The Psychology of Catching: Holden Caulfields Mental Deterioration - Book Report/Review Example

The Psychology of Catching: Holden Caulfield’s Mental Deterioration J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye follows its main character, Holden Caulfield, over the course of several days as his mental state deteriorates. None of the events that take place during these days would normally lead a person to the kind of breakdown that Holden is subject to; it is obvious that from the start that of these events that he is suffering from psychological anxiety that forces his irrational behavior: “One problem is that Holden tells us very little about ‘what my lousy childhood was like’ or the event that may have brought on the trauma behind all of his problems: the death of a younger brother when Holden was thirteen” (Bryan 1065). Holden, as narrator, treats the events of the book as separate from the rest of his life, not feeling it worth getting into “all that David Copperfield kind of crap” (1). He is attempting to treat his life separate from his psychological condition; however, without intending to do so, he illustrates how very connected it really is. Without the brief bits of information we receive about his younger brother Allie, it would be difficult to understand the events of the book and Holden’s motivations. Through a psychological examination of Holden’s breakdown, we can see that many of the attitudes expressed by Holden and his irrational behavior can all be traced back to the death of his younger brother when he was thirteen. It is significant that the traumatic death of Holden’s brother Allie took place at thirteen. This is the age that is generally considered the be the end of childhood and the beginning of the teenager years. This is often a difficult time for people as they are beginning to experience sexuality and find that the world is not what they were led to believe when they were children. James Bryan states that Holden “is hypersensitive to the exploitations and insensitivity of the post-pubescent world and to the fragile innocence of children” (1065). He is forced to accept the unfairness of the adult world when Allie died, which he did not handle well by any means: “I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage” (38-39). Unable to handle his emotions, he acts out in a destructive manner, which becomes a pattern for him for the rest of the book. His brother Allie for him represented innocence and the way people should act: “He was always the nicest, in a lot of ways. He never got mad at anybody” (38). Allie’s death represented the adult world and the kinds of events that one has to accept in order to function in the adult world. As this happened when Holden was thirteen, he was right on the verge of coming adulthood, but still too young to truly deal with events in adult ways. He apparently decided at this point that everything associated with childhood was pure and good, while everything associated with adulthood was “phony,” to use his vernacular, and bad. After this event, Holden was unable to accept anything related with adulthood, though he was especially conflicted with his attitudes towards sex. At his age it was only natural to be keenly interested with sex which he demonstrates throughout the book; however, he also cannot fully accept the idea of his sexuality as it is associated with the adult world. He will make references to sex, but at the same time try to act as though it wasn’t important to him: “such double entendres as ‘kidding the pants off a girl’ reveal not only Holden’s sexual preoccupations but the elaborate coding his mind has set up against recognizing such preoccupations for what they are (Bryan 1067). At times he acts as though he wants to rid himself of his sexuality: “’Listen. What’s the routine on joining a monastery?’ I asked him. I was sort of toying with the idea of joining one. ‘Do you have to be a Catholic and all?’” (50). Impulsively, he asks his roommate Ackley about joining a monastery, which would entail taking a vow of chastity. At this time, the idea of sexuality is so difficult for him to come to terms with that he wishes to just get rid of it. Later, he expresses his lack of understanding towards his sexuality, “Sex is something I just don’t understand. I swear to God I don’t” (63), but still expresses his keen interest in it, “After a while I sat down in a chair and smoked a couple of cigarettes. I was feeling pretty horny. I have to admit it” (63). He then demonstrates his lack of understanding by calling up Faith Cavendish late at night, a girl who “wasn’t exactly a whore or anything but that didn’t mind doing it once in a while” (63). He has not told the reader about any event that would have brought him to such an irrational point of view regarding sex; we must assume that he is acting in this way because he is acting the way a young child might act towards sex. It is not the idea of sex itself, but its connection to adulthood that scares Holden: “More than anything else, Holden fears the biological imperatives of adulthood—sex, senescence, and death” (Bryan 1065). Though his teenage body his wishing to express his sexuality, his is psychologically unable to act in a mature way in regards to his sexuality due to his inability to make the sort of compromises associated with adulthood. His sister Phoebe is the character in the book that Holden shows the most deference towards. He can relate to her and is at ease around her as she is not at the age in which sexuality plays any role: “During the bedroom scene, Holden shows no uneasiness about his and Phoebe’s being there together in their parents’ absence, about dancing with her, or even pinching her behind…The point is that such contact need not be corrupt” (…121). It is telling that the world of his younger sister is the world in which he is most comfortable in. He wishes that he could live in a world without sex, not because of anything inherent in the idea of sexuality itself, but because