The development of the character Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye Many adolescents often suffer from a lack of direction. Not knowing what they are doing or where they are headed, faced with the many obstacles of both life and adult society as they struggle to find direction in the world. Many long for acceptance and love that they do not receive. This description perfectly suits the situation befalling Holden Caulfield, the controversial protagonist and main character of J. D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.
In the novel, after being expelled from his fourth school, Pencey Prep, Holden goes on a journey of self discovery through New York. He becomes increasingly unstable in a world in which he feels he does not belong, with the company of people he deems “phonies”. Holden, not unlike a typical teenager, is also on his own quest in order to find himself, yet he resorts to ignoring his problems as a way of dealing with them. Holden tells his story from the confines of a psychiatric hospital, having been there to recover from a neurotic breakdown caused by his outlandish and often over the top actions.
Holden Caulfield’s unachievable dreams, delusional fantasies, and erratic behaviour all lead to the breakdown of his character throughout the course of the novel Catcher in the Rye. One way the reader is privy to the collapse of Holden Caulfield’s mental well being is through his unattainable dreams of grandiosity. While many people find that their dreams can be unreachable, Caulfield’s border on the overly extravagant. When Holden returns to his childhood home and talks to his ten year old sister, Phoebe, his undecided direction in life becomes very clear; Siddle 2 Holden wishes to be the catcher in the rye.
Protecting children from the cruel, phony world in which he is living in. When Phoebe asks Holden what he would like to be he responds by saying: 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. (Salinger 173) Holden decides to be the “catcher in the rye” because he yearns to keep the innocents of the world from falling off the cliff into adulthood and desires to protect the innocence of his sister and every other child in the world. He wishes to keep them from the depressing, ever changing world, and the horrors of adult society. Before Holden meets his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, for a brief date, he stops in front of the Museum of Natural History and begins to recall events of the past.
He thinks about visiting the museum as a child with his teacher and classmates. Additionally, he contemplates that the best part of the museum was that everything in it remained stagnant. Holden enjoys that the exhibits stay unchanging, even as the viewer of them grows and changes, even if the changes are inconsequential. Holden seems to be filled with nostalgia for his lost youth. For this reason he believes that specific things should be preserved in glass, like they are at the museum: “Certain things they should stay the way they are.
You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone” (Salinger 122). Consequently it depresses Holden to think that someday the innocence of those around him, his younger sister Phoebe included, will be spoiled by the world, unable to stay preserved and unchanging in small glass cases. Siddle 3 Holden realizes that becoming the catcher in the rye is an unattainable ideal. When he goes out to meet Phoebe during her school lunch break, he has made up his mind to leave New York and hitchhike out West.
When Phoebe asks if she can come along it overwhelms Holden to the point where he decides not to go, showing the reader how frivolous and easily thrown aside his fantasies are. Instead, he decides to take her to the zoo and convinces her to go for a ride on the carousel. When the carousel starts, Holden notices Phoebe reaching to grab for the golden ring. However, he does not intervene, though he realizes it could potentially be dangerous: “All the kids kept trying to grab for the gold ring, and so was old Phoebe, and I was sort of afraid she’d fall off the Goddam horse, but I didn’t say anything or do anything.
The thing with kids is, if they want to grab for the gold ring, you have to let them do it, and not say anything. If they fall off, they fall off, but it’s bad if you say anything to them” (Salinger 211). Holden understands that sometimes children must learn life lessons the hard way. When Phoebe goes to ride the carousel again Holden experiences a sudden surge of happiness, and begins to cry. In that moment he witnesses what perfection is to him, yet he is haunted by the fact that he knows the unrelenting outside world will eventually influence Phoebe, leading to the loss of her childhood innocence.
Holden finally becomes fully aware that he cannot be the catcher in the rye. He is not able to protect anyone from the adult world he fears so deeply, as his goals are wholly unachievable. Another way the nervous breakdown of Holden Caulfield is illustrated is through his plentiful delusional fantasies and spontaneous and dramatic bursts of insight or ideas. While in New York Holden decides to take his old girlfriend, Sally Hayes, out on a date, where he formulates an impulsive, crazy plan entailing running away with Sally to Massachusetts or Vermont, living in cabins, getting married, and rowing old together.
