PS. I wanted to add some more personal details, but it’s turning out to be too gooey, so I’m leaving that part out. I hope I don’t sound too conceited in the above post.

It was fashionable, in my high school, to have sort of a crush on Holden Caufield. But I don't think that he should be admired or viewed romantically! He is, ultimately, everything he detests. He's sort of tragically deluded about himself; his non-conformity is really a front for the way his own actions mirror what he sees around him. In real life, I probably wouldn't give him the time of day.

On preview, I don't want this to seem like I'm dissing you, hadjiboy. I'm almost 100% sure you're nothing like good ol' HC.

I'd tell him to read The Catcher in the Rye. "It's a great book, Holden; it'll blow your fucking mind, man!"

And I'd tell you to breathe. These choices aren't really choices. It's more like embracing a whole section of a gradient. Embrace both. Wasted opportunities are decisions to do something else. Time spent gathering moss is good for the moss.

You're headed down your path, and you see some goal at the end. Happiness, or satisfaction, or something material, or wisdom, or just an aged you. Sometimes you find yourself looking at the goal over your shoulder, and you wonder why you're moving sideways.

Look at the way roads go up a mountain, switching back and forth, or at the way paths meander through marshy land or around a bramble patch. Nothing out-of-the-ordinary there. Go straight up the mountain and you might fall off; walk straight into the marsh and you're lucky if you just lose a toe to a snapping turtle; head into the brambles and you"re a bloody mess, and stuck, to boot.

Those metaphors are goofy. Things happen, whether you cause them or someone else, or nature or whatever. They seem good or bad or neutral. The process of reflection makes bad into good, and neutral into good, too. It really is all good in the end.

And breathe. Don't forget to breathe. Most people don't even know how.

Oh, no way Muddgirl—I need someone to tell me the way it is. I also know what you mean about his character having that mystical allure to him, although I don’t know if he turns out to be all those things he despises—I hope he does make it out to those woods he’d dreamt about and lives out the rest of his days as a deaf-mute. And how crazy does one have to be to think like that. Sometimes I too think that any sane woman like yourself wouldn’t give me the time of day either, because I see the Dhobis (local laundry men) taking their laundry to the river to wash it, and they’re happy with what they do, and that’s what I want—I want to be CONTENT.

Time spent gathering moss is good for the moss

Yes, but too much moss isn't good either, right?
I'm just wondering where I draw the line.

I'd tell him there's no such thing as authenticity.

Ugh - when can we ever stop lionizing the HC character? Catcher has got to be one of the single most overrated books in the canon. I agree with muddgirl - I'm sure you're nothing like HC, and I feel as though I could barely swing a dead cat in high school without hitting his clone (or someone who liked being thought of that way).

The character's just a kid getting disappointed as he realizes the world is not ideal. News flash, huh? There's nothing remarkable about his feelings, in themselves -- his story is that of a standard crisis of adolescence. What's interesting about this dream of moving to the woods and being a recluse is that it actually presages the author's own life. Salinger has withdrawn from normal social interaction and lives in a rural village (in the woods) about an hour from me. He's had a string of very troubled relatinships and a tortured writing career, and has still not been able to make his peace with the world. This is the grown-up Holden. Is this what anyone really desires to be?

We all have to face the fallen nature of this world. Holden's curse is that he could never forgive it, or embrace it, or love it in spite of itself. He had to turn his back on it and live in isolation, because he believed that taking it on directly, and living within it, would somehow make him 'phony.'

Throw aside concern with phoniness. We all have work to do. Find your purpose. If you feel lost in the world, my advice is: just be about something. Pick something, anything, to be about. Staying morally or philosophically pure, untainted by compromise or untouched by grief, is not worth it if it means a life of isolation.

It's a great life, if you don't get sucked into the navel gaze too much.

/strong opinion

Here’s what I think—I think Holden was a boy, on the precipice of being a man, and not wanting to be one. Remember when his little sister Phobe asks him what HE wants to do with his life, and he doesn’t know what to say? I think that’s my problem too; everything about adulthood is making those difficult choices that you don’t want to make and sticking by them. I guess that’s what life’s all about. The things that scares me the most about it is that I don’t know if I’ll make the right decisions or not. But then if I think like that, then I probably won’t make any decisions at all. And where will that leave me??

In The Adventures of Pete and Pete, is Little Pete's cap a reference to HC?

