Posted on January 29, 2010 - by David

J.D Salinger: 1/1/1919 – 1/27/2010

Not sure what to say, other than that he wrote probably the most culturally significant story of adolescent identity crisis and isolation in 20th century American literature. The following is a paper I wrote in 2005 for my Modern American Novel class as a junior at Boston University. It reads like, well, like a college paper I guess. Hopefully it’s not too long or boring.

What “Happened” to Holden and What Should He Do?

When Holden tries to talk to one of his cabbies about what happens to the ducks during the winter, the cabby points to the fish. “If you was a fish, Mother Nature’d take care of you, wouldn’t she? Right? You don’t think them fish just die when it gets to be winter, do ya?” (83) But Holden is not a fish, and the mother that nature happened to provide him with is still mourning his little brother, who did “just die.” His basic needs are provided for, but his deeper emotional needs, many of which are tied to Allie’s death, are left in his own hands. He is expected to figure out what he wants to do with his life, but all his possible role models, from his own father to his teachers and classmates, fall short, each seeming in some way “phony.” Of course, the hormones in his brain only complicate the situation. This combination of elements leads finally to his mental collapse, which is still not severe enough to protect his mind from the question of what he is going to do. This question that the book leaves the reader with is, in Holden’s opinion, stupid. “I mean, how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? The answer is you don’t” (213). This is the way he seems to live his life, unaware and uncertain of each move until it is already made – a disorienting sensation that teens today can still identify with.

Holden’s view of himself as a somewhat passive actor is made subtly apparent in the book’s first paragraph when he says he’s going to tell the reader about “this madman stuff that happened to me around last Christmas just before I got pretty run down and had to come out here and take it easy” (1). Using the word “happened” doesn’t seem to be an excuse for anything he did, but since he often acts on impulses he can’t explain or understand, and his mind is in such turbulence, the sensation he has is not of doing things, but of things happening. He doesn’t sense his thoughts or feelings until they are almost full-blown and they slam into his mind “all of a sudden.” After talking to Stradlater for a bit about his upcoming date with Jane Gallagher, and already displaying plenty of nervous and excited behavior, Holden says, “I was getting sort of nervous, all of a sudden” (34). Later that night, he goes into Ackley’s room, obviously looking for some company. Still, he says, “I felt so lonesome, all of a sudden. I almost wished I was dead” (48). The reader sees the feelings starting to develop before Holden takes notice of them, so when he finally becomes aware of himself, he feels things hit him “all of a sudden.”

While describing things in this way may downplay his own role as an actor, there are other things that really do “happen” to him that have a great effect on his life. The most important that “happens,” the death of his brother Allie, occurs when he is only 13. The mark this has left on Holden’s mind is clear, and he remembers his reaction every time he tries to make a fist out of his once-broken hand. Referring to smashing windows when Allie died, Holden says, “I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it.” The reader sees how highly Allie figures into Holden’s psychological issues when “all of a sudden, something spooky started happening” on his way up 5^th Avenue (197).  As he crosses the seemingly endless vacuum of the street, he calls out to his brother, saying “Allie, don’t let me disappear.” Allie’s death, an incomprehensible tragedy, seems to have established in Holden the distinct sense of lacking control.

Jane, one of the few bright spots in Holden’s life, comes along only by chance, when her dog “relieved himself” on the Caulfield’s lawn and the happen to become friends. He “happens” to be around one afternoon when she lets a tear drop and he is able to console her. While he never even “necked her,” he cherished holding her hand, and recalls her touching the back of his neck more fondly than any experience with another girl. Her importance is solidified when Holden tells the reader, “she was the only one, outside my family, who I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt to, the one with the poems written on it” (77).

