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1. ALIENATION AND COMPLEXITY: ANALYZING
HOLDEN CAULFIELD IN SALINGER’S THE CATCHER
IN THE RYE
ALIENACIÓN Y COMPLEJIDAD: ANALIZANDO A HOLDEN
CAULFIELD EN EL GUARDIÁN ENTRE EL CENTENO DE
SALINGER
TRABAJO DE FIN DE GRADO
TOMÁS LÓPEZ REVIDIEGO
GRADO EN ESTUDIOS INGLESES
TUTOR: JEFFEREY MORSE SIMONS WILSON
22 DE MAYO DE 2019
CONVOCATORIA: JUNIO 2019

2. A mi abuelo.
Por haber luchado hasta
el último día.
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3. Abstract
The Catcher in the Rye is the first and only novel by the American author J. D.
Salinger. This novel tells the story of Holden Caulfield, a problematic teenager who is
experiencing a complicated period in his life and is isolated for numerous reasons from
other characters in the novel. In this Final Degree Essay, I aim to analyze the character
of Holden and the possible factors that led to his alienation and to his complex behavior.
This analysis will be supported by numerous passages of the novel, as well as by
secondary sources that are useful to understand Holden’s inner working.
Keywords: The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger, literary character, adolescence,
alienation.
El guardián entre el centeno es la primera y única obra del autor
norteamericano J. D. Salinger. Esta novela cuenta la historia de Holden Caulfield, un
adolescente problemático que está pasando por un mal momento de su vida y se
encuentra aislado, debido a distintas razones, de otros personajes en la novela. El
objetivo de este Trabajo de Fin de Grado es analizar el personaje de Holden y los
posibles factores que dieron lugar a su alienación y a este comportamiento tan complejo.
Este análisis será apoyado con numerosas escenas tomadas de la novela, además de con
fuentes secundarias que son de interés para entender la psicología de Holden.
Palabras clave: El guardián entre el centeno, Salinger, personaje literario,
adolescencia, alienación.
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4. INDEX
1. Introduction 5
2. Objectives 6
3. Methodology 6
4. Theoretical framework 7
5. Analysis 9
5.1. The starting point of Holden’s radical behavior: his brother Allie’s death and the
troubles of adolescence that led him to behave in this way 9
5.2. The complexity of Holden’s character 12
5.3. Holden feeling alien in a society that he criticizes and yet also often imitates 15
5.4. Holden’s search for mental tranquillity in other people’s company 20
6. Conclusions 23
7. Works cited 24
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5. 1. Introduction
Jerome David Salinger—most commonly known as J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)
—is one of the key authors of the American Postwar period, despite having produced a
very small number of works. He started his career as a student at Columbia University.
As a result of his evening classes there, Salinger wrote “The Young Folks”, a short story
which impressed his teacher, Whit Burnett, who would publish it later in 1940 in the
journal Story.
In 1941, the New Yorker accepted Salinger’s “Slight Rebellion Off Madison”,
which was, however, later marked as not appropriate for reading, since it narrated the
story of Holden Caulfield (it was this character’s first appearance in Salinger’s
literature), a teenager who was frightened by having to serve in World War II. This
coincided with the United States getting involved in this war. “Slight Rebellion Off
Madison” was later published in 1946.
In 1948, the New Yorker published “A Perfect Day for Bananafish”, a tale that
described the calamitous story of the suicide of Seymour Glass. It was highly successful
and gave Salinger the opportunity to sign a contract with the New Yorker. In 1951, The
Catcher in the Rye, Salinger’s first and only novel, was published. This novel, which I
study in the present Final Degree Essay, was followed by Nine Stories, a collection of
nine previously published stories that became an immediate best seller. Franny and
Zooey was published in 1961, and it consisted of two novellas that, as was the case of
Nine Stories, had already been published in the New Yorker. In 1974, Salinger stated
that he continued to write, although he no longer wanted to publish.
From among these works, the most essential one would be, with no doubt, The
Catcher in the Rye. The Catcher in the Rye led to Salinger’s becoming a reputed writer
and, as earlier mentioned, one of the most important literary figures during the
American Postwar Period. This novel is the story of Holden Caulfield, who is a sixteen-
year-old teenager, and of his alienation, not focusing on the origins of this happening at
all, but on its most critical episodes. Holden is the novel’s narrator, and we thus get a
close view of his alienation and complex behavior.
The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most significant and influential novels of
the twentieth century, which makes it an American classic. Its importance is not only
literary but also social, since Salinger’s novel has been the center of numerous
polemics, such as the murder of John Lennon by Mark David Chapman, and, as Harold
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6. Bloom (14) discusses in his 2007 Guide to the novel, because of the censorship it has
suffered from. These factors, among others, led me to develop a special interest in the
book and in the character of Holden, which I find fascinating and worthy to do some
research on. This would explain why I determined to choose this novel, and, in
particular, to focus on the character of Holden for my Final Degree Essay, in which I
will analyze his character and seek to defend the thesis that his alienation from the
world is a consequence of his complicated and difficult behavior.