Hear, hear, Miko—thanks for putting that so well!
The only problem is, where I lived, and the circumstances I was brought up under—without any friends, or outside interaction—Holden, or rather, reading Holden’s words were like reading my own, and to see and feel him do the things he did, were like magic. I wish I’d read that book a whole lot sooner than I did, because it would’ve given me so much solace in knowing that I wasn’t the only guy who felt like him. (You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a Holden Clone?) Jeez, I had the exact opposite experience, where everyone wanted to be like the hippest guy who was the it thing at that time.

everything about adulthood is making those difficult choices that you don’t want to make and sticking by them.

No, that's not really what adulthood's about. Making decisions is a privilege, a learning experience, and an expression of individuality. The idea of a life with no opportunity for personal decision-making fills me with horror.

I don’t know if I’ll make the right decisions or not.

Think of it this way: There are no right decisions.

Just as there are no wrong decisions.

Seriously: the obvious legal and moral exceptions aside, there is no authority with the power to decide whether your choices were right, other than yourself. There may be decisions with positive or negative outcomes, but if you mkae a decision that turns out to be wrong for you, you can follow it with a new decision to get off that path and do something different. Few choices will lock you in forever and ever. There are a full range of choices in every moment. Life is not a game in which you have to get each answer correct before you move on to the next level. A lot of things will happen to you which are beyond your control - your decisions are the areas in which you do have control. Making decisions and watching the results is the process that allows us to learn and become fully developed humans.

hajidboy - I guess the guys I knew felt an isolation similar to yours, and probably took some comfort in identifying with the isolation of another person, that feeling of being different from the society around you. The dangerous thing would be never to outgrow that.

I found two of the bits of Catcher trivia on the Wikipedia link chilling:

--Kurt Cobain from Nirvana was seen carrying The Catcher in the Rye days just prior to his suicide. It also is said to have been his favorite book.

--The novel The Catcher in the Rye was carried by Mark David Chapman at the time he assassinated John Lennon on December 8, 1980. John Hinckley, Jr., who attempted to assassinate Ronald Reagan, was reported to be obsessed with the novel.

Here are a couple of people who stayed within that of isolation; who could not meet the world halfway.

It's just a phase.

(And I say that as someone who strongly identified with the character at the time I first read the novel in my late teens. Later in life, I gave it to my wife to read. I told her it would explain a great deal about 'me.' She hated the book. I was puzzled, so I read it again. It really wasn't about 'me' at all anymore. The experience was like stumbling upon some really bad angst-ridden poetry that you wrote in high school.)

And listen to Miko's wise words.

It's easier if you don't think the world is fallen. Hypocrisy, doubt, spite, giant piles of dogshit on hotel carpets; it's all pretty great, when you think about it. A painful, oozing sore is a sign of life. So is even the worst headache.

And Catcher gets worse the more distance one has from it, just as the vanities of adolescence grow tiresome (or amusing, or at least less important) the older you get. For some, it's a guide for what to do, or what to avoid at least for the next fifteen minutes or few years. For others, it's dirt, or nothing. HC isn't shallow, he just isn't like everybody else in a way that everybody is at a certain point. Just the way everybody isn't like you, and all this advice, from any of us, is just a way for us to describe ourselves.

For what it's worth, I got more out of Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner, which to me covers some of the same ground.

Try a couple other books, The Miracle of Mindfulness, by Thich Nhat Hanh (for its first couple chapters if nothing more: they'll help you breathe), and Peter Brook's The Empty Space, which is a text for actors, but is also a lucid and intelligent discourse on action and inaction.

The idea of a life with no opportunity for personal decision-making fills me with horror

See, this is what I mean; it seems like there are so many ways for someone else to make those decisions for you, and so few ways for you to make those types of decisions for your self.

Or am I totally wrong in assuming that?

I found two of the bits of Catcher trivia on the Wikipedia link chilling:

That's what I'm scared of too. Not of going off my rocker and knocking off someone, but of ruining myself in some other way, by not outgrowing some of the fantasies I have.

In The Adventures of Pete and Pete, is Little Pete's cap a reference to HC?

Hmmm...never thought about that, box. I just got season one on DVD for Christmas. PIPE!

I always loved Holden because he was at least thinking about something. I went to a high school ruled by vapid jocks where they built a new gymnasium, put in a pool and completely revamped the football field but cut back on art classes and allocated ZERO dollars to put on a school play. Zero. Being too smart or too "arty" was a real quick way to get ostracized. So sweet, troubled Holden was my Tiger Beat pin-up.

