A Passing Thought

As I stated in my previous post, Holden's final statement was "Don't tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." I said that it was an extremely cynical statement, but because Holden was the one saying it, it shouldn't have surprised me. It did, however. Maybe I expected reconciliation. Maybe I expected his time in New York to have changed him somehow, made him a more likable person. Basically, I wanted a change. I didn't want Holden Caulfield to be a static character; I didn't want Catcher to be like Joyce's "The Dead", where nothing ever changes. To be fair, at no part in the story was I fond of Holden as a character. I wasn't fond of how he hated everybody and how nothing he did could possibly make me care. He calls everything a phony (he believes nothing as it is really is); he smokes, drinks, curses and calls prostitutes; he is an outwardly rude, obnoxious and generally despicable character. I wanted this to just be a passing phase. I hoped that New York was going to give him a new perspective in life (of course, nothing that happened in New York could have changed him, considering he seemed to hate everybody there as well, but it was a hope nonetheless), and that he would be at least somewhat likable. His statement made me feel like nothing had been accomplished, that the story began with nothing and ended with nothing.

The Homestretch, part 3

So, the book comes to an end. Holden is in a rest home (or a hospital or something), apparently in psychotherapy (not a surprise) and will be going back to school next year (a good thing). Very little to refer to in the story, though it ends with him saying to not tell anyone anything, else they'll end up missing people. This seems extremely cynical, though, considering the character, a statement like this shouldn't surprise me.

The Homestretch, part 2

Chapter 25 mainly contains Holden further walking around New York City and a minor descent into madness. I say a descent into madness partially because I've always wanted an excuse to use the phrase and mostly due to his strange, well...

He believes he's going to disappear. He believes he's going to disappear every time he crosses a street, and he calls to Allie (who's dead) to help him make it across the street. While I could not pinpoint an exact disorder, this sounds like a bizarre delusion. Bizarre delusion is a delusion that is completely implausible and strange; believing you will straight-up disappear from existence simply from crossing the street is implausible. Had it merely been a fear of dying from crossing the street (that is to say, a fear of being hit by a car) it would have been a non-bizarre delusion, which is a delusion that is possible, though still false.
Insanity aside, Holden also stumbles upon vulgar graffiti, which strongly effects him (this may have been me reading in too much, but he seemed personally affronted by it), eventually speculating that they'll write the same vulgarity on his tombstone; this sounds as if he thinks people strongly dislike him. This, combined with the apparent personal affront and several other aspects of how he's been throughout the book, sounds somewhat like Paranoid Personality Disorder. Holden asks Phoebe to meet him in the museum so he can return the money she gave him. She comes asking him to take her with him, which makes him feel faint. He tells her no, which makes her mad.

The Homestretch, Part 1

Because there was little to talk about between the last chapter I referred to and now, next up is Chapters 24-26  (done in three parts, in honor of last-ditch attempts to make things longer than they should everywhere).
24 is Holden with one of his old teachers. There's really not a lot to talk about with this, either, come to think. Mr. Antolini tells Holden something anyone would want to tell him. That is to say, he tells him to get his act together else nothing good will happen. After a long, awkward discussion, Holden goes to bed and is eventually woken up by Antolini stroking his head.
Now, stroking someone's head isn't exactly creepy, nor is it necessarily sexual. However, Holden reacts to this as if he had been molested (because I skimmed over part of it, that's actually what I assumed happened at first). He goes on to swiftly (and somewhat angrily) leave the apartment.

Another thing occurred to me

Most stories tend to have some form of conflict; it's what gives a story a plot (or, well, a story). Catcher doesn't appear to have this.
The best argument to be made for a conflict is either Man vs Man or Man vs Society, neither of which being very good arguments. Holden, as previous stated, hates everyone, save his sister, so in that sense there's Man vs. Man. However, Man vs Man is intended to be used as a "Hero vs Villain" type of thing, so it still doesn't count. Man vs Society is about conflict with concepts and social traditions; Catcher has none of this. However, looked at literally, the hatred of everything could also work with Man vs Society.