Unfortunately for Holden’s mental stability, Stradlater, of all people, happens to get a date with her. Even though Holden says he knows Jane would never even let Stradlater get to first base, the mere thought of the two of them in the back of Ed Banky’s car is too much.  While the two are out, Holden writes his essay about Allie’s baseball mitt, and when Stradlater returns, he looks at it and criticizes Holden for doing things “backasswards.”  In a way Stradlater threatens to profane both Jane and Allie, and Holden reacts. In his first observable outburst, Holden swings at Stradlater, aiming for the toothbrush in his mouth “so it would split his goddam throat open” (43). For Holden, the whole Stradlater-Jane issue is a major crisis because of what Stradlater represents. Stradlater is older, more athletic, and one of the few guys Holden knows who has actually had sex. While Holden may envy him for some of this, he also hates him for it. Stradlater is a reminder of what he lacks, while remaining the kind of phony person Holden doesn’t want to be.

Obviously, underlying the whole issue is Holden’s anxiety about sex. He is a normal 16 year-old male with an ever increasing sex drive he can barely comprehend. “In my mind,” Holden says, “I’m probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw,” but he finally confesses that he is actually still a virgin (62). “I’ve had quite a few opportunities to lose my virgininty and all, but I’ve never got around to it yet. Something always happens” (92).  The only thing that “happens” is that Holden keeps stopping when he’s told. “I don’t know. They tell me to stop, so I stop” (92). Holden sees this stopping, which could be seen as an emblem of his respectful sensitivity, as his real problem. Why is it a problem? Because “most guys don’t” (92). Here, both social expectations and his sex drive are in conflict with his sensitivity, so he condemns himself for his good manners.

With all this weighing on his mind, it’s no wonder that Holden bolts from Pencey in the middle of the night. “All of a sudden, I decided what I’d really do, I’d get the hell out of Pencey – right that same night and all” (51). He needs a vacation, he says, because “my nerves were shot. They really were”(51). He may be running away from the ‘phonies’ at Pencey and  the thought of Stradlater with Jane, but he’s also running from the fact that he has again let his parents down by failing out of another school because he didn’t apply himself. Clearly, there are expectations that he will at least try hard to do well in school, but what he is supposed to do after that isn’t so clear. What does Holden want to do? Well, he doesn’t want to be a phony, and most of the men he could possibly look up to seem to be phony in varying degree.

Mr. Spencer, who seems more like a relic than a phony, points out Holden’s academic failures and criticizes his lack of ambition. Trying to draw out some kind of thoughtful response, and perhaps trying to make him feel guilty, Spencer asks Holden, “Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?” (14) But right in front of Holden is Mr. Spencer, in “his sad old bathrobe with his chest showing, and that grippy smell of Vicks Nose Drops all over the place,” which is hardly an encouraging picture of the future (15). Whatever concern Mr. Spencer may have had for his own future, he, like everyone, is unable to prevent his own physical deterioration.

The next possible role model Holden encounters is Carl Luce, his former student advisor who Holden primarily remembers for presiding over “sex talks” and causing flit-paranoia. Luce is supposed to be an intellectual, but he refuses to give Holden advice or have any kind of serious conversation. Then when Holden reverts to sex talk, Luce protests the “typical Caulfield conversation,” which he, as Holden’s primary sex-educator, is largely responsible for.  Holden asks about one of Luce’s girls, and Luce says he has no clue, she might as well be “the whore of New Hampshire.” Holden, in contrast defends the girls honor a bit. Luce talks about maturity and Holden’s lack of it, while hypocritically displaying some of the very attitudes he criticizes Holden for. The trouble is, Holden already had the general feeling that Luce was “ a fat-assed phony,” but he still looks to the phony for guidance because he has nowhere else to turn (137).

