Character analysis

Holden Caulfield

Holden is the protagonist teenager of the novel of 1951, The catcher in the rye. He is a young rebel who goes against established rules and wants to change the world with his own ideas for good. He seems to have a history of expulsion and failure at various prep schools because of his inability to adjust to institutional life and the world in general. He is tall, he has the ability of detecting the qualities more ridiculous of the people, like narcissism, hypocrisy and superficiality. Holden is a lonely person although he often tries to approach  people but because of his personality he always spoils it. He thinks he is the only decent character in a world of fake adults. He is the second of four children, with two brothers, D.B. and Allie, and a sister, Phoebe. He wants to grow up and act like an adult, drinking, ordering a prostitute, and using money are all things that grownups  do but Holden yet still wants to remain innocent.

Phoebe Caulfield

Holden’s younger sister, whom he loves and respects completely. She is ten years old, thin and redheaded, she likes to wear short hair in summer and  long hair in winter. She sleeps in her big brother’s room, D.B., when he is not at home because she says that she doesn’t have enough space in her’s. Holden thinks Phoebe is the only person in the world who understands and loves him completely. She is lovely because she manages to be everything her brother says she is, but without losing her childhood. She has a mixture of infantile enthusiasm and adult acuteness wich makes her an irresistible character. Phoebe gives a lot to Holden, not like the other characters, she starts to take care of him herself.

Allie Caulfield

Holden’s younger brother who died of leukemia when Allie was 11 years old. The night he died Holden broke all the windows of the garage and they sent him to the hospital. Allie was redheaded too and left-handed, he wrote poems in his baseball glove all over in green ink . Holden idealized Allie, according to Holden he was the most intelligent and sweetest, with the best sense of humor that someone could ever know. Allie was extremely close to Holden. Holden keeps the fielder’s mitt with him wherever he goes. Jane is the only person whom he has ever shown Allie's baseball mitt.

 D.B. Caulfield

Holden’s older brother, he used to  write really good stories  that Holden used to say that he was has favorite writer, he once published a collection called ‘The Secret Goldfish’. D.B. is now employed as a scriptwriter in Hollywood. Holden doesn’t agree with that because he says that it’s the same to prostitution.

Jane Gallagher

Holden’s childhood friend. Though they never actually dated, they used to hold hands. She is never actually present in a scene, but is constantly in Holden’s thoughts and memories. Holden seems to feel tremendous respect and affection for Jane, and holds her up as a pure and spotless friend . Sometimes she is a  summer girlfriend of Holden's. Jane is one of the few people of whom Holden speaks fondly. In fact, he idealizes her so much that he makes her sound perfect.

Mr. antolini

Holden's former English teacher, but then an instructor at New York University. Mr. Antolini is one of the few adults Holden respects. He warns Holden that Holden is headed for a "terrible fall."

According to Holden he has a wife that is much older than Mr. Antolini , that she’s unattractive, and that she has a lot of money.

Holden and Mr. Antolini have been friends a long time, and they are very close to each other. They used to play tennis together, Mr. Antolini hangs with Holden's parents. Maybe "handsome" was just a compliment.

What's bothering Holden?

Holden’s madman days around Christmas

The reason I think Holden was really weird around Christmas days is because of depression, Dysthymia because he has always been depressed although he doesn´t know it.

Depression is a common and debilitating mood disorder that is affecting more and more people around the world. An estimated 350 million people of all ages experience symptoms of depression and about 13 percent of Americans take antidepressants.

When you’re trapped in depression, it feels like nothing will ever change. But it’s important to remember that feelings of helplessness and hopelessness are symptoms of depression—not the reality of your situation.

There are four types of depression:

1.  Major depression: typically lasts for about six months, but major depression can be a recurring disorder.
2.  Atypical depression: Include weight gain, increased appetite, sleeping excessively, a heavy feeling in the arms and legs, and sensitivity to rejection.
3. Dysthymia: It lasts a long time (at least two years). Some people also experience major depressive episodes on top of dysthymia, a condition known as “double depression.” You may feel like you’ve always been depressed.
4.   Seasonal affective disorder (SAD): It can make you feel like a completely different person to who you are in the summer: hopeless, sad, tense, or stressed, with no interest in friends or activities you normally love. SAD usually begins in fall or winter when the days become shorter and remains until the brighter days of spring.