Something just occurred to me

A running motif in the book seems to be, of all things, where the ducks in Central Park go for the winter. Now, I have several problems with this (namely the fact that he harasses every taxi driver he meets with the question), but the one I have is this: Did they not know about migration at that point, or was the idea to make everyone ignorant? Holden constantly wonders about this, asking people about it; when he does so, nobody seems to know.
Either this is a concept much newer than I expected, or Salinger really thinks poorly about the American public's intelligence. For the record, ducks migrate south. They have no specific path, and if it's warm enough, they might just stay where they are.

Holden's desperate quest for attention

Further proving my point: The kid is apparently obsessed with buying drinks for women that are way older than him. In Chapter 8, he tried to buy Ernest Morrow's apparently attractive mother a drink. I don't think that there needs to be an explanation on why a sixteen-year-old offering a drink to some kid's mother is a problem.

In 10, he then attempts to buy drinks to three twenty-something women. It doesn't help his case that the waiter calls his bluff and won't let him buy alcohol because he's a minor, so he's trying to coax a dance out of women who aren't interested in someone obviously a kid (he claims he's in his twenties or thirties, but that went over as well as it would if I claimed I was in my thirties). When they do dance with him, he all the way mentally criticizes their dancing skills, along with considering them to be ugly. He's obviously desperate, but if I wanted to read a story about a desperate teenager, I'd read Tom Sawyer.

Back to the story

So, Chapter 7 and 8 further proved my point about the lack of likableness when it comes to Holden Caulfield. In Seven, he wakes up Ackley (also an unlikable character), just to talk to him about nonsense until Ackley understandably tells him to go away (he's just bothering him). Afterwards, he decides to leave early (he was expelled anyway), going on to shout at his dorm, entirely as an attempt to wake them up (a final act of revenge).
As for Chapter 8, my disdain for him is only more so. The majority of the chapter is spent with him lying to a classmate's mother, with him attempting to buy her a drink early on. He tells her his name is Rudolph Schmidt (which is the name of the janitor), he claims he has a brain tumor (as an explanation for why he's leaving), and he talks about how amazing her son is, essentially telling her that he's some exalted mensch of a kid, how he ran for class president and everything (ironically, Holden hates the kid's guts and everything he says is a lie).
Maybe I'm the only one, but I find it really difficult to identify with unlikable people, and there is not a single likable thing about Holden; he hates everyone and everything (save his hat and his sister), he refers to basically everything as a phony (even when it makes no sense in the context), he lies constantly and every time he says anything, I want him to stop. If a character is unlikable, I have no interest in their story. At the moment, Holden Caulfield is doing a pretty bad job of making me interested in the story he won't stop telling me.

And now something completely different

Of course, I did look at the book through cynical eyes before even starting it. However, it wasn't just my family that caused this.

I enjoy reading articles online, with Cracked.com being one of my favorites. I understand it's not exactly the most reputable of sources (it's a comedy site), though I've yet to see anything straight-up wrong on the site. One of my favorite articles, "The Five Greatest Articles with Psychotic Fanbases", references Catcher, stating it's a favorite among psychopaths and murderers, most notably Mark David Chapman, the assassin of John Lennon.

On a side note, I will follow Spider Robinson's suggestion to not use Chapman's name, instead calling him He Who Must Not Be Named. This will be because Chapman supposedly murdered Lennon to be famous, ergo we will follow the example of the Greeks after The Arsonist, who burnt down a library for fame. His name has been lost to history. Come to think, He Who Must Not Be Named is a really long name, so instead I'll refer to Chapman as Voldemort.

Anyway, the Cracked article refers to how Voldemort was inordinately fond of Catcher in the Rye, having brought the novel with him when he went to shoot Lennon, then bringing the book out and reading it "while still steps away from the murder scene," signing "This is my statement, Holden Caulfield." Because commas are very difficult to decipher (direct address vs signatures), he either is talking to Holden (a book character) or is talking as Holden (still a book character, ergo not real, ergo not him).

The article does go on to explain how it doesn't make any sense that murderers liking Catcher is a thing, but it certainly did give me an unusual context. I would not say it's the reason for my disdain of the book, but it was, again, a context.