2. Objectives
My primary objective in this Final Degree Essay is to produce an insightful
study of Salinger’s novel, focusing specifically on the character of Holden Caulfield and
on how his attitude alienates him from the world. A further objective is the study of
secondary sources having to do with this American classic and with the nature of
narrative fiction.
To make this in-depth study possible, I seek to defend the following thesis: In
The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger created one of the most complex and criticized
characters in American literature, this being Holden Caulfield, a 16 year-old teenager
whose complex personality alienated him from the world surrounding him.
To support this thesis statement, I provide the following lines of argument.
These lines of argument will be developed in the analysis section of the present Final
Degree Essay:
1. The starting point of Holden’s radical behavior: his brother Allie’s death and the
troubles of adolescence that led him to behave in this way;
2. The complexity of Holden’s character;
3. Holden feeling alien in a society that he criticizes and yet also often imitates;
4. Holden’s search for mental tranquillity in other people’s company.
3. Methodology
It is by means of the methodology now presented that I have been able to reach
the objectives I set in the second section of the present Final Degree Essay. The most
important source I use is Salinger’s novel itself, The Catcher in the Rye. I helped my
reading with various manuals of American literature and history, so as to understand the
social and political situation during the years in which the novel is based, as well as the
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7. prominent literary movements. Both the socio-political situation and the literary
movements are of interest when analyzing certain features of the novel.
Secondary sources have thus been of an enormous help. As secondary sources
I employ, mostly, literary criticism, i.e., articles by many authors who analyze
profoundly the novel and the different aspects that were pertinent to my Final Degree
Essay. A very helpful source has been, definitely, Harold Bloom’s 2007 Guide for
Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, which provides a contextual introduction to the book.
Bloom also provides a discussion of distinct interesting points for the novel’s reading.
It, furthermore, includes a compilation of numerous essays from different authors who
analyzed different points of the novel, such as Holden’s longing to construct a new
home, Holden as the unreliable narrator, Christian themes and symbols in the novel,
mourning Allie Caulfield, or cultural codes at Pencey Preparatory School. Another
volume edited by Bloom in 2009 has also been helpful, especially its essay by Jane
Mendelsohn, “Holden Caulfield: A Love Story”. Also, Literature Online has been really
useful due to the large number of essays available.
4. Theoretical framework
Before working on the four points that will support the thesis proposed in the
introduction of this Essay, I find it crucial to discuss the social context of the era in
which the novel is set, and since I will be analyzing Holden’s character, also to discuss
what a character is in narrative. Both the social context and the understanding of literary
character are parts of the theoretical framework I adopt to interpret The Catcher in the
Rye.
The novel is set in New York City right before Christmas in 1949. We get to
know about it when, in chapter 5, Holden says that his brother Allie died in 1946 when
he—Holden—was thirteen. We learn earlier in the novel, in chapter 2, that Holden was
sixteen when his collapse after Allie’s death took place. The conclusion that we draw
from this is that the action takes place in 1949, right before Christmas vacation. The
setting of the novel is thus included in the Postwar American period. This epoch was
characterized by large changes, whose immediate cause was World War II. There were
some legislation bills that were passed, such as the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of
1944, which provided money for veterans to afford college, buy houses and farms. The
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8. return of soldiers from the War led to an increase in marriages and the so-called “baby
boom”, which in turn led to the largest generation in the history of the United States.
This prosperity, however, did not benefit all Americans. Minority groups of
people such as African Americans, Native Americans and American women, were
excluded from this American Dream. This made these groups adopt a more aggressive
attitude later in the same century, in order to achieve equal civil rights.
The optimism of the Postwar period did not last long, however. It was
interrupted in 1948 by the tensions that the Cold War caused. This created a negative
atmosphere that spread throughout the mentalities of the American citizens. This
atmosphere is in the background in Salinger’s novel.
As previously mentioned, and since we are analyzing a character, it is
necessary to define, as well, what a character is in order to have a clearer idea when
analyzing Holden’s character. One of the most important features that should be
analyzed most closely when analyzing narrative is that of character. Since “literature is
written by, for, and about people” (Bal 115), and characters can be comparable to
people, it is appropriate to say that “they are fabricated creatures made up from fantasy,
imitation, memory: paper people, without flesh and blood” (Bal 115). They do not have
any type of real or proper personality or ideology, but the characteristics they are
attributed make them psychologically and ideologically possible.
Characters can be further divided into flat characters and round characters.
“E.M. Forster introduced the term flat character to refer to characters who have no
hidden complexity […], they have no depth […]. They are limited to a narrow range of
predictable behaviors” (Abbott 126). On the other hand, “Foster’s counter term to flat
characters was round characters. Round characters have varying degrees of depth and
complexity” (Abbott 126).
It is, in fact, by means of Holden’s interactions with flat characters, and
subsequenlty by means of the comments he makes due to these meetings, that we can
discover Holden’s inner working. During these interactions, we can get to know
Holden’s alienation, insecurities and worries, as occurs in chapter 8, when, while on his
way to New York City, he converses with Ernest Morrow’s mother, showing his
immaturity by means of the numerous lies he says, or in chapter 12, when Holden asks
Horowitz, a taxi-driver, where the ducks go in winter.
