People are fake but it's not merely a choice, it's a demand placed upon us via a world that expands beyond our ability to map it. It's a coping mechanism, a defense strategy and a limit upon our empathy and understanding. Sometimes, you just gotta shake a crummy guy's hand and smile like a hyena.
It's been many years since I've read (and re-read) that book. Maybe it's time for a third read--through the eyes of a professorial older man. I suppose it's fairly quick...that said, I'm not so sure it maps very well onto a world with the Internet and social media in it; a world more fake and pretentious than anything Holden could have dreamed of.
As Holden describes it, the "phony" conduct of Headmaster Haas that irked him could more aptly be called snobbish. Semantic precision was not Holden's strong suit.
Have TIME to read FICTION? When? How? There's SO MUCH BETTER non-fiction!
Fiction usually has better, more satisfying stories than nonfiction because the author is not constrained by reality. Additionally, being able to set up the circumstances in fiction allows idea to be demonstrated without complicating factors, like a controlled experiment.
It's pretty much impossible to write a character-centered story that focuses on internal drama as nonfiction. Even if your characters were real people, what they were thinking at the time is pure speculation.
I had basically the same reaction when I first read CITR, but there was a strange phenomenon where the character lingered with me long after. I think you're being a little too dismissive (as was I), directionally like calling Hamlet "simply a confused teenager" because he demands authenticity from the royals around him and mourns his father too long as his first close experience of loss (until, of course, he remembers Yorick).
The way you've described the character, I would be very surprised to hear him say, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." And yet he does. Worth thinking about.
Also, could you expand on 2)? I don't know what you meant by his personality traits don't "google" - did you mean that Holden exhibits a very odd collection of the 5-traits?