"I know that feel bro"

It is known that J.D Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye is a novel that achieved huge success for a lot of readers, above all, adolescents. The protagonist Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye really feels like someone coming out of the pages; he communicates successfully with the reader.

Holden Caulfield is a character that unveils himself throughout the story, by showing his true persona to the reader; Holden appears so real, that at the end of the novel the reader actually feels as he or she knew him very well.

When it comes to an analysis of the novel, there is no doubt that an important aspect of it, is Holden's denial of growing up, holding close to the authenticity of childhood that we lose when we slowly start becoming adults.

The protagonist appears as a very arrogant person; he is constantly dragging people down, calling them “phonies”. But why does society seems so phony to Holden? Well, what the protagonist is doing is actually fighting against appearances and this empty perfection that doesn’t exist in real life. In fact, Holden hates adults, because adults pretend all the time. That is why Holden has this constant inner fight, because he doesn’t want to become an adult, he doesn’t want to pretend. He wants to protect the innocence and authenticity of being a child, because some day when we grow older, all of this will get lost.

It is possible to say that society has failed Holden; he is very disappointed of life, and that is what his behavior shows. Holden shows himself as an unstable and depressive person. Nonetheless, an interesting point is that he is emphatic; a virtue that doesn’t really fit into the schema of Holden’s egocentric and pessimistic personality.

In order to go in-depth about the concept of empathy in Holden Caulfield, it is very important to define the term first. Kathleen Stassen Berger (2010) in her book “Invitation to the Life Span” defines empathy as “the ability to understand the emotions and concerns of another person, especially when they differ from one’s own”.

This is exactly what Holden does in certain moments throughout the story; understanding the other person and putting himself in other people’s shoes.

But the question is "Why"? Why in this lonely and inner journey, he shows himself very careful about other people anyway? Despite all his problems and insecurities, what is it that makes Holden think about the other?

A first moment is when Holden meets the prostitute Sunny. She is in his hotel room, looking kind of nervous but ready to do “her job”. Holden is also very nervous and not quite sure about what he is going to do. The moment that turns interesting is the thought of Holden when Sunny asks him to hang her dress:

“I took her dress over to the closet and hung it up for her. It was funny. It made me feel sort of sad when I hung it up. I thought of her going in a store and buying it, and nobody in the store knowing she was a prostitute and all. The salesman probably just thought she was a regular girl when she bought it. It made me feel sad as hell—I don’t know why exactly.” 

It is interesting to think that Holden, someone who aims to appear as an alienated person, in this moment actually appears to hold on very close to people. Sunny seems so real and so “normal” just as any other person, that he is not able to objectify her. Holden doesn’t know the prostitute; nonetheless he feels empathy for her. Perhaps he is emphatic about the past of hers that lead her to work as a prostitute. All this, makes Holden change his mind about sleeping with her. Instead, he chooses to talk.

Other moment is when Holden notices the words “Fuck you” on the wall of the school:

“I saw something that drove me crazy. Somebody’d written “Fuck you” on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how Phoebe and all the other little kids would see it, and how they’d wonder what the hell it meant, and then finally some dirty kid would tell them (..) what it meant, and how they’d all think about it and maybe even worry about it for a couple of days. I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it.”

It may be said that the anger that Holden expresses towards this person who wrote those words, is really the anger he experiences when he thinks about growing up; these “Fuck you” words would take the kids their innocence away, and bring them a little closer to the “nasty and rude” world of adults.

These “Fuck you” words offend Holden not because of what they mean, but because they somehow destroy the childhood of the kids who could see this wall. Maybe Holden sees himself reflected in those kids. He doesn’t want his childhood to be taken away. Nonetheless, growing up is inevitable, just as inevitable as children finding out what “fuck you” means by looking at the wall.

It seems to me that this empathy that Holden shows towards others, is a product of what he’s gone trough in his life. The fact that nobody ever was emphatic with him, ended up with his life being awful and with him being aware of things having gone differently, if people had actually cared about his feelings. 

I think that being emphatic for him is something natural and unconscious; he is constantly thinking about the past and what could have happened if people were emphatic; that means, thinking about the “What if?”.

Maybe being emphatic is avoiding that other people have to go through the same miserable stuff he’d gone through. Maybe that’s why Holden doesn’t pay back by being selfish, but showing the contrary behavior.  

References:

Berger, K.S. (2010). Invitation to the Life Span. New York: Worth Publishers.

Salinger, J.D. (1951). The Catcher in the Rye.