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9. Salinger’s novel has been frequently studied and analyzed, and Holden became
the voice of a whole generation. Another scholar, Platon Poulas, focuses on the
character of Holden Caulfield and states the following: “The novel is widely regarded as
one of the most influential novels of the 20th century. A large number of teenagers, from
different generations, have found in the main character, Holden Caulfield, someone to
whom they can relate, someone who speaks their language”. Holden is thus a round
character who has appealed to many readers.
5. Analysis
This analysis section of my Final Degree Essay will develop the four lines of
argument that I seek to defend in my thesis statement. To make these lines of argument
clear, I enumerate and explicate them below.
5.1. The starting point of Holden’s radical behavior: his brother Allie’s death and
the troubles of adolescence that led him to behave in this way
Since the publication of the novel, the character of Holden has been considered
highly controversial, and it has been, on numerous occasions, the target of censorship.
He has a different and awkward view of the world, a world he often criticizes by using
very inappropriate language. This, however, can be understood if we take into account
that Holden’s attitudes are no more than the symptoms of a serious psychological
problem, since he “has to wrestle not only with the usual difficult adjustments of the
adolescent years, in sexual, familial and peer relationships; he has also to bury Allie
before he can make the transition into adulthood” (Miller 74).
Allie, Holden’s younger brother, died of leukemia at the age of 11, and since he
is not present in the novel, it is directly through Holden’s descriptions and thoughts that
we get to know about him. Holden describes him as “fifty times as intelligent”, and
“terrifically intelligent” (43). He was, Holden continues, a pleasure to have as a student,
and “the most intelligent member in the family” (43). He is, in fact, portrayed as a
special human being who was different from the rest. Allie was a left-handed, redheaded
boy who enjoyed poetry and who, in Holden’s words, was “a nice kid” (44). Having
said this, we can infer in Holden’s speech some kind of idealization of Allie.
It is mostly in chapter 5 that we are told about Allie. However, the way in
which he is described differs greatly from the speech Holden uses to describe himself.
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10. Holden says of himself right after describing Allie: “I was only thirteen, and they were
going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the
garage” (44). This contrasts with the way in which his younger brother is described,
both of them being opposite poles, and Allie being understood as an essential element
who completes Holden and who was necessary for his own existence. With that said, we
can infer why and how much Allie’s death affected Holden’s behavior.
The first consequences of this loss occurred the night on which Allie died.
Holden “slept in the garage […], and broke all the goddam windows with my fist” (49),
and he also “even tried to break all the windows of the station wagon we had that
summer” (49). As Edwin Haviland Miller proposes in “Mourning Allie
Caulfield” (129), this “reflects his uncontrollable anger […] at his brother for leaving
him alone and burdened with feelings of guilt” (75). It was, indeed, a moment of pain
and sorrow, and, in fact, the beginning of Holden’s decline, the one on which the novel
is centered.
As earlier mentioned, it is in chapter 5 that Allie is first and most talked about,
but for that to happen there is a key event that takes place in chapter 4. In that chapter,
Stradlater, Holden’s school roommate at Pencey Preparatory School, asks him to do him
“a big favor” (32). That favor consists of writing a descriptive essay on any topic that
would please Holden. Holden chose to write about his brother Allie’s baseball mitt.
About this mitt Holden says that “he [Allie] had written poems all over the fingers and
the pocket and everywhere” (43). Allie did this so that “he’d have something to read
when he was in the field and nobody was up at bat” (43). Holden chose to write about
the mitt for the essay in order to mourn Allie, and because he “sort of liked writing
about it” (44). About this essay, Lisa Privitera observes the following:
The essay he writes for his roommate, Stradlater, becomes a memorial to
his dead brother. Anger, depression, sadness, and the idea that there is no
one who truly understands drive him to spill this angst out on paper.
Instead of his peers seeing it as a way to mourn his lost brother, Holden is
ostracized for again rebelling against the rules and not writing what was
assigned. (205)
This would explain the fight Stradlater and Holden had. It was half because his
roommate had been out with the girl for whom Holden feels a tremendous affection, and
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11. half because Stradlater did not react the way Holden expected towards such a sensitive
topic as Allie is for Holden.
Holden’s love and predilection towards his brother can be seen, as well, in
second instances of his speech. When his sister Phoebe asked him to name something he
liked, the first thing he answered was "I like Allie" (189). His love can also be seen in
his red hunting hat. He bought this hat in New York City right after losing his school’s
equipment for the fencing team. For the scholar Jane Mendelsohn, this hat goes beyond
being a simple ornament. She thinks that, for Holden, this red element is highly
connected to Allie. As previously mentioned, Allie’s hair was red, and Mendelsohn
relates this to Holden’s hunting hat: “For the first time it occurred to me why Holden’s
hunting hat is red: because Allie had red hair” (126). The scholar continues by saying
that she “saw a new meaning behind Holden’s comment that ‘I act like I’m thirteen.’