That said, my plan if I ever met him was to fuck him until he relaxed, then lay in bed watching Airplane or some such nonsense until he cheered the hell up.

Unfortunately, I think we need an alternate plan for you hadjiboy. Do what you need to do to loosen up a little and don't overthink things. My life is happier and more productive when it's not overanalyzed.

On preview: Kurt Cobain? Oh grrrrreat. I am no longer defending this book.

What kind of fantasies, hadjiboy?

It's easier if you don't think the world is fallen

I do think of it as fallen, but I agree that it's worth loving anyway. The headaches and wounds are one thing, part of being able to live, but the cruelty of humans to one another throughout history, both systematically and individually, makes me feel sure it's fallen -- that essence is deeply constrained by the limitations of thinking in the flesh.

But that's my personal view of things, not really part of the argument. The more generally useful thing to say in this discussion is that the world is as it is. Why it's that way is a philosophical problem. That it is that way is undeniable.

it seems like there are so many ways for someone else to make those decisions for you, and so few ways for you to make those types of decisions for your self

Can you give me an example? I really don't see life that way. Unless you are in a very unusual situation, no one else is really making decisions for you. Even if others are attempting to make your decisions, it's your decision as to whether to acquiesce to that or not.

I meant to point out that being able to make decisions is true freedom, and should be welcomed as such. The sting of slavery was not in long hours of unpaid work, but in being stripped of the power to make decisions about one's own life. The same is true of traditional gender roles - being unable to decide to get a certain degree, leave an abusive relationship, control your fertility. The freedom to make decisions is, in my eyes, a fundamental human right. That may be a very American perspective - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is enshrined in our founding documents, after all. Still, I think it is true for anyone that the power of decision making always rests within the hands of the indivual. The consequences may not always be fair or reasonable, depending on your surroundings, but you always can do some deciding.

taking their laundry to the river to wash it, and they’re happy with what they do

I'm sure, from the outside, they look that way to you. However, I'm betting that they hate how cold and wet the job is sometimes, and they come home and their wife is all over their back about forgetting to pick up some milk at the store, and they look at you, hadjiboy, and see all the youth and future possibilities in you, and they probably wish they could go back to when they were twenty and uncertain. The grass is always greener.

I'm sort of maybe a year ahead in life from you, hadji, and I well remember all the doubt and uncertainty and "Oh god, what if I make the wrong decision". Remember, though, that life isn't one big decision, written in stone and sealed forever. It's a bunch of little stuff, and if you don't like one you made you can make another.

When I said HC is everything he dislikes, I mean that HC is himself quite a "phony" (what we call an unreliable narrator, my high school english teacher's favorite kind). He's looking out on the world and only seeing images of himself in it. Freud would probably have a lot to say about that. Let me say that I still really do like A Catcher in the Rye, along with other Salinger stories, because they are all so reserved and keep their secrets closely.

That said, my plan if I ever met him was to fuck him until he relaxed, then lay in bed watching Airplane or some such nonsense until he cheered the hell up.

Where were you when I needed you?:)

Unfortunately, I think we need an alternate plan for you hadjiboy.

Nononononono, I think that one’s just fine!

My life is happier and more productive when it's not overanalyzed.

Listen to jrossi4r: she speaks the truth.

And every single thing that Miko has said.

taking their laundry to the river to wash it, and they’re happy with what they do

I'm sure, from the outside, they look that way to you.

That's that Garden of Eden/Flowers for Algernon/Homer-with-a-crayon-in-his-nose thing. Once you've eaten from the tree of knowledge, so to speak, you can't go home again.

(Around the same time that I was reading and rereading Salinger, my then-pal Tara and I had a contest to see who could last the longest speaking only in cliches. I miss her.)

What kind of fantasies, hadjiboy?

Oh, the usual—going out into the woods and living by myself. Pretending to be a hunter-gatherer, and not needing to depend on anyone. I don’t know—it just seemed so natural to me at the time, and it still does to a certain extent.

Muddgirl, I think the phony that he describes in his book is of two types. The phony that he sees in himself, and the phony that he sees in others. So the phoniness that is in him (about him not being able to make a decision about what he wants to do with his life), pales in comparison to the phoniness that he sees in others (who have already made that decision, and are now paying the price for it). At least that’s how I read the book.