Risk factors that make you more vulnerable to depression include:

1.       Loneliness and isolation.

2.       Lack of social support.

3.       Recent stressful life experiences.

4.       Family history of depression.

5.       Marital or relationship problems.

6.       Financial strain.

7.       Early childhood trauma or abuse.

8.       Alcohol or drug abuse.

9.       Unemployment or underemployment.

10.   Health problems or chronic pain.

Symptoms of depression:

• Fatigue and decreased energy
• Difficulty concentrating, remembering details, and making decisions
• Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, and/or helplessness
• Feelings of hopelessness and/or pessimism
• Insomnia, early-morning wakefulness, or excessive sleeping
• Irritability, restlessness
• Loss of interest in activities or hobbies once pleasurable, including sex
• Overeating or appetite loss
• Persistent aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems that do not ease even with treatment
• Persistent sad, anxious, or "empty" feelings
• Thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts

Treatment:

·         Learn as much as you can about your depression.

·         It takes time to find the right treatment.

·         Don’t rely on medications alone.

·         Get social support.

What Holden  has is depression. Depression over the loss of his brother, which is a perfectly natural and understandable thing. I just think he isn't quite sure how to deal with his depression. He brings up Allie many times during the book.

I think that Holden should not be on medications because there is a better idea like Jane Gallagher, he likes her a lot so I think that she could help him move on and get a bit distracted.

Why did this book have such an impact on Americans of the 20th century and today?

• Reviews:

TIME “Some of my best friends are children,” says Jerome David Salinger, 32. “In fact, all of my best friends are children.” And Salinger has written short stories about his best friends with love, brilliance and 20-20 vision. In his tough-tender first novel, The Catcher in the Rye he charts the miseries and ecstasies of an adolescent rebel, and deals out some of the most acidly humorous deadpan satire since the late great Ring Lardner. 

Afraid to go home ahead of his bad news, he checks in at a cheap New York hotel; in the next 48 hours, he tries on a man-about-town role several sizes too large for him. Getting sickly drunk at a bar, he slithers away in a Walter Mitty mood, pretending: “Rocky’s mob got me … I kept putting my hand under my jacket, on my stomach and all, to keep the blood from dripping all over the place. I didn’t want anybody to know I was even wounded . . . Boy, was I drunk.”

Some Crazy Cliff. When the seedy night elevator man proposes sending a young prostitute to his room, bravado makes him play along. Besides: “I worry about that stuff sometimes. I read this book once . . . that had this very sophisticated, suave, sexy guy in it . . . and all he did in his spare time was beat women off with a club … He said, in this one part, that a woman’s body is like a violin and all, and that it takes a terrific musician to play it right. It was a very corny book—I realize that—but I couldn’t get that violin stuff out of my mind anyway.” His enthusiasm for that kind of fiddling practice fades in hopeless embarrassment as soon as the tart snakes out of her dress.

Scolded by testy cab drivers, seared by his best girl’s refusal to elope with him, and surrounded by an adult world of “phonies,” he loses control of his tight-lipped histrionics. He sneaks home for a midnight chat with his perky ten-year-old sister, breaks down and cries on her bed. In a moving moment, he tells her what he would really like to do and be: “I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy . . .”

For U.S. readers, the prize catch in The Catcher in the Rye may well be Novelist Salinger himself. He can understand an adolescent mind without displaying one.

http://time.com/3677041/catcher-in-the-rye-review/

The New York Times It is just before Christmas and 16-year-old Holden Caulfield has been kicked out of exclusive Pencey Prep, a boys' school in Pennsylvania. Considering everything, this reflects more credit on Holden than on Pencey. Life at Pencey is dreary, regimented, artificial and, of course, expensive. This happens, however, to be only the latest of a series of schools from which Holden has been expelled. Understandably he is in no hurry to encounter his parents, but he is also reluctant to linger a moment longer than necessary at Pencey. He therefore takes what money he has and departs for New York, where he passes several days in a weird jumble of adventures and experiences, is involved with a variety of persons including taxi drivers, two nuns, an elevator man, three girls from Seattle, a prostitute, and a former teacher from whom Holden thinks it best to flee in the middle of the night and most of all from himself. Holden's story is told in Holden's own strange, wonderful language by J. D. Salinger in an unusually brilliant novel, "The Catcher in the Rye." The Book-of-the-Month Club has chosen it as its current selection. Holden is bewildered, lonely, ludicrous and pitiful. His troubles, his failings are not of his own making but of a world that is out of joint. There is nothing wrong with him that a little understanding and affection, preferably from his parents, couldn't have set right. Though confused and unsure of himself, like most 16-year-olds, he is observant and perceptive and filled with a certain wisdom. His minor delinquencies seem minor indeed when contrasted with adult delinquencies with which he is confronted.