Although he’s sixteen when the book takes place, he was thirteen when Allie
died” (126), as if time had stopped at that moment. She concludes by saying that
“Holden’s urgent desire to know where the ducks went in the winter when the pond
froze […] [is because] he wanted to know where Allie had gone, and where he could
find his mourning and unavailable mother (Mendelsohn 126).
Furthermore, as Wan Roselezam argues, Holden’s pain towards his brother’s
death is so large that his “identification with his dead brother sustains the story’s deeper
flow. Memories of Allie repeat throughout the story, lending structure to Holden‘s story
while representing the inescapable essence of his trauma” (1827). It is interesting to
add, as well, that, sometimes Holden behaves as if Allie was still, in some way, either
alive or present in his life. An example of this can be found when he talks with his dead
brother right after the scene with Sunny, the prostitute:
After Old Sunny was gone, I sat in the chair for a while and smoked a
couple of cigarettes. It was getting daylight outside. Boy, I felt miserable.
I felt so depressed, you can't imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of
out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed. I keep
telling him to go home and get his bike and meet me in front of Bobby
Fallon's house. (110)
This proves that Holden holds on to his brother when he feels depressed and that,
sometimes, he acts as if he had not passed away.
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12. Secondly, another factor that led Holden to have his breakdown after his
brother’s death is his experience of adolescence. In this regard, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
observers: “It is well known that there are huge hormonal changes at puberty. But it is
not just a matter of hormones. The teenage brain, especially the prefrontal cortex, the
area responsible for decision making and social interaction, also undergoes its own
metamorphosis.” Similarly, Sharon Levy recognizes adolescents’ capacity to question
their parents and break the rules. Since they are no longer under their parents control,
the behavior of adolescents is determined by their own moral and behavioral code.
Furthermore, “as an adolescent, [Holden] experiences the painful transition from
childhood to adulthood, which is a special and critical phrase in a person’s life. Holden
belongs to neither of child or adult worlds” (Han 2384).
This experience of adolescence would explain why Holden behaves in the way
that he does: he is in the most complicated years of his life, his body is changing and he
is not under his parents’ control. All this makes him feel like an outsider, as if he did not
belong to the society in which he is living. He feels frustrated, and the enormous
sensation of guilt he feels due to his brother’s loss does not let him continue living his
life in an ordinary way.
5.2. The complexity of Holden’s character
What was discussed in the previous line of argument would give way to
Holden’s complex character and to his being “in the middle of an emotional
breakdown” (Alexander 87). His complexity has to do, as the scholar Carl F. Strauch
argues, with the fact that “Salinger employed neurotic deterioration, symbolical death,
spiritual awakening, and psychological self-cure” (43) to create Holden and raise the
level of his complexity.
The tough times Holden had to go through greatly influenced him, his behavior
and the opinion he had of himself. As Platon Poulas states in his article “The Catcher in
the Rye: Who Is Holden Caulfield Talking To?”:
Holden shows traits of depression and borderline personality disorder
throughout his narrative. Even to the most casual reader, his depression is
evident through his statements, as Holden expresses feeling depressed on
fifty different occasions during the span of a few days. After he leaves
Antolini’s house, his depression seems to be more severe as it causes a
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13. headache, sweating and dizziness. As Holden says himself, “I still had
that headache. It was even worse. And I think I was more depressed than
I ever was in my whole life.” (Salinger 209 [214 in my edition])
This depression Holden suffered from had a great influence on him, and his
behavior radically changed. He developed, among others, some kind of obsession with
death. He witnessed—that we, the readers, know—two deaths: his younger brother
Allie’s and his classmate at Elkton Hills School, James Castle’s. Due to both these
occurrences, Holden developed some deep fear towards death, and he became, to some
extent, obsessed with the idea of dying. Roselezam clearly recognizes one of these
paranoid attacks: “Engaged in memories of Allie, lonely in his room, ―so lonesome
[...] I almost wished I was dead! (p. 42 [54 in my edition])” (1827). She also observes
that this paranoia was such that Holden thought of himself as having, like Allie, some
mortal disease:
Holden sees himself in a Manhattan hotel room alone and
overwhelmed by the thought of “jumping out the window” (p. 94 [55
in my edition]). He is persuaded that, similar to Allie, he suffers from
a deadly disease: “a tumor on the brain” (p. 51 [65 in my edition]);
“pneumonia” (p. 139 [171 in my edition]); “cancer” that would lead to
his death “in a couple of months” (p. 176 [215 in my edition]).