And about those washermen—yeah, no doubt you’ve hit the nail on the head, but I was talking about the Happy Washermen, like the Labourers who’d come to work on my house a couple of years back, and these men and women work for maybe a hundred rupees a day, which is maybe 2$, so it’s not a lot. But you should’ve seen them. There were four of them in total I think: Two men (one older than the other, much older now that I think about it), and two women (one of whom had a little girl). The four of them worked all day, from about 10 in the morning to maybe 2 in the afternoon, after which they had their lunch, and then went to sleep for some time. They slept like logs after doing all their work, and when they rose, they spent some time just sitting there and chit-chatting with each other, and laughing, and smiling. In the sun. When was the last time you’d done that? (I’m not asking you that—I’m sure there are many people here who like to do these things—which is one of the reasons why I like this place so much, but I don’t think there are too many people in today’s world who think like this.)

My life is happier and more productive when it's not overanalyzed.

Listen to jrossi4r: she speaks the truth.

And every single thing that Miko has said.

Ditto.

I read The Catcher and the Rye around the age of 19 or 20. I can't remember shite, excpet the central theme, and thinking that Holden was cutting off his nose to spite his face. I also wondered what all the fuss was about concerning this book, but I wasn't a very sophisticated twenty-year old.

Can you give me an example?

Sure, like at work (take the call-centre industry which I’m in right now, which is booming too), and where we’re all expected to perform like rats in a maze, and I’m not really sure how much of leverage I have in being a little different, cos I’m scared to find out (I’m still in training), and my parents want me to hold onto a job for stability’s sake, and all I want to do is something where I’m helping someone, but all those jobs don’t pay a lot and I need the money to support my family, but I don’t want to sacrifice any of my principles in the process.

Heh. I had roughly the same plan as jrossi4r in regards to Holden Caulfield. I reread the book a couple of years ago and was dismayed by how badly it had held up, because I liked it very much when I was young. Not as much as Franny & Zooey, but a lot. Why don't I like it now? What Hugh said a couple comments up - partly because I'm not all that adolescent anymore (I'm not totally out of it, okay, even given the weight of years) and then, this is just me - partly because it's too dated for me now. I have no trouble visualizing Saturn in 2525 but I can't quite wrap my head around New York ca. 1955.

There are so many ways for someone else to make those decisions for you, and so few ways for you to make those types of decisions for your self.

This will change. Right now - how old are you, hadji? Pretty young, I'm guessing. Just starting college? I have kids your age. Anyway. Right now it seems as if things are decided for you and all you do is drift. In about five years or thereabouts, it will seem opposite, as if all you can do is make decisions and they're all shatteringly important and OMG OMG what if I make the wrong one, help! Then add another five to ten years and you will realize that actually it's a balance between the two: there are circumstances and there are choices and the two work together and somehow, usually when you're not looking, you come out of it with a life of some kind. It's all kind of mysterious but I swear it just happens.

And the best advice I have ever gotten in my life was this simple statement: There are many ways to live. Yeah. There are. Not many right ways or wrong ways or anything like that - just many ways for many people.

I'll second my recommendation of the Thich Nhat Hanh book, hadjiboy. The washermen you're talking about: they're washing the clothes to wash the clothes, not to get the job done. Some people call it living in the moment (actors strive for this kind of thing all the time, which is part of why I recommended the Peter Brook book), as if it's something to glimpse or attain. Breathing is the beginning of doing everything, including relaxing and laying about, with purpose, when the aim of every start is to commit, and not complete, the action.

There is a difference between being satisfied with things and finding satisfaction in things.

I always read the Catcher in the Rye as an adventure story, not a moral or philosophical instruction manual. I enjoyed it for that, but I'm a Franny and Zoey man meself.

What, nobody has any love for Nine Stories?

I have never read more than a chapter of Catcher, but I have read books of characters that love and hate it (King Dork being the best example, where the main character despises it).

From what I'm told, I would have loved it when I was younger, but now (27), probably not so much.

I'll third Thich Nhat Hanh. I like Peace is Every Step. Like most of Thich Nhat Hanh's books, they're very readable and easy to apply to modern life. Another book that I love, albeit a children's book, is Zen Shorts. Check it out hadjiboy.

One of the poeple I admire most, my husband's uncle, is a doer. Sure, I might admire him for his enviable education and career. But I admire him most for his optimistic view on life. He sails his boat, makes his furniture, drinks his wine, laughs, and loves people. His beloved wife died a couple of years ago, he kept on going. He has a new girlfriend with a carefree spirit. They travel and do their Sudoku puzzles and knit and drink more wine. They don't overanalyze. They live and enjoy life.

What, nobody has any love for Nine Stories?

