I wish I had read this book when I was in high school… oh wait, I did!

When I was 16 years old El Guardián entre el Centeno was assigned to me as a home-reading assignment, and to be honest, I did not fully understand the message behind it. Maybe I was too young or maybe I did not take it seriously (most probably), but now that I am older, I can appreciate the masterpiece that is in front of my eyes.

When I first started reading The Catcher in the Rye I thought “This seems familiar” and it was not until I had read the first 15 or 20 pages that I realized that they were the same book (I have issues with translations, apparently). I remembered vaguely the story, but as the book went on and on I was engaged with the novel and the “teacher part of me” only wanted to help Holden through his journey.

The journey that Holden describes all along the book is more than just one rebel boy who is mad about life. If you slow down a minute to think what is the protagonist is going through, you will realize that he is desperate about companionship, affection and understanding and even though he tries to find it from different people, no one seems to give him what we really wants… what he really needs. On his way to NYC Holden finds his first listener outside school, this is Mrs. Morrow, but as we can see later, the conversation between them develops oddly, and he stars lying compulsively to his classmate’s mother, he cannot stop doing it, and as the time passes, he not only lies about Ernest, but also lies about himself.

 "Then I started to read the timetable I had in my pocket. Just to stop lying. Once I get started, I can go for hours if I feel like it. No kidding. Hours." Holden, p. 59

At first you could think that his lies are told to please Mrs. Morrow and to picture her a different reality about his jerk son, let’s say that he is trying to make her a favor somehow. But soon the lies are about him, as a way to escape from an uncomfortable situation. That is no good, Holden, no good. He seems to lie compulsively to cover his own mistaken life choices and how he has failed to be what the society expects him to be.

If we keep in mind that he is a troubles teenager, we could understand his behavior. At the end of the day all teenagers lie, some more than other, but them all lie. But the most interesting thing here is that Holden is constantly calling everybody a “phony” and judges people about their behavior and way of thought, a good example of this is how we criticizes Robert Ackley for being unhygienic or hoy he judges Stradlater for what Holden thinks he did with Jane. But, as I said before isn’t it curious that he calls everybody a phony when he is the one who lies the most all over the novel? Peter J. Seng seems to get this idea too, when he states:

It might be said that Holden's chief fault is his failure "to connect" (to use Forster's phrase); he hates lies, phoniness, pretense, yet these are often his own sins. (Seng,205)

Holden thinks that all adults, or relatively mature people, have lost their innocence and that they are living a fake life, but here he is the only one who is pretending to live a life that is not his own. He makes up stories and lies about his life constantly and that only shows how lonely he is, and how he desperately needs help. Needs someone who listens to him, someone who can understand him and see the true reasons behind his problems at school or with his parents. But that “someone” is nowhere to be found.

I had all my hopes in Mr. Antolini, but of course that he couldn’t do much to help a boy who was lost in the reality that he thought was real. Holden ends up escaping from Mr. Antolini’s apartment and not taking his advice seriously. In this chapter we see how Holden’s mind is disturbed, how he thinks in a very trange way. How he makes a big deal about Mr. Antolini touching him , how he talks to his dead brother, and how he thinks crazy things as he walks. We can see these nonsense thoughts in the next quote:

“Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I'd never get to the other side of the street. I thought I'd just go down, down, down, and nobody'd ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can't imagine. I started sweating like a bastard--my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I'd get to the end of a block I'd make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I'd say to him, "Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Allie, don't let me disappear. Please, Allie." And then when I'd reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I'd thank him” (Holden Caulfield)

After all, what can we expect from a narrator who is having some psychiatrist issues? He is not a reliable narrator at all, since he always tells the story from his point of view (obviously) and he seems to have no objectivity when telling any story. Probably all this inappropriate touching from Mr. Antolini wan not such and he just made it up in his mind.

The way I see it is that he is trying to justify his actions through stories that have a little bit of extra (and made-up) information, so he can do whatever his twisted and immature mind tells him to do. That is a little bit what we all do when we want to escape from reality and we negotiate the truth in our mind to feel better about certain actions. This is why I think that we all have a little bit of Holden inside us, and that is no completely wrong, as long as we keep it to a minimal expression.

References:

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

- Seng, P (1961) The Fallen Idol: The Immature World of Holden Caulfield