(Roselezam 1827)
Another source of complexity in Holden’s personality also has to do with the
use he makes of language. Since the story is narrated by means of a first-person singular
narrator, this narrator being Holden himself, it is possible to see clearly how Holden
speaks and directly expresses himself. It could be said that the way in which he speaks
is, in fact, characteristic, and shows patterns in sentences he uses over and over. Donald
P. Costello writes in this respect:
Holden uses these phrases to such an overpowering degree that they
become a clear part of the flavor of the book; they become, more, a
part of Holden himself, and actually help to characterize him. Holden's
'and all' and its twins, 'or something,' 'or anything,' serve no real,
consistent linguistic function. They simply give a sense of looseness
of expression and looseness of thought. Often they signify that Holden
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14. knows there is more that could be said about the issue at hand, but he
is not going to bother going into it. (12)
Holden’s use of swearwords is, furthermore, a sign of his immaturity. Also, he uses
slang terms on several occasions, but what is interesting about this is that he uses these
words with several different meanings. As Costello (15) states, the word “crap”, for
example, has seven different meanings in Holden’s mind: it might mean, among others,
foolishness, as in “all that David Copperfield kind of crap” (1); or it could be used as an
adjective whose meaning is anything generally unfavorable, as in “The show was on the
crappy side” (139). We conclude that, in general, Holden plays with a certain duality,
since “for his private world Holden uses a literate and expressive English, and so the
profounder psychological and symbolical purposes of slob language may be detected
only as that idiom functions in polarized relationship with the other” (Strauch 44).
Related both to the way in which he speaks and to the topic of death, Holden
uses the colloquial phrase “it killed me” repeatedly during the course of the story. He
uses this sentence to indicate that he likes something: “It was about this little kid that
wouldn't let anybody look at his goldfish because he'd bought it with his own money. It
killed me” (2). Holden also uses it on occasions in which he is dealing with something
with which he is not pleased: “Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed
me, but I didn't say anything” (228). That he uses this phrase so repeatedly could be
understood to indicate that his soul and a large part of himself was wounded after his
little brother Allie’s death.
One more aspect of character that evidences Holden’s complexity is his fear of
growing old. He is afraid of adulthood because he believes that it would corrupt him,
and that is why he appreciates children’s innocence so much. Holden’s fear of growing
old will be analyzed in the next point of this Final Degree Essay.
Holden is, furthermore, aware of being irresponsible, and he lets his audience
know about it when he says that “this [Pencey] is about the fourth school I've gone
to” (11). More instances of Holden’s irresponsibilities can be found when he left “all the
foils and equipment and stuff on the goddam subway” (5). However, as Edwards argues,
“he refuses to assume responsibility for his own actions. For example, when […] he
leaves the ‘foils and equipment and stuff’ (page 5 in my edition) on the subway.
Although he admits that he left them there, he listens to add: ‘It wasn’t all my fault’ (3
[5 in my edition])” (66).
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15. A last sign of Holden’s complexity is his outlook on life. The general tone that
Holden adopts throughout the novel is, definitely, pessimistic. This has to do with
Allie’s death and with Holden’s “assumption that everything is worthless” (Sasani and
Javidnejat 208). These same scholars indicate that this “is just the normal feeling people
have when someone they love dies” (208). So, in general terms, Holden’s problem is
that “[he] is a young man who approaches all life situations on a deeper plane than most
teens his age, making it almost impossible for him to relate to anyone on a normal
level” (Privitera 204).
All this that has been discussed in this line of argument leads to the following
conclusion: Holden has a not-easy-to-deal-with personality, and this contributes to his
being “a practiced outsider, having faced a lifetime of upheavals, moved around like one
of the checkers he speaks of so reverently in regard of Jane Gallagher” (Evertson 96),
which I will analyze in the next line of argument.
5.3. Holden feeling alien in a society that he criticizes and yet also often imitates
One of the central themes in The Catcher in the Rye concerns Holden’s
alienation within the society he is living in. This alienation could be understood if we
take into account that World War II followed “a period of increasing individualism, in
which the trauma of war and the US’s shifting social, cultural, and political landscape
left many feeling abandoned or betrayed by their country” (Kinane 117-118). This
would come to signify that Holden’s isolation is, in part, the consequence of World War
II, which would make sense if we consider that Salinger—the author of the novel—
served for the American troops during the previously mentioned conflict.
Holden’s attitude towards being alienated can be seen in his attitude and way
of behaving. In this regard, Sasani and Javidnejat observe that Holden is “an observer
rather than the active subject” (209). This is obvious in the way Salinger begins the
novel:
Anyway, it was the Saturday of the football game with Saxon Hall.
The game with Saxon Hall was supposed to be a very big deal around
Pencey. It was the last game of the year, and you were supposed to
commit suicide or something if old Pencey didn't win. I remember
around three o'clock that afternoon I was standing way the hell up on
top of Thomsen Hill […] You could see the whole field from there,
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16. and you could see the two teams bashing each other all over the place.
You couldn't see the grandstand too hot, but you could hear them all
yelling. (4)
In this scene, “all the students are watching the football game with Saxton Hall in the
stadium actively and vehemently supporting their team, but Holden is standing on a hill
observing the game from high above” (Sasani and Javidnejat 209). Holden is, in this
part of the novel, clearly not taking part in one of the most important events for the
school. Instead, he is alone, watching them and analyzing what they are doing. Sasani
and Javidnejat continue by spotting another example of Holden being alienated: when
he is in the hotel room in New York City. The scholars write: “He is observing the erotic
sexual plays of the other people in the buildings around but when it comes to his own
time with the prostitute, he simply rejects getting involved in the real action” (209).