I'll have to check this out from the library. Catcher in the Rye is the only thing I've read by Salinger.

I recommend you get a copy of the movie Six Degrees of Separation, and watch it carefully. Will Smith's character does a 7 minute monologue on Catcher about halfway through the movie, that debunks the major myths surrounding the book, and those underpinning much of Western civilization as well.

Of course, as it turns out, it's all bunk.

But it's based on a true story.

going out into the woods and living by myself. Pretending to be a hunter-gatherer, and not needing to depend on anyone.

Oh those thoughts never go away. I have The Waitress Fantasy, wherein I move to a small town, sling hash and keep my mouth shut. At the end of the day, I go home to my books, with no friends or family--no hassles or expectations. I'm pretty sure everyone has an escape route planned.

There are many ways to live. Yeah. There are. Not many right ways or wrong ways or anything like that - just many ways for many people.

So true, MGL. As Maude would say:

If you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
Cause there's a million things to be
You know that there are.

I'd tell him to read Vernon God Little instead.

What would you say to Holden Caufield if you had the chance?

I like to think we'd have a couple beers and just sigh about life.

Would you scold him for wasting so many of the opportunities that he had..?

Holden rocks, just the way he is. I agree with his worldview. Salinger is a genius.

There you have it.

As far as I'm concerned, Holden is dead on target in his veiw that the world is full of phonies, he just hasn't learned a) that despite their bullshit most people are OK, anyway, b)he's as full of shit as anyone and c)how to survive in spite of that knowledge.

It's all kind of mysterious but I swear it just happens.

Well said, mgl! That is so true. Somehow you end up having a life. I like that take on "choices and circumstances."

Hajidboy, right now you have a lot of circumstances going on. Sounds like you're trying to get a foothold in a career to satisfy your family's goals for you, and maybe their needs. Meanwhile you'd like to be doing something else. That's fine. Now, you do have choices here, though none are without consequences. You could do something more rewarding but less stable, stressing your family out and causing them consternation. You could drop out entirely and just walk the earth. You could set your sights on the job above yours and climb your way to it. But you also have the choice to take some time really think about what you'd like to be doing in five or ten years' time, and then do the things today that will put you in a position to make them happen later.

I remember being your age and finding myself in situations in which it felt like there was very little wiggle room, and I really did feel trapped in decisions I didn't like. I had gotten a college scholarship, for instance, which required me to teach school for three years after graduation. And after the first year I knew I was unhappy as a classroom teacher, but - guess what? My choice was to fulfill the three year contract, or pay back my college education (which I couldn't afford to do - that's why I took the scholarship). I felt very stuck. But I got through it by putting together the future. Spent a lot of time thinking about/researching other career paths, made some contacts, did some informational interviewing, generally set myself up for a career change. When the time came where I had freedom of choice, I was ready. I also tried to appreciate the good things about where I was at that point - I had an eight-week summer break, and I travelled, volunteered on sailboats, and worked at a camp (things I could not do now due to lack of time).

I used to spend a lot of time worried about whether I would survive, and what other people would think about my choices. Fifteen years later, I know that a) you always survive (you're not gonna let yourself down!) and b) I am no longer as worried about what other people think about my life - far more worried about what I think about it. After all, the person we are most accountable to is ourselves.

But don't worry. All this passes. If you are not content right now, spend your time imagining what contentment would look like for you. If you want to make sure you don't sacrifice financial stability, there is probably a way to make plans so that you won't, or so that your sacrifices will be worthwhile in the end. Many, many choices. Many ways to live.

Oh Miko, that's the wisest thing I've ever read on the internet. *Runs for president of Miko fan club*

Lots of insight here; mgl and Miko, as usual, are full of tasty goodness.

As I read through this, a response from Cary Tennis came to mind. The question was a bit different, but I think the wisdom still stands.

One of the most important things to learn in life is how to deal with questions for which there are no answers -- how to identify them, how to attain a just and sane posture toward them, how to regard them, how to carry them around with you, how to honor them, where to store them at night, how to recognize them when they visit you in your dreams, how to know whether to speak of them or not, and to whom.

I think you already know the answers to some of your questions, and to others there is no answer. So I would encourage you to do what you are already doing: Go on with life. Simply pay attention to the quality of your various emotions and questions; ask yourself which questions can be answered and which emotions can be named....

The rest of the things you are feeling are the unknowable and unnamable secrets of the heart. If you become conscious of which things are unknowable, you will be able to look at each unknowable thing and simply say, "That is one of the unknowable things that I carry around with me."