 Mr. Salinger, whose work has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, tells a story well, in this case under the special difficulties of casting it in the form of Holden's first- person narrative. This was a perilous undertaking, but one that has been successfully achieved. Mr. Salinger's rendering of teen-age speech is wonderful: the unconscious humor, the repetitions, the slang and profanity, the emphasis, all are just right. Holden's mercurial changes of mood, his stubborn refusal to admit his own sensitiveness and emotions, his cheerful disregard of what is sometimes known as reality are typically and heart breakingly adolescent. The author evidently takes a dim view of prep-school life, and few writers have presented it with more effortless devastation. Holden's reminiscences and observations are short and to the point. "Pencey," he tells us, "was full of crooks. Quite a few guys came from these very wealthy families, but it was full of crooks anyway. The more expensive a school is, the more crooks it has. I'm not kidding." Holden is sometimes, but not for long, a little bitter, and it may be he has a tendency to generalize from too little evidence (in this case his camel's-hair coat had been stolen out of his room), but he has seen and done a lot for a 16-year-old, and a lot has been done to him. Mr. Salinger gives us a peek at Pencey's headmaster, who knows just which parents to talk with, which to ignore, gives a glimpse, too, of alumni and assorted students. Then there is a fine chapter in which Holden calls to say good-by to an ancient teacher, an unlovable Mr. Chips without wisdom or imagination.

 https://www.nytimes.com/books/98/09/13/specials/salinger-rye02.html

• People that were affected by Holden and did something about it

No matter how many times Holden says he’s “lonesome” (it’s a lot), he often can’t even get to the point of reaching out at all. The very first thing the does when he gets off the train in New York is go to a phone booth… and then he leaves twenty minutes later without having even picked up the receiver.

 Every time Holden thinks of someone to call, he ends up deciding not to—usually because he’s afraid he’ll have to interact with someone he doesn’t like. (Like adults.) On the one hand, this is just Holden’s passivity. Over and over again, he decides not to do something.

 On the other hand, judging by the interactions that he does have, we… can’t really blame him. Take a look at just a handful of these encounters:

 He invites Ackley along to the movies, but Ackley won't return the favor by letting Holden sleep in his roommate's bed. He writes Stradlater's composition for him, and in return gets yelled at (and socked in the nose, but technically that was for different reasons). He even had to type that essay on a junky old typewriter because he had lent his own to the guy down the hall. He lends out up his hound's-tooth jacket, knowing it'll get stretched out in the shoulders. He gets stuck with the tab for the three "moronic" girls' drinks in the Lavender Room at his hotel. He pays Sunny even though he doesn't have sex with her, and ends up getting cheated out of five more dollars (and socked in the stomach, although technically this, too, was for different reasons).

 Still, Holden never makes himself out to be a victim. He doesn't seem to notice that he gets taken advantage of over and over and over again. At least, not on a conscious level. (We’re not so sure about his unconscious.). Despite his Judgy McJudgerson exterior, Holden just wants to make friends—like a cute little puppy who keeps on trying.

http://www.shmoop.com/catcher-in-the-rye/holden-caulfield.html

When I started reading this book, by the second paragraph I already had a pretty good idea of Holden’s personality. It seems as if just about everything bothers him of he doesn’t like many things. Also, he doesn't say many positive things, and if he does, it’s closely followed by a negative.

I think that something traumatic happened in his life that made him develop his view of the world the way he did. Initially I thought his parents abused him or something, but then he talked about how the were nice people, so I ruled that out. My next thought was maybe he had a sibling or friend he was close with had died, and the death had major side effects on him. My last idea was his personality was like this naturally; negative and uncaring (to some degree).

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/298976-holden-caufield--view-of-the-world-page-16

• How did teenagers react to the book when it was first published? 

The Catcher In The Rye had an impact when it came out, and still does now because the teenage population still exists and can relate to Holden. At the time period the book came out, teenagers were not as exposed to Holdens language, behavior, and the sexual references. Adults did not approve of this book for those very reasons and parents were once young and disillusioned themselves, but they’ve grown out of it, and they assume the rest of the world has grown with them.

In the book, Holden Caulfield is trying to grasp at maturity. As a teenager this kind of behavior and attitude is still relevant, even if it is dated. Our generation might be more technologically focused, but that does not change the simple feeling near all of us have: rebellion toward those older than us. Most teens are trying to grow up too fast just as Holden Caulfield did in Catcher In The Rye.