Although this could be said to be due to his being a virgin, he emphasizes his condition
of being an observer rather than of an active subject.
Another factor that emphasizes Holden’s alienation is the fact that he does not
even have the support of his family. His father is too busy with businesses like
“investing money in shows on Broadway” (120), and his mother “hasn't felt too healthy
since my brother Allie died. She's very nervous” (120). Warren French states the
following: “Holden is thus without the kind of parental guidance an adolescent urgently
needs during this crucial period” (61). “The boy is struggling, without enlightened
assistance, against greater odds than he can fight for himself” (French 61).
A large part of the novel, as this line of argument makes explicit, has to do with
Holden feeling alien in his society. As regards this, we can say that he “continuously
feels nausea and claims to be on the verge of puking because of a suffocating world
which denies innocence” (Sasani and Javidnejat 207), and “as he says to Mr. Spencer,
he feels trapped on ‘the other side’ of life, and he continually attempts to find his way in
a world in which he feels he doesn’t belong” (Kheirkhah and Pishkar 38). As Kheirkhah
and Pishkar also state, “Holden’s alienation is his way of protecting himself. Just as he
wears his hunting hat to advertise his uniqueness, he uses his isolation as proof that he is
better than everyone else around him and therefore above interacting with them” (38).
What is more, since Holden feels as if he did not belong to his society, he
alienates himself because he believes that the issues of this world are flimsy and
irrelevant. He finds, like many others, trouble in fitting into a world that he considers
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17. phony and full of stupidity, and “like earlier social resisters in American literature,
Holden holds to his own vision of authenticity in the teeth of a morally degraded
society” (Rowe 78). This corruption that characterizes the world made Holden develop
some special admiration towards children, due to their innocence. He considers their
innocence unique, since they have not been corrupted by society yet. In this sense,
innocence is very important for Holden. This is very likely to be why Holden loves
Phoebe so much. She representes everything that Holden likes and cannot find in the
corrupted outer world. This obsession with innocence can be seen in the following
passage of the novel:
Somebody'd written “Fuck you" on the wall. It drove me damn near
crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it,
and how they'd wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some
dirty kid would tell them—all cockeyed, naturally—what it meant,
and how they'd all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a
couple of days. (221)
That graffiti in Phoebe’s school was something unthinkable for him, since children were
too pure to read something like that, something that would give them a hint of how
depraved the world is. This fascination with pureness can also be seen when he, in a
clear allusion to the novel’s title, tells Phoebe that he just wants to be “the catcher in the
rye”:
“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in
this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's
around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge
of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if
they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't
look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and
catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye
and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I
know it's crazy.” (191)
With this allegory based on Robert Burns’ poem “Comin’ thro’ the Rye” Holden
pictures himself as a hero and “wishes to be the protector of the children in the field of
rye where he can make up the regulations to protect them from suffering his fate” (Wei
637). Holden does not want these children to suffer his fate because, he says, “there is
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18. no fulfillment in the adult world, since all it can offer man is frustration and corruption
(Galloway 207). This, however, reveals Holden’s ignorance. As the writer Duane
Edwards states, “when Holden says that he wants to be the catcher in the rye he reveals
a great deal about himself” (65). Edwards continues by saying that “he [Holden] reveals
that he does not seriously want to learn about himself. […] After all, he hasn’t bothered
to read Burn’s poem, he isn’t able to quote accurately the one line he heard a small boy
recite; he doesn’t know that Burns’s narrator contemplates kissing the ‘body’” (65).
Edwards states that by doing so, Holden unveils his readiness to pervert the truth by
ignoring the facts (65).
In view of this, and taking into account Holden’s vision of the world, everyone
who does not behave in the right way, according to him, is directly called phony. Phony
“is a phrase Holden often uses for describing […] superficiality, hypocrisy, pretension,
and shallowness” (Chen 144). For him, everyone is a phony given that, as the scholar
Lingdi Chen writes in this regard, “he feels surrounded by dishonesty and false
pretenses” (144). Some of the people Holden considers phony are his brother D.B., who
“is being a prostitute” (4) in Hollywood working for the movies. Also, he considers
Stradlater to be a phony because he “was more of a secret slob” (31) and because “he
always looked all right” (31).
What is interesting about this is that “Holden obviously fails to see that his
criticisms apply to himself” (French 62), i.e., he spends a great amount of time in the
novel criticizing the phonies he encounters, yet he does not realize that he behaves in a
way similar to the way which he criticizes so much, being thus a phony himself. A clear
instance of this could be said to be that he is, in some way, against adulthood, yet on
some occasions, he behaves like an adult. As he said, “I’m a heavy smoker” (7), and
when he goes to the Lavender Room, he tried to order Scotch with soda. In that same
place, he spent thirteen dollars on drinks, all this being behavior which is more common
in adult people.