Sometimes, when there is no war to fight, or when our enemies are far distant, we are nothing but apothecaries, weighing out our cares, taking inventory of our woes and hopes. It is as if we sit by candlelight at a desk late at night in the back of the pharmacy, turning over little stamps from China and Austria, the stamps that paid the postage for exotic medicines, looking at the stamps with a magnifying glass, just looking, just studying. We're not even looking at the substances, we're just looking at the stamps of the envelopes they arrived in, but still we are entranced. We study these things and sometimes they speak to us and sometimes not. These things are the mysteries of our lives: what will happen in the future, how friendship will morph into love or bitterness. We just sit there with it.

Time takes care of the rest. - - - - - - - - - - - -

Another thing that came to mind is the fact that there are few things as paralyzing as fear of oneself. When you are unable to trust yourself, your perspective and your capacity for making sound choices, the world becomes a hell hole of sorts...a terrifying terrain that can induce constant anxiety, social and otherwise. I can't describe a definitive path to achieving trust in oneself and I suspect that most of us are plagued with a certain degrees of self-doubt until our dying breath. [And it, arguably, makes us stronger for the experience.] As far as I can tell, inevitably, we will fuck things up; life is nothing if not generous in its ongoing gift of moments that you will look back on and have the opportunity to wince...or at least stroke you chin and think, "If I only knew then what I know now."

But that's part of the gig and one of the best reasons for not isolating oneself: there's a profound comfort in realizing that we're all in the same boat, or have been in the same boat or are willing to regale you with horror stories of having sailed, sunk and swum to shore from that boat. And then things aren't nearly as dire seeming...or, if nothing else, you know you're in good company.

Confidential to jrossi: though it cracked me up, the Waitress Fantasy is highly overrated. Trust me.

I sympathize, hadjboy. Necessity forces us to compromise, I'm afraid. Still, as others have said, it's worthwhile to work towards something that will ultimately be more satisfying, fulfilling, and meaningful for you, and still allow you to help support your family. That can make the day to day of where you are now more paletable. Course, I've always been more the impulsive type myself; I tend to make the mess, then start mopping. Once upon a time, I went to law school and dropped out the first semester. I didn't necessarily know what I wanted; I just knew that wasn't it. My father was very disappointed, but he got over it. If I hadn't, I might have been a very unhappy lawyer instead of a moderately unhappy English teacher (with a side of writerly hopes). I've never been very good at doing what I had to do, though; once, I drove right by the exit to my office temp job in Cincinnati and on to Indianapolis an hour and a half away. I had lunch in the cobblestone traffic circle on the steps of the civil war monument with all the Indianapolis office folk. I was admittedly a little nuts, but it was a lovely day. I don't know. It's a luxury really to have any choices at all, painful as they may be.

As for Holden, I think a lot of folks misread or misremember Catcher, myself included, having read it again for the first time in twenty years with my students. What he's experiencing, I think, aren't just your ordinary growing pains, but a prfound sense of grief after losing his younger brother, Allie, to leukemia, about three years before the start of the novel (which is also when he started flunking out of school). Nothing will cause you to question what's really important and what isn't like a close death. It's mentioned in passing here and there, so it's easy to miss. He carries around Allie's baseball glove, for instance, with his brother's scribbled poetry on it. And most certainly his fantasy about "catching" all the children before they unwittingly go over the cliff is representative of the helplessness he felt at not being able to save his brother. Allie's dead, and Holden's still alive, and Holden saw Allie as the best of the Caufields. He learned a hard truth too early: Terrible things happen to beautiful, innocent people for no discernible reason. After three years, he was still reeling. And his family, with the exception of his little sister, wasn't much help, shipping him off from boarding school to boarding school, expecting him to go on as if nothing happened, before he'd even had a chance to make any sense of it all, if any sense can be made; it must have only increased the sense of isolation and disillusionment he felt.

Anways. Holden Caufield was wise beyond his years, and his only fault is that he saw the bullshit too clearly. The fact that you identify with him just means you have the sensitivity, depth, and soul to see the complexity of the world around you. I don't know if Holden Caufield ever recovered, but I like to think he found a way to go on. Not everybody does.

Sorry for the lengthy response. That's an English teacher for ya, right? All the best to you, though.

("Perfect Day for Banana Fish" is one of my absolute favorite stories, by the by, along with "For Esme, with Love and Squalor," from Nine Stories. You're not a complete human being until you've read them.)