Holden Caulfield by Arielle

Holden Caulfield by Arielle - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

I don’t read books. I climb inside them and live in between their chapters. I befriend characters in those books to the point where I love them. I cry and laugh with them, and physically miss them when they’re gone. Sometimes those characters are people I want to be, people I know I will spend my whole life trying to emulate. Other times I find characters eerily similar to myself, characters I will spend the rest of my life trying not to be. Holden Caulfield was one of those rare characters that somehow became both.

If you’ve read Catcher in the Rye, you know that Holden has a favorite word. Only, you probably think that word is “phony”. If you ask me, his favorite word is “listen”. Holden Caulfield is a total failure at being heard. He spends the book wandering around trying to get people to listen to him and they refuse. As the introverted fifteen-year-old that I was when I first read Catcher in the Rye, I immediately latched on to this. Finally, a character who understood where I was coming from - a character to whom I could relate. And then I suddenly realized: Holden Caulfield isn’t the person I want to be. Holden is just a kid. He’s a kid who is alone, who is scared, and who no one hears - who no one ever bothers to listen to.

The thing that most people don’t realize is that there are two Holdens in Catcher in the Rye. There is the Holden who the story is happening to and the Holden who is writing about the story. No one ever bothers to listen to the Holden we’re reading about. But a year later, Holden is writing about the person he was and the way he writes it made me care. I was listening to him; I was empathizing with him. Holden goes from having to search all of Manhattan for an audience, to being the main topic of lectures and English classes for years to come. That is where I found myself in this book.

When I first read Catcher in the Rye, I was quiet. Much like Holden, I was desperate to be heard. Holden taught me that writing and creating would be the way out. I went from being the girl who could barely speak in class without her face turning red to someone who posts videos of herself on YouTube once a week, gets on stage and recites spoken word poetry, who writes essays and screenplays and shares them instead of keeping them locked up in a journal. As a result, people started to listen. Now, I have become a leader in my school - I am the Station Manager of the radio station and the student director of the plays; I have created strong relationships with teachers and administrators; and I have a community that I am a part of and I have a voice on YouTube, all because I can effectively communicate. Holden Caulfield has given me a voice. A chance to tell my own story and share it with the world.