Furthermore, as he mentioned: “I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of
my head—the right side—is full of millions of gray hairs” (64). In addition, “although
Holden frequently dismisses movies with the same snarl with which he defines all the
phoniness in the world, he has plainly seen a great number of them” (Seelye 25), and in
the fifth chapter of the novel, he accepts going to the cinema with Mal and Ackley. He
also admits to being “the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (19), even though
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19. he hates lies. He is constantly lying, from the moment in which he pretended to Ernest
Morrow’s mother that he was somebody called Rudolf Schmidt to that in which he told
Sunny, the prostitute, that they could not have sex because he had recently had surgery
on his “clavichord”. Related, as well, to Sunny, after both Maurice—the elevator man
who arranged the meeting—and Sunny come asking for five more dollars than they
previously agreed to Holden, he imagines himself shooting Maurice in some movie-like
scene:
I sort of started pretending I had a bullet in my guts. Old 'Maurice had
plugged me. […] I pictured myself coming out of the goddam bathroom,
dressed and all, with my automatic in my pocket, and staggering around a
little bit. Then I'd walk downstairs, instead of using the elevator. […]
then I'd ring the elevator bell. As soon as old Maurice opened the doors,
he'd see me with the automatic in my hand and he'd start screaming at
me, in this very high-pitched, yellow-belly voice, to leave him alone. But
I'd plug him anyway. Six shots right through his fat hairy belly. Then I'd
throw my automatic down the elevator shaft--after I'd wiped off all the
finger prints and all. Then I'd crawl back to my room and call up Jane
and have her come over and bandage up my guts. I pictured her holding a
cigarette for me to smoke while I was bleeding and all. (116)
Even after imagining shooting Maurice, Holden shows more phoniness when, by the
end of the novel, he admits he misses Maurice: “About all I know is, I sort of miss
everybody I told about. Even old Stradlater and Ackley, for instance. I think I even miss
that goddam Maurice” (234). This could be understood, as David Galloway observes, as
“a possibility of re-entering society […] because his experience [and of all the other
phonies he has met] has taught him something about the necessity of loving” (208). One
more instance of Holden’s phoniness can be observed when he states that “I'm always
saying ‘Glad to've met you’ to somebody I'm not at all glad I met” (98), this showing
how large his falsity is. Having said this, it is clear that, on many occasions, Holden
does what he criticizes, this contributing to make his character, as discussed in the
previous line of argument, more complex.
Related both to the topics of phoniness and of innocence, Holden seeks
alienation when he is with people he considers to be phony, yet when he is with people
impregnated by innocence, he feels good and enjoys their company. This is clear in the
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20. relationships he shares, for instance with his school roommates, whom he considers to
be corrupted, and, on the other hand, with his sister Phoebe, a child full of innocence.
This is why Holden meets a large number of people during his journey in New York: he
wants to find his mental tranquillity in people, yet he often finds others to be phony.
5.4. Holden’s search for mental tranquillity in other people’s company
An important part of the novel has to do with Holden trying to find his place
and searching “desperately for something to sustain him” (Galloway 206). As the
scholar Warren French observes, “he is not seeking to run away from a monotonous,
humdrum life, but to run toward some kind of tranquil sanctuary” (63), a sanctuary
where he does not have to endure the phonies and can live a happy life
Holden’s search for mental tranquillity began with his departure from Pencey,
partly because “he needs sympathy, and he has not been able to find it at
school” (French 63). Right before leaving his school, he is portrayed as a victim, a
“misunderstood victim willing to face a cold night without sure shelter while they [his
colleagues] insensitively ‘sleep tight’ in their collusion against him” (Evertson 96).
It is true that a great part of the novel has to do with Holden trying to find “the
understanding that will help him through a difficult period” (French 63). Privitera writes
in this regard: “Although he claims to want to be left alone, Holden wants more than
anything to make a connection with someone, anyone. His numerous attempts through
the novel prove how inept he is at accomplishing this goal” (204). That is why he
spends a great amount of time trying to have some contact with people. The first thing
he did when he arrived in New York was, as he says, the following:
I went into this phone booth. I felt like giving somebody a buzz but as
soon as I was inside, I couldn't think of anybody to call up. My brother
D.B. was in Hollywood. My kid sister Phoebe was out. Then I thought
of giving Jane Gallagher's mother a buzz. Then I thought of calling
this girl Sally Hayes. I thought of calling Carl Luce. So I ended up not
calling anybody. I came out of the booth, after about twenty minutes
or so. (66)
Once in New York, and after his unsuccessful attempts to contact somebody
via a phone call, he tries, on several occasions, to initiate some kind of relationship with
several individuals he had the chance to meet during these days. A clear example of this
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21. can be found when he gets a cab to Greenwich Village. Matt Everston observes in this
respect: “Trying to draw the cabby, Horwitz, into a friendly conversation, he asks if he
knows where the ducks in Central Park go in winter” (97). As I mentioned earlier in this
Final Degree Essay, quoting Mendelsohn, “Holden’s urgent desire to know where the
ducks went in the winter when the pond froze […] [is because] he wanted to know
where Allie had gone, and where he could find his mourning and unavailable
mother” (126). It is true that the real reason behind Holden’s curiosity towards the ducks
might be that, yet it seems that, on this occasion, he is using this topic to begin a
conversation with someone, and therefore, to find the mental tranquillity he was looking
for.
