Attempting to unpack Holden a little bit
I don’t understand Holden, and the more I try to boil his personality down, the more complex he gets. On one hand, Holden is a miserable person to be around and he’s rude to almost everyone. However, there are a few people in his life that he really cares about and also genuinely wants them to be happy. Holden also struggles with mental illness that gets worse as the book progresses, which partly explains his negative outlook and judgment of other people. That being said, depression is not an excuse to treat people in your life poorly and I think we have been giving him more credit than he deserves.
Holden’s narration honestly bores me and from the beginning of the book I did not find it enjoyable to read. In the first few chapters, Holden talks about how he hates the movies and the fact that his brother works on them. It seems like Holden doesn’t really have a valid reason for hating the movies other than phoniness, which is his reason for hating everything. After a certain point, phoniness stops being a legitimate reason to hate everything, in my opinion. A little later in the book he visits his old teacher who just tries to help him by offering advice, but Holden completely ignores it, and that annoyed me. Holden has flunked out of so many schools despite the fact that his parents have given him everything and then some in order to succeed. He’s the epitome of privilege and he completely throws his life away just because he can. He really rubs me the wrong way I guess.
Despite all his flaws, it’s difficult to completely hate Holden because I can sympathize with the way he feels sometimes and I understand that he has a lot of trauma he hasn’t processed. It is clear that Allie’s death had a bigger impact on Holden than he would like to admit and it seems as though his death is part of the reason Holden is so infatuated with childhood and innocence. Holden associates childhood and all things good with his brother, and probably wishes he could go back in time forever. When his brother died, he struggled to reconcile with it, and it seems like he never fully healed or even processed it in a healthy way.
My final thoughts on Holden are that he needs help from a mental health professional, needs a little more love in his life, and has lots of maturing to do.
This analysis summed up a lot of what we were all thinking while reading "The Catcher in the Rye". It's a really difficult book to work through and Holden is a pretty complicated character. I like how you talked about how your feelings towards Holden changed as you read along, I would say mine went through a similar shift. In a way he's a difficult character to feel incredibly strongly about (either in a positive or negative way) because he's so nuanced.
ReplyDeleteI like the way that you think about what Holden is like to be around and what he would be like in personal relationships. This book is all about him and his journey and he is telling us the story so I think it can be hard to analyze the way that other people think of him because the only way we have access to them is through him. This seems like a good way of getting around that roadblock.
ReplyDeleteI love how you discuss the complexity of your feelings about Holden - how you can relate to him but find it hard to like him despite that. Often people prefer to relate or project onto characters they view as likeable in some way and it's hard to admit that maybe we have a little more in common with this rude and outspoken character than we'd like to admit.
ReplyDeleteI agree with pretty much everything in this post. Holden's narration focuses mostly on himself instead of the world around him and while his attitude towards others is generally negative, he clearly cares about the few people he sees as not phony. I don't think Holden's outlook is particularly pessimistic given what he's gone through with Allie's death and subsequently hopping from school to school. Lastly, I completely agree that he would benefit from seeing a mental health professional!
ReplyDeleteI definitely think Holden is a difficult character to decipher. Like you pointed out, he can be a privileged a-hole at times, like how he fails out of school despite all the wealth his family has. But, at the same time, he is dealing with major past trauma, particularly Allie. Despite this complexity though, I still personally found his narration to be pretty funny and engaging most of the time. He's witty, even if his privilege rubs me the wrong way sometimes.
ReplyDeleteBut do you kind of "get" what he means when he says he hates the movies? I write as someone who *loves* movies, and Holden sure seems to spend a lot of time watching movies that he "hates" (his first idea when faced with an open Saturday night is to go into town and watch a movie with Mal Brossard and Ackley). But when he's complaining about the dumb, predictable, formulaic plots with their sentimental emotional manipulation, does he at least resonate with some things you might have disliked about movies you've seen? I get that he sounds like someone you'd rather not watch a movie with--if only to avoid hearing him complain about it, and God forbid you were to find anything "phony" to be funny or entertaining, you'd ruin your rep with him forever. But when he goes off on Olivier's performance as Hamlet, I happen to think he's spot on: instead of a "sad, screwed-up-type guy" (like Holden!) he plays Hamlet like "a goddamn general." Watch the Olivier Hamlet and tell me Holden is wrong here.
ReplyDeleteI agree that it's hard to figure out how you feel towards Holden. At first glance, he seems like a spoiled and annoying teenager to be around as he frequently criticizes everyone he interacts with and almost every activity he engages in. At the same time, however, I often forget that all those criticisms are his thoughts, so it shows that he's not an intentionally rude or mean person nor does he act rudely to the people he criticizes in his thoughts. Also, you mentioned his depression. I agree that he really needs help for his depression because I agree and think that most of his negative outlook on life is from his depression. I also don't think he wants to feel this way, that everything basically sucks. Overall, yes he has a very negative view on the world and does need a lot of maturing, but I don't think it's his fault that he is so immature or is so critical of everything. It is not his fault that he is facing depression, trauma, or whatever situation he is dealing with. These factors create huge obstacles in his path that are affecting his life, making it extremely difficult for him to grow and enjoy his life.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything that you said. I personally found Holden to be a mix of annoying and boring. He was really rude and I wouldn't want to be around him, but I could empathize with him. I don't think that he is fundamentally evil or bad, just difficult. In addition, he seemed to think that he could do anything without consequences and that his parents would just pay for whatever he needed. He needs a reality check, and I mean that in the kindest possible way, as well as some real adult support to help him through his trauma and other troubles.
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything you mentioned in this post! Throughout the whole book I don't remember a single time where he was appreciative or grateful for the position he's put in. Like yes, he gets kicked out of multiple schools and bounces around from place to place, but he doesn't end up homeless on the street--also he's the main cause for most of "pain". You summed it up perfectly where I think Allie's death was traumatizing to Holden and he needs a mental health professional to work through his emotions with him.
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