The catcher in the rye is a
novel written by JD Salinger, in which the main character, Holden Caulfield, is
a boy that from my personal point of view represents the anger against society,
adults, life, and other people in a perfect way during the whole story.
However, this post is not
entirely about how angry could Holden be, is about how I realized that I have
lived with “a Holden Caulfield” my entire life. WHAT? And yes, it is true, my
brother is 80% Caulfield, and to explain why am I saying that I am going to
talk about how I made the connection between them.
My brother is two years
younger than me, he is now 19 (almost 20) years old, and I have to say that he
is a good boy, respectful and honest. I know and I am sure that if you know him
you are going to love him! He is awesome. Or so I thought.
In 2010 I read The catcher in
the rye for the first time, in school and I have to say that I read it because I
had to (grades and all those things that are compulsory in school), at that
time I remember that I loved Holden and all that rebellion in him (more than
once I wanted to meet someone like Caulfield), but now 6 years later I realize
that this guy is the type of people that I don't want to meet.
After saying that I have to
clarify that I don’t hate my brother or something like that, please don’t think
that.
Now, you may think “in what
sense her brother is similar to Holden?”So, returning to the main idea of this
post, let’s analyze my brother’s personality in comparison with Holden’s. I don’t
know if you are going to agree with me but anyway...
On the one hand Holden from my
point of view is the typical guy that needs to prove anyone that he is awesome,
that he is the coolest one and that is against everything, someone that has his
own rules and that almost hate adults because they corrupt us and change our
personality, our childish personality, also I believe that he is also someone
that doesn’t want to grow up because he doesn’t want to live the adults’ life,
sort of someone with peter pan syndrome. (Definition below).
Peter pan syndrome: “The
'Peter Pan Syndrome' affects people who do not want or feel unable to grow up,
people with the body of an adult but the mind of a child. The syndrome is not
currently considered a psychopathology.” (U. Of Granada, 2007)
Nevertheless, during the novel
I could see also another part of his personality, and is related with how
protective is Holden with her little sister Phoebe, and how he puts emphasis in
doing that, teaching her how is the adult life and how the society corrupts us
while we are growing up, that thing in my opinion is something that not all the
siblings do (I didn’t talk about that with my brother).
On the other hand, my brother,
in the same way as Holden wants to show everyone, in special his friends that
he is kind of “bacan”, he is always doing “dangerous” things for example he
drinks in the street, runs from the police, has parties in abandoned places for
2 or 3 days, disappears an entire week without answering the phone, all with
the purpose of calling the attention of his friends or us, his family. However
and equally as Caulfield does during the story, when my brother is at home he
tries to teach everything related with “adult” life to our little brother that
is only 7 years old. He talks with him about how dangerous is the night in
Santiago, in what way he should meet new people, and different problems or
issues that can occur in the adult life, such as bills to pay, work, money,
etc.
Is for that reason that I can’t
hate my brother, maybe he worries me a lot when he is outside the house, but
maybe I was a Holden too (in a different way, but I was in some aspects), so
more than criticize him due to the fact that he is a trouble maker in my house,
I prefer to appreciate him and thank him for being so good with my little
brother and for be the Holden, the catcher in the rye that Phoebe needs.
As a
conclusion, a question for you to think…. Do you live with a Holden? If the
answer is yes, give the thanks for being like that.
University of Granada. (2007, May 3).
Overprotecting parents can lead children to develop 'Peter Pan Syndrome'.ScienceDaily.
Retrieved August 8, 2016 from
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070501112023.htm
First of all, in order to answer to your question I would like to say that I believe that we all live with a 'Holden Caulfield' inside of us (which is actually the topic of my post). I believe that because to my mind we all have experienced at some point of our lives, a moment in which we wanted to be treated as 'bad ass' (excuse my french), which means we all wanted to catch the attention of the people we cared about, and we wanted to tell them secreatly that we wanted to be seen, we wanted to be taken into consideration.
ResponderEliminarThat was my point when I titled my post "Hello, my name is Holden", because we all secreatly share those moments of our lives as teenagers maybe or now as young people, when we want to be acknowledge by being "someone", someone who is recognized by people, so 'they' can say: Hey! look at him or at her, he/she is so freaking awesome! totally someone I would like to hang out with, that girl/boy rocks!
We all know this, but we never wanted people to find out that we wanted that, because that would have been so lame hahaha. Anyway, I totally share your opinion, and I feel sorry for your brother's dangerous activities. Good luck with that.
When I read your post, I figure out that dated a Holden Cauldfield for almost 2 years hahaha. Well, he wasn't thaaaaaaat Holden, just the angry old-man part of him, but sometimes he was even worse. Nevertheless, as Asael also said, I also believed that we all have a Holden Caufield inside of us. Maybe my ex-boyfriend had the angry part, maybe I have the nothing-make-sense-in-this-world part. But I think that importat thing here is that should be able to manage our emotions and know how deal with in order to improve ourselves for own good and the others.
Eliminar