Identifying with Holden Caulfield by Robert

Identifying with Holden Caulfield by Robert - April 2014 Scholarship Essay

I felt pretty overwhelmed, at least initially, upon reading the prompt for this essay (“Describe a character from a book you have read and how he/she has influenced you.”) I have read hundreds, if not thousands of books, which makes for a lot of characters to choose from. From “Sam I Am” in Dr. Suess’ classic "Green Eggs and Ham" to Jake Brigance, the attorney/hero of John Grisham’s "A Time to Kill," there have been so many characters that evoke strong feelings in me, both positive and negative. But there are certain stories that I read, and re-read, over and over again, like J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth books, and Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises," my love of which I have passed on to my 19 year old daughter. It is from this second, well-thumbed set of paperbacks that I draw the one character that has a profound effect on me, no matter how many times I find myself lost in his story: Holden Caulfield, from J.D. Salinger’s "The Catcher in the Rye."

If you have not read "The Catcher in the Rye," please accept my condolences and sympathy for your loss.

"The Catcher in the Rye" is the story of Holden Caulfield, a troubled 16 year-old, bright and sensitive, and fortunate enough to come from a well-off family in New York City. In the beginning of the book, Holden is relating to the reader how he had been sent off to his third or fourth (I cannot remember, and I don’t think Holden was clear on that, either) preppy boarding school, and how he was about to be kicked out of this one for failing all of his classes, except English. Holden just did not fit in with the “phonies,” as he calls them, and does not really believe that he wants to. His biggest concern at that time was feeling pretty bad that he had to inform his parents that he had flunked out of yet another prep school. Holden’s only real connection is to his younger sister, Phoebe, and to his younger brother, Allie, who died from leukemia 3 years before the start of the novel. Holden’s story is one of alienation, of cynicism towards a world seemingly filled only with hypocrisy and ugliness, in which a great kid like Allie can die of a horrible, wasting disease; of a longing for the virtuous, and the simple wholesomeness of childhood.

Holden’s story resounds so strongly with me because I feel the same way he does. Even when I first read the book (as a 13 year-old freshman in high school), I understood how Holden felt. I didn’t think too much of the world around me, and most of the time I still don’t. I am bright, and sensitive, and for the most part a good person, yet it seems to me that our society does not value those attributes, but rather encourages and rewards the loud-mouthed self-promoters, the arrogant, and the selfish. I understand Holden’s cynicism - it is hard to be optimistic about human character when so much of what we see every day is the ugliness, the scaly underbelly, of that character, in our communities, and our leaders. I don’t think I am exaggerating by much to say that most of us would be hard-pressed not to be disgusted by the politicians in Washington and the rest of the world, who are worried much more over self-preservation than in representing their constituents, or in solving the problems that so many face. Every night, the news is full of the atrocities we humans inflict upon each other, atrocities that exist nowhere else in the natural world. The phonies and the ugliness have only increased since Holden told his story.

Holden eventually cracks under the strain of his self-imposed exile from his peers, and his inability to properly process the grief and anger he carries over his brother’s death, but he does so in such a noble (at least to me) way. He does not get angry, and “go postal” and shoot his classmates, or teachers, or hurt anyone else – he slowly implodes, and breaks down. When asked what he wants to do with his life, he says he wants to be the guy that keeps the little kids from falling off the cliff at the edge of the rye field, hence the novel’s title. The last scene is Holden standing in Central Park in Manhattan, watching Phoebe ride the carousel, crying, because he feels truly happy for the first time he can remember. Holden wants to protect the innocence he sees, and values, in the world – his noble pursuit of innocence in the face of the callous and cynical world is what makes Holden a hero, albeit a doomed one, and is what resonates with me so strongly.