Hello, My name is Holden

One of the things that really caught my attention - while reading the book “The Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger – was the personality that the main character, Holden Caulfield, has. It is a very special personality considering how he liked to communicate with others and the attitude he has towards people in the very first pages of the book. 

As we read the book, we are able to notice how special Holden is. He seems to be quite different from ‘normal’ people, and apparently, he never cares so much about what people may think of him. He is always keeping an attitude of the ‘bad guy’, as someone who does not care about his surroundings, or about what is going on in the world. It is easy to notice this personality in the beginning, when he is observing the football match that Pencey preparatory was having that day, and he is telling us that everyone in the school is in that important match, but not him. Sure Holden, because you are so over them. Right.

If we continue with the reading, we can notice the way he behaves with his roommate, old Stradlater, and the guy that roomed next to them, Robert Ackley (or how Holden call him, just ‘Ackley’). Every time we see Holden referring to something that is happening concerning these two guys (or just one of them), he repeats the same attitude he had before towards the people who was watching the football game. He seems to be so indifferent, not caring at all about these guys. He shows no respect, and even less, he does not even care about what is happening with their lives – apparently.

But is that his real personality? Or does he have a special attitude when people is around him?
Obviously, he is just pretending to be a ‘bad guy’. Deep inside, he is just a teenager who is trying to look as someone important, or someone who has a really amazing life and does not care about yours. Nonetheless, Holden is always paying attention to everyone’s life!

Holden Caulfield knows the people that surrounds him very well. He highlights so many details about Ackley, old Stradlater, the people from his school, the football game, etc. He is just a teenager that uses a mask to be looked as someone is not, but every time something is happening in Pencey, he knows it. While Holden is showing indifference with is face, he is paying attention to every detail of every situation. For instance, in the situation in which old Stradlater is having a night out with a random girl, but that Holden Caulfield knew very well. Holden wants to know so badly about Stradlater’s night out.

Ok, but… Hold on right there. Am I describing the Catcher in the Rye main character, or am I describing us? Us? Yes, every single teenager and young people.

Don’t we all have something similar to Holden Caulfield? As a matter of fact, we do!

The point of this brief post about this book, and in particular about Holden, is that we – as human beings – share some aspects of Holden’s attitude, or we have in common some of his reactions in certain situations of the book. Sometimes we all want to look so uninterested to what is happening around us, as if we are trying to say that we do not care about what most of people care; trying to say that we do not like the same things that everyone likes, we want to seem different from the rest of people, however, it is so difficult to live aside from the rest of the world, or indifferent to what everyone is doing when you are a teenager.

Just take a few minutes of reflection and remember those times when you wanted to do what everyone was doing, or at least, just to be aware of what people was doing so I could have the chance to talk crap about it. Even when we were so unconcerned with that, when we wanted to talk bad about someone we did not like, we had to know something about those people in order to talk about them.

We all share a piece of Holden inside of us. We all have been that Holden at least once. Do not try to hide your Holden.