i was talking indirectly to holden there, by the way. indirectly because he's a character only. however i'm finding uncanny similarities between him and the personalities i see floating around the halls of our school. the attitude that you face everything with, you come face-to-face with your superiors with a look of contempt, "rebellion", without a chance all you offer the world in your adolescence is immediate anger. i really can't stand it when people don't think. when as a teenager you rush into your challenges - or "challenges" - with no preparation, or even contemplation as to what lays ahead of you.
i came into the catcher in the rye like any other adolescent would. i accepted it at face-value, taking holden for what he was, as an endearing and immediately likable and accessible character, at least to the reader. i felt that way after i finished the book, too. partly because i don't think about book when i finish them because i'm afraid i'll never come up with any good ideas, and partly because i just wasn't thinking at all, about anything. i don't think i wanted to see anything deeper and potentially dislikable in holden's character by analyzing his personality any further.
but now, as i'm required to write this post, the inevitable horror has occurred, and i am thoroughly pissed off at holden. (only at the first portion of the book, though. by the end the burden of vexation had lightened, if only very slightly.) it's a habit of his to complain, primarily about his discontent with people and the way the world works. of course it's understandable and very common to have grudges or annoyance against others, but as you progress in the story there seems to be no end to his worldly criticism, most of which he could have easily kept quiet. if he had actually thought about other people's lives, i think maybe the complaining would lessen. this has been suggested to everyone who has ever complained about another individual, and from experience we all know it's harder than it seems.
but what i find interesting is holden's reluctance to tell his story in the very beginning of the book, and his immediate negative attitude towards his audience. "...in the first place, that stuff bores me... i'm not going to tell you my whole goddam autobiography or anything." i find it interesting that the things he does choose to tell us about are his complaints. i can imagine that if holden were a real person, the composition of this story would be a delightfully liberating cathartic experience. and that's the theme i get from all these coming of age books - what it all boils down to is complaint. rebellion's built upon complaints, discontents with the world, nothing going "your way". is it really all necessary?
are some of holden's complaints about the world really just things he invented in his own mind as excuses to rebel? is he making up society's expectations just to have something to rebel against, when really society doesn't expect that much of him? he doesn't realize it, but even that hunt for a rebellion excuse is a way of conforming to society - it's expected for young'uns to rebel. he wouldn't feel mature without that "struggle".
maybe i'm minimizing the challenges that holden has to face. but it's hard to have perspective on holden's annoyances when the entire story is filled with them...you can't compare one to another. i'm just assuming here, but some of the things that bother holden seem so unreasonable, irrational that i can't help getting the impression that he's exaggerating.
at the heart of the coming of age experience there is essentially one huge, enormous, godzilla-like struggle that dominates all, the all branch off of. it's the desire, the need, to be understood and accepted as how you are. we need pity, we need sympathy for our own personal struggles, ones that we are convinced no one will understand. when no one offers us that kind of understanding, we look for things that will give us a pitiable sheen to ourselves. sometimes, like in holden's case, we invent our own struggles in our desperate search for kindness, artificial challenges in hopes that we'll get some compassion.
it took me a while to realize exactly how holden changed by the end of the book. he kept his rants, his friendly and familiar tone. but by the end i think he found out that his complaints were utterly fruitless, and that he was purposely seeking out people's faults to make people feel sorry for him. if not that, he was just judging them too harshly, looking for ways to rebel against the people he was close with.
in the end, i thought that the catcher in the rye had a fairly satisfying conclusion. this was when i wasn't thinking, before i really looked into holden's character as a complex mass of passion. but i feel even more so now that by the end of the story holden grew and matured as a character. it was holden against the world, when really the world had given him nothing to complain about.