It might seem contradictory that Holden criticizes society so much, and yet he
wants to have company. As Moore states, “he himself is never alone. He hates being
alone and cannot live alone. If he finds himself without anyone to whom he can talk, he
heads for the nearest phone booth so that he can call someone up” (159). In addition to
being so judgmental, he seems to still have hope to find someone innocent with whom
he could feel better.
Holden tries to establish some contact, as well, with Sally Hayes, “a girl that
Holden sometimes dates” (Bloom 22), and we can even get to witness “Holden making
a drunken telephone call in the middle of the night to Sally to tell her that he will join
her to trim her Christmas tree as planned” (Alexander 87). All this, of course, could be
due to his need to have some contact with somebody. The scholars Kheirkhah and
Pishkar observe in Holden’s behavior with Sally a certain duality:
He desperately needs human contact and love, but his protective wall of
bitterness prevents him from looking for such interaction. Alienation is
both the source of Holden’s strength and the source of his problems. For
example, his loneliness propels him into his date with Sally Hayes, but
his need for isolation causes him to insult her and drive her away. (38)
This greatly differs from how Holden treats Jane Gallagher, “Holden’s childhood friend
(Bloom 22). Although she is—likewise Allie—never physically present in the novel, it
is by means of Holden’s words that we get to know about her. As Bloom in his Guide to
The Catcher in the Rye observes, “Holden seems to feel tremendous respect and
affection for Jane” (22), and, in some way, he finds the comfort and mental tranquillity
he needs by thinking of her. It is, then, by remembering past memories with Jane,
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22. memories of when both of them were kids, that he feels relaxation. This would explain
why he appreciated Jane so much: she was a child, an innocent girl who had not yet
been corrupted. He appreciated her so much that he stated the following: “I know old
Jane like a book—I still couldn't get her off my brain. I knew her like a book” (85). In
addition, like Allie and Phoebe, the love Holden feels for innocent and pure Jane made
him want to protect and comfort her:
All of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on
the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. […]
Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she knew
where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still
wouldn't answer him. […] Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down
on the checkerboard. On one of the red squares—boy, I can still see it.
She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but it
bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her
move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her—I practically
sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and
the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over—anywhere—her eyes,
her nose, her forehead, her eyebrows and all, her ears—her whole face
except her mouth and all. (87-88)
It is not only in people that Holden finds tranquillity. There is a place for which
he feels something special: the Museum of Natural History. This place is important for
Holden since its “dioramas of American Indian life convey an image of time suspended”
(Shaw 101). The scholar Peter Shaw observes that “the Indian who is fishing and the
squaw who is weaving will never change, he muses, and he goes on to fantasize
returning to the dioramas, without growing older, and finding the figures always exactly
the same” (101). Furthermore, the writer Lingdi Chen continues observing that “the
museum represents the world Holden wishes he could live in: it’s a world of his ‘catcher
in the rye’ fantasy, a world where nothing changes, where everything is simple,
understandable, and infinite” (144). This would explain why the museum represents one
of the few places in which Holden can find a small glimpse of happiness: it is a place
where time is not a key factor, it remains always the same. This, however, is not the
only place where Holden attempts to find happiness. As the scholar John Seelye
observes, “Holden dreams of a Huck Finn-like asylum, a cabin in the woods that he
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23. would build after he went ‘somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and
where nobody'd know me’” (27). In this case, this place only exists in Holden’s mind,
and “it is only a dream, abstracted like so many of Holden's fantasies from the very
movies he condemns” (Seelye 27), so “he can find in the real world no sanctuary, no
place to call his own” (Seelye 27).
Holden has, in general, a constant and internal fight against himself in order to
establish some contact with people, and to improve his mental situation, yet he is
constantly ruining all the progress, due to, as mentioned in the second line of argument
in this Final Degree Essay, his complex personality.
6. Conclusions
As I wrote in the Objectives section of this present Final Degree Essay, my
main objective was to defend my thesis statement: In The Catcher in the Rye, Salinger
created one of the most complex and criticized characters in American literature, this
being Holden Caulfield, a 16 year-old teenager whose complex personality alienated
him from the world surrounding him. Having supported this thesis with the four lines of
argument I proposed, we can draw the following conclusions.
Holden is one of the roundest characters in contemporary American literature,
due to his complexity. He is a teenager who, after enduring his littler brother’s death,
and entering adolescence, experienced an enormous change in his behavior. He thus
became more complex as a character, showing, among others, duality in his way of
speaking, and a great obsession with the ideas of death and dying. This complexity led
him to become alienated from the world and constantly to criticize people he considers
“phony”. Although he enjoys his solitude, he tries, on numerous occasions, to establish
some contact with people around him, most of these attempts ending in a catastrophic
way. All this helped both Holden and The Catcher in the Rye to become literary classics.
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