When Sally calls him out on his crazy plans Holden claims to be getting “depressed as hell” (Salinger 133), directly contrasting his own viewpoint just moments Siddle 4 earlier when he declares himself to be “getting excited as hell” (Salinger 132). Holden’s constant attachment to his grandiose, unrealistic schemes indicate his deep struggle with manic tendencies, and an exaggerated perspective of his reality. His outlandish thoughts and actions fuel all of his dramatic and fallacious scheming through the course of the novel.
As can be seen often Holden embellishes his many fantasy worlds for no obvious reason until he discards them like coats as rapidly as he drew them on. By the end of the novel, Holden has made two rather senseless and desperate plans to run away from his responsibilities. Holden tells his psychiatrist that he is not sure what his future has in store for him: “A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I’m going to apply myself when I go back to school next September. It’s such a stupid question, in my opinion.
I mean how do you know what you’re going to do till you do it? ” (Salinger 213). Ultimately, after receiving some proper treatment, Holden now realizes that he must live life as it happens, and not with the dreamy quixotic utopian ideals he often had in the past. One final way Salinger shows the total collapse of Holden’s character is through his erratic behaviour. Throughout the course of the novel, it becomes increasingly apparent that Holden, far from being practical and pragmatic, has clouded judgement as he rides an emotional roller coaster of constant mood shifts.
Holden even contemplates committing suicide several times after seemingly trivial things “depress” him to the point where he can no longer cope. As a result, Holden’s innermost thoughts indicate a deep-seated struggle with depression, and he seems to have difficulty coping with his intense sadness. After one night in which Holden does not socialize very well with others he claims to feel so depressed that he wishes he was dead, showing how entirely his depression influences his thoughts.
It is very evident that Holden often holds himself to a higher standard than his peers, pointing out the phoniness and wickedness in others and the world around him, yet he is not as perfect as he wishes to be. He views the “phonies” as inauthentic and shallow as opposed to actually seeing the world clearly, Siddle 5 and becomes very disappointed in those who cannot see beyond life’s trivialities. When he leaves Pencey Prep Holden lies to a woman he meets on the train, the mother of a boy he went to school with, just so he would have something more interesting to talk about.
He lies to her when he finds himself in a situation that he cannot easily talk his way out of by lying even more, and telling her he’s just had an operation for a brain tumor. Holden frequently claims that those around him are all “liars and phonies”, but in turn brags that he himself is an astounding liar: “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful” (Salinger 16). Lying seems to be Holden’s way of coping with his perceived inferiority and controlling situations.
He uses his lies with the intention of manipulating others around him, keeping the truth for himself only, yet believes there is always an ulterior motive behind everyone else’s actions. Additionally, Holden consistently looks towards others for validation and praise. At his old school, Pencey Prep, Holden becomes the manager for the fencing team in an attempt to gain friends and a certain level of elevated social status. Even his best attempts at normal social interaction seem to go awry when he loses the team’s fencing equipment on the subway on a trip to New York and was “ostracized… he whole way back on the train” (Salinger 3).
Holden’s depression, crazy manic schemes, and extreme cynicism lend credence to his lack of emotional stability and seeming inability to form true intimate relationships or bonds with others around him. Through the entire course of the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, it is evident that the narrator, Holden Caulfield, is a deeply troubled young man. Constantly alternating between conflicting feelings of superiority and inferiority, Holden Caulfield’s unachievable dreams, delusional fantasies of grandeur, and erratic behaviour all lead to his slow decomposition over the course of the novel.
Thus it is clear that his wide array of character flaws, including his cynical, depressive, and often unreasonable attitude and thoughts are rooted in some underlying emotional and mental health issues. Holden takes on a journey that transforms him from a dreamy romanticising idealist to a more Siddle 6 rational existentialist. It directly parallels the transition from the fanciful mind of a starry-eyed teenager to the prudent, level headed adult that many teenagers are afraid, and far too immature, to become.
