The Catcher in the Rye describes the emotional struggles of a teenager in the 1950s that all of us can somewhat empathize with. Holden may be misunderstood at first because he pushes the readers away with his distancing language and confuses us with his hypocrisy. The real Holden is empathetic under his emotional mask but chooses to act independently to protect himself from being hurt again. We will begin by analyzing Holden's mask, then his actual personality, and finally the major events that have caused him to hide behind his mask.
Holden portrays himself as an independent character, who doesn’t need to rely on anyone. When he was packing to leave Pencey to venture into New York, he recalled how his mother had misunderstood him: “She bought me the wrong kind of skates, I wanted racing skates and she bought hockey” (Salinger 52). Hockey skates represent dependence on others because hockey is a team sport that can’t be played alone. This corresponds with his mother’s wishes for Holden to bond with those around him. However, Holden wanted racing skates because racing is a solitary sport that you can compete alone. This expresses Holden’s mindset that he can go through life alone without a team or anyone to support him. Near the end of the novel, Holden again fantasies about journeying through life companionless. He decided to hitchhike out West and pretend to be a deaf-mute to gain the solitary he wanted. He planned to work at a filling station and build a little cabin to support himself (Salinger 198-199). This quote shows the extent of Holden’s obsession with being self-supporting. He yearns to pay for his own expenses and construct his own shelter. In order to farther detach himself from the world, he is even determined to surrender his ability to speak, by pretending to be a deaf-mute. The loneliness from not connecting with others would have driven him insane. The laborious work of having a low salary job that comes along with having no connections doesn’t matter to him. He is resolved on shivering in the bitter cold world alone, without the warmth of another companion. However, his plan would not only achieve independence but also make him crumble under severe isolation. Holden wants to prove that he is independent by detaching himself but it comes at his own expense.
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The real Holden is empathetic, which makes him overly sensitive to the world he perceives. Holden mentioned how agitated he felt when rooming with Slagle, who had cheap suitcases: I kept wanting to throw mine out or something, or even trade with him (Salinger 108). His empathy makes him want to protect others, even as his own cost. He’d rather take the place of being embarrassed by trading suitcases. He even ended up putting his suitcase under his bed in consideration of Slagle’s feelings. Most students won’t even be aware of their roommate's feelings, much less feel the guilt to take action. Holden again demonstrates empathy when he believed that he was going to die from pneumonia and made his last wishes:
I hope to hell when I do die somebody has sense enough to just dump me in the river...Anything except sticking me in a goddam cemetery...Who wants flowers when you’re dead? Nobody (Salinger 155).
Holden’s last wills were downright selfless. He’d rather not be remembered than to be bestowed with flowers to display his family's yearning. He would prefer to heroically sacrifice the recognition he would receive if his body was placed in the cemetery. Holden wants his family to move on, unlike him, who is still anchored to the past because of Allie. He wishes that he won’t torment his family with the unbearable grief that he had endured each time he visited Allie in the cemetery. Whether it is to strangers or to those he cares about, Holden cannot help but reveal his empathetic self underneath his mask.
A series of traumatizing events in his past, including Allie`s death and Castle`s suicide, has scarred him deeply. July 18, 1946, the night of Allie’s death, struck Holden down. He remembers breaking all the windows in the garage with his bare fists and admits that his hand still hurts when it rains (Salinger 39). The death of his younger brother overwhelmed him with frustration, guilt, and despair, all binding together to mock how powerless Holden was. He had failed to protect Allie whom he cherished so much. His empathy made him feel survivor’s guilt, leading him to disfigure his own hand by shattering the windows. The physical pain must be incomparable with the agony he had felt. The empathetic traits of Holden, who would rather be the one to suffer, than to witness the suffering of others, tormented him the most. His hands still ache when it rains because the absence of Allie still haunts him, which is shown with Holden constantly drifting his mind to his blissful past before Allie’s death. When Phoebe asks Holden what he liked, Holden thought of James Castle, a boy who suicided: He was dead, and his teeth, and blood, were all over the place (Salinger 170). The gruesome picture of a corpse is a sickening sight to a teenager, making the wrenched world he lived in even more arduous to digest. Holden may have unconsciously compared Castle to Allie because they both died at a young age in a pitiful way. He criticizes himself for not protecting the weak, leading him to care for outcasts, such as Ackley. Holden, who carries all these agonizing memories, distances himself from others with his mask to defend his fragile heart from being shattered again.
In conclusion, after examining Holden's mask, his true personality, and his tormenting past, we can better understand this piteous character. He is an empathetic individual who wears a mask of independence as a self-defence mechanism. However, the solitary road he aspires to tread on will only repay him with loneliness. Surprisingly, we can learn from this broken-down character that faking independence is a mask that only gets us more ‘run-down’. Instead, when troubled, we should open ourselves up to those around us to lighten the load we stubbornly carry by ourselves.
Works Cited
- Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1998. Print.
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