A little bit troubled

Adolescence might be the most confusing and hardest stage of life for some people, as one goes through a journey where the body changes, your beliefs start to convey, your personality is shaping, and sometimes this whole transformation might be stressing for some teenagers and they do not know how to deal with what is happening. Therefore, these almost adults behave in a way that sometimes goes against every social rule or principle. 

This process is clearly exemplified on the life of Holden Caulfield, the lead character of "The Catcher in the Rye" of J.D. Salinger. Holden had trouble with almost everything in his life, with school; with other people, who he called "phonies"; and even with his own future life path. One of his personal fights occurs when he was beaten up by Stradlater, then he goes to Ackley's room and lay on his roommate bed and he is feeling lonely in the world, he even wanted to die at that moment, so is in that moment when he wanted to change his bearing and for a minute he wanted to join a monastery.

"'Hey, Ackley!' 

He heard that, all right.

'What the hell's the matter with you?' he said. 'I was asleep, for Chrissake.'

'Listen. What's the routine on joining a monastery?' I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. 'Do you have to be a Catholic and all?'

'Certainly you have to be a Catholic. You bastard, did you wake me just to ask me a dumb ques---'

'Aah, go back to sleep. I'm not gonna join one anyway. The kind of luck I have, I'd probably join one with all the wrong kind of monks in it. All stupid bastards. Or just bastards.'"

Another thing that Holden perfectly characterises about adolescence is the fact that almost everything depresses or dislikes him, maybe because at that phase he was going through, he was really alone. Certainly nobody could really understand what was happening to him. Some examples of the situations that depressed him were:

"(...)If somebody, some girl in and awful-looking hat, for instance, comes all the way to New York - from Seattle, Washington, for God's sake - ends up getting up early in the morning to see the goddam first show at Radio City Music Hall, it makes me so depressed I can't stand it.(...)"

"(...)New York's terrible when somebody laughs on the street very late at night. You can hear it for miles. It makes you feel so lonesome and depressed. I kept wishing I could go home and shoot the bull for a while with old Phoebe.(...)" 

Maybe this kind of hate towards the people described in the previous quotes is due to the artificiality and phoniness of the adult world irritates him not allowing to fit into the social norms. (Nayebpour & Aygül, 2014)

Furthermore, Holden was just the typical adolescent with the personality that has prevailed over the years, as most of the teens from now are just like him. These adolescents goes through stages inside the period of being an Adolescent, plus there are several researchers and psychologists that have stated different stages for this period and the one which I have agreed the most at this moment is with David Elkind. 

Elkind claims in his Egocentrism Theory that adolescents are more idealistic than realistic. This theory posses 3 features, which are "the imagery audience", "the personal fable" and "apparent hypocrisy". Here I saw Holden's adolescence perfectly described, mostly because of the first and third feature, as in the imagery audience, the teenager images an hypocritical mass of people around him, and "the apparent hypocrisy" posits that adolescents judge people with rules that are not valid to apply on themselves. (Nayebpour & Aygül, 2014) Moreover, it is the last characteristic that stands out the most, perfectly characterising Holden, since he believes that he would never be like the people that depresses him or he would never do the things that those people do.    

Finally, Holden might have been a '50 adolescent on "The Catcher in the Rye", however, his story will continue to be essential to simbolize the psychological stages that adolescents go through, as todays and futures adolescents might still have the same characteristics as they have prevailed in time. 

References

Nayebpour, K. & Aygül, A. (2014). Representation of Holden Caulfield as a Problematic Adolescent in J. D, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/9588338/Representation_of_Holden_Caulfield_as_a_Problamatic_Adolescent_in_J._D._Salingers_The_Catcher_in_the_Rye 

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