Perhaps the most obvious person for Holden to look up to, his father, is almost completely absent from the story. On the first page he reveals that his father is touchy so he won’t be saying a lot of personal stuff.  The only real mention comes when Phoebe finds out that Holden failed out again and she tells him repeatedly, “Daddy’s going to kill you” (172). She tries to get him to say something he’d like to do, and suggests, “a lawyer – like Daddy and all” (172). He shows his distaste for the idea of his father’s profession, and his words suggests he doesn’t even know his father well enough to say if he is a decent guy or a giant phony. He describes the life of a lawyer saying, “all you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink martinis and look like a hot-shot” (172).  Holden sees that even a lawyer who is “saving guys’ lives” might be doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. But more important than his skepticism about his father’s profession is the lack of emotional bond between them. When Phoebe first says “Daddy’ll kill you,” Holden doesn’t seem too concerned. “The worst he’ll do, he’ll give me hell again and then he’ll send me to that goddam military school” (166). The fact that he says ‘give me hell again’ shows that they’ve been through this before. We see his father’s expectations, but not love for his son. The threat of military school feels empty to Holden because his father has in a way already relegated his duty to numerous boarding schools.

The last person Holden has to turn to is Mr. Antolini. He’s set apart from the other male figures Holden has encountered because “you could tell he was interested” in what’s going on with Holden (183). Antolini seems particularly perceptive, describing several possible versions of a “terrible fall” he sees Holden heading towards. He explains this kind of fall as happening to:

Men, who at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn’t supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn’t supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started (187).

He tells Holden he needs to find out what he wants to do. “You can’t afford to lose a minute. Not you” (188).  He says that once Holden learns to apply himself and get past the Mr. Vinson’s, he will find “the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart,” and he’ll see he is “not the first person ever confused or frightened or even sickened by human behavior” (189).

While this sounds like good advice, if the reader pays attention to context, much of the value seems to be taken out of Mr. Antolini’s words. It’s so urgent that Holden start going somewhere, yet where has Antolini gone? He sits on the couch drunk in his bathrobe and slippers downing highball after highball, forcing the reader to question what use academic knowledge has actually served in his life since it appears he needs to drink to get by. Of course, Mr. Antolini is a teacher, and he is also drunk, so it makes sense that he is ranting about the importance of education, but what Holden really needs at this moment in the story is not an inspiring lecture but some sleep, and Antolini is so involved in his own that it takes him a while to realize this.

Obviously, both the reader and Holden are startled when he awakens to find Mr. Antolini looking down on him and patting his head, and Holden hurries out of there. He debates what this display of affection may have meant, thinking, “even if he was a flit, he certainly’d been very nice to me” (195) Between his relationship with his wife and his interaction with Holden, there is evidence to suspect that Antolini may be a homosexual. Even if this makes him a ‘phony’ for trying to cover up part of his identity, he is kind and seems well-intentioned, overzealous as he might be. This is perhaps Holden’s chance to realize that he lives in a world where growing up may mean becoming phonier. Essentially, children imitate and follow after adults into adolescence, until they choose a role for themselves and then play it out, like the phony actors he says he hates so much. If he is to survive, he must recognize this reality, as well as realize his own phoniness which can be seen in the lies he tells and his attempts to appear older than he is. He must seem that some degree of phoniness is inevitable in social interaction.

It’s tough to say whether this book carries any redemptive message. The fact that Holden misses the people and places he leaves behind – even people like Ackley, Stradlater, and Maurice the pimp – suggests that he may be learning to simply value life for what it is. Still, the overall picture of adulthood in modern American society is a rather bleak one. It seems that he may be able to embrace life in the near future, but there still looms the possibility of a more severe mental collapse, or perhaps even worse, the life-long struggle to find that indefinable thing he thinks he’s looking for. What Holden and his young readers need to figure out is not “What am I going to do?” but “How should I deal with what has happened?”  What the reader should hope for Holden is not that he applies himself next fall, or that he one day accomplishes something great, but that he just learns how to survive without such mental anguish and without having to isolate himself. Holden’s story may not provide much helpful advice, but as long as there are adolescents who feel pressured to fulfill some yet undefined roles, to go somewhere and be somebody while also feeling like they’re barely controlling what goes on in their bodies, minds, and lives, then this story will resonate with its readers. Perhaps, like Mr. Antolini said, the record of someone else’s troubles is enough to keep one from feeling completely alone.