We all feel alienated by adults at one point or another, mainly just because they have more freedom than us. The ways that Holden reacts to these feelings may be old-fashioned and unheard of nowadays, but the essence of his character touches close to home to teenagers today.

• Why was the book banned? 

It was banned for its sexual references,  its alcohol abuse and simply for being “unacceptable”.  The book has multiple scenes and references to prostitution and premarital sex.

Although The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most controversial books ever written, it is still taught in many English classes all around the United States, and is still loved by many teenagers and adults for its rebellious characteristics. It was banned for its profanity, sexual content, and violence by many schools from the 60’s to the present. But many schools have reinstated the book, recognizing its literary importance.
My opinion is that they are right, it could be a great book for teenagers but they can also read it out of the school because not all students have the same maturity at school.

Back to the 50´s

What was it like being a teenager in 1950? 

Teenage boys were taught to go to the military or find a job to support  his family. While teeenage girls were taught to take care of  the household. They were encouraged to attend college.

They also became more rebelious and independent.

They used to play cards, dice games and board games. And go to drive-in movies and bowling alleys. Teenagers prefered watching movies at cinemas because of privacy.

Three influential artists: Elvis Presley, Little Richard and Buddy holly

Dancing: After World War II and popularity of the Swing, American social dancing changed into bands of bebop and cool jazz. But teenagers still liked to dance.  Teens’ dancing during the 1950s was widely varied in steps and styling.  Most of it was still swing-based, but swing had been diverging into local styles and regional variations each decade for thirty years.  

Music: They liked to listen to Rock and Roll, Classic pop, Blues, Jazz.

Popular songs: Chuck Berry, ‘Johnny B Goode’, Elvis Presley, 'Hound Dog'

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog

Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

Well they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Yeah they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

Well they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Yeah they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

Well they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
You know they said you was high-classed
Well, that was just a lie
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
And you ain't no friend of mine

You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
You ain't nothin' but a hound dog
Cryin' all the time
Well, you ain't never caught a rabbit
You ain't no friend of mine

Popular actresses/actors: Paul Newman, Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Kim Novak

Popular tv shows: I love lucy, Disneyland, The honeymooners, Father knows best

Language: Slang has always been the province of the young. Words come in and out of favor in direct proportion to the speed with which they travel through the age ranks. Once college kids know that high school kids are using a term, it becomes passe. Many of these words, in fact most words can have “ville” added to them. There was coolsville, deadsville, Doodyville, squaresville, weirdsville and so forth. “Cool” was a 50’s word. We said it a bit differently. Today it is said in a more clipped way. We tended to drag out the pronunciation. But we had it first; we were the originals. Its a very similar  way holden talks.

Teenagers clothes: Ladies favored to wear poodles skirts, while gents went for more of a uniform look with suits, and skinny ties were kind of “the thing” at the time. Saddle shoes were also the “rage” for both boys and girls. Back in the days ladies made their own clothes. Hats were a misjudged symbolism. Boys hair was not allowed to touch ears. For ladies it was frowned upon if they tried to wear pants, most schools wouldnt allow it anyways. Boys werent even  allowed to wear blue jeans to school.

Dating: Before the war "going steady" was the idea that a couple was serious about marriage, the term got a bit of a vocab lesson. Dating is still pretty much the same as it was back then.

Dating Etiquette for Girls:

• Only floozies ask guys out.
• When someone asks you out, it’s polite to give an immediate answer.
• Never break a date without providing a valid reason.
• There’s no such thing as fashionably late; be ready when your date arrives.
• It’s only proper to introduce your date to your parents.
• Don’t apply makeup in public (please see first point).
• At a restaurant, it’s ladylike to tell a date what you want for dinner, so he can order for you.
• Don’t humiliate guys by trying to pay for a date.

 

Dating Etiquette for Guys:

• Dates aren’t like cramming for exams; don’t wait until the last minute to ask a girl out.
• It’s poor form to honk the car horn to announce your arrival; call for her at the door.
• Ask her parents when they want her home — and make sure your watch works.
• It’s only polite to help her don her coat.
• Real gentlemen open car doors for girls — or any door, for that matter.
• It’s chivalrous to walk between her and the curb.
• Bring enough money along.
• No kissing on the first date.
• On prom night, don’t leave the corsage in the fridge.

How much an average person earned per month:

The average family income:        $3,300

The average car cost:                     $1,510

The median home price:               $7,354

Minimum wage: $0.75/hour

Gas: $0.27 

Movie ticket : $0.48 

Rent: $42 

The average income per year in 1949 was $2,950. Holden's parents income was most likely much higher than this, like around $10,000.