it represents the world of adulthood, so by accepting the idea of sex he is accepting all of the compromises that come with being an adult. This is the reason why he is unable as a sixteen year to function the way that people are expecting him too. He simply lacks the “psychological staying power that he will have to have to survive in the adult world” (121). The impulsiveness of the act of calling Faith Cavendish is a pattern that is demonstrated throughout has he attacks Stradlater, “This next part I don’t remember so hot. All I know is I got up from bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him” (43). A little bit later, he decides to leave Pencey: “But all of a sudden, I changed my mind…I just didn’t want to hang around till Wednesday or anything…So what I decided to do, I decided I’d take a room in a hotel in New York” (51). Whatever sort of caprices that pop into Holden’s mind, he decides to act upon. If it requires more effort than he might have originally thought, like joining a monastery, it leaves his mind just as quickly. But if all that is required is for him to pick up a phone, such as when he decides to call Faith Cavendish, he follows through. This sort of impulsive behavior is very indicative of a much younger child, one that doesn’t have a firm understanding of the way in which the world functions. This is the sort of behavior that he would have imagined his brother Allie doing, Allie the child that never had to grow up. Again, without any other information given, we can only assume that Allie’s death really did have this intense effect on him, influencing most all of his decisions three years later. Holden’s breaking of the garage windows was the first example of his impulsive behavior, setting it up as a pattern that was repeated over and over again. The mere fact that he brings it up several times and discusses how much it did affect him, though, points to the fact that this is indeed the event that put Holden in such a psychological state. What Holden envisions himself doing with the rest of his life is very telling of his desire to protect the innocence of youth: Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big rye field 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 o, I have to catch everybody if they start 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…I’d be the catcher in the rye and all (173). Holden has this fanciful set-up where he keeps children from running off the edge of the cliff all day. As he says, he would be the only adult around, showing that he simply doesn’t know how to act around other adults, so he has no real use for them. Catching the children before the run off the edge of a cliff is obviously a metaphor for keeping them innocent and not letting the adult world encroach in this fantasy. If they were to fall off, that would be a tragedy along the lines of when his brother died, and this is exactly the sort of thing that he doesn’t want to happen. However, this just shows Holden’s inability to realize how things actually work. There was no catcher that could have kept his brother from dying. Obviously there was nothing that could have been done, just as there is nothing that can be done to save everybody from dying in the adult world. Ultimately, it is the aspect of death that exists in the adult world that Holden refuses to accept. The death of his brother at a young age happened to him at a time when he was too fragile for something like that to happen. Death, that which is completely unavoidable in the end for everyone, is what keeps Holden from progressing in his life. This split from reality shows the severity of Holden’s problems, as he thinks he can keep children safe and innocent. In Holden’s vision, he is the only “big” person. As opposed to using the world “adult,” he chooses to use a word that a child would use. Still, in saying that he was the only “big” person, he was stating that he realized that certain events had happened to him and he could no longer return to the state of childhood innocence himself. Many of the traits that he values in children he does not posses himself. As he states, “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life” (16). This admission forces the reader into questioning the veracity of his stories. He is at times openly contradictory, declaring himself “illiterate” in one breath and then stating “but I read a lot” (18) in the next. It is questionable whether anyone other than himself believes his lies. Holden tends to think in absolute terms, either he is lying or he is not, and this is another aspect of childhood that he is clinging to that makes him ill-prepared for the adult world: “In a complex modern society truth, too, is complex, and a certain amount is necessary. That is the kind of compromise Holden is unwilling to make” (Seng 206). Holden, in fact, is unwilling to accept any sort of compromise. His brother, D.B., earns Holden’s scorn by moving to Hollywood to be a writer: “Now he’s out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s the movies. Don’t even mention them to me” (2). If Holden were to have any idea of what it takes to survive in the adult world, he would not begrudge his brother for deciding to earn a decent living for himself. He respected him when D.B. was a “regular writer,” glorifying the writer living in poverty but staying true to art. The real reason that he resents D.B. is because he has made a decision that firmly places him in the adult world, the world he refuses to enter. He is caught somewhere between adulthood and childhood. Experiencing the loss of childhood through the death of his brother, his is no longer able to be himself what he praises Allie and Phoebe for being. As was mentioned, there are no events that take place during the several days described in the book that would account for his breakdown. There is a level of disconnect. As he himself states, “I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I was thirteen” (9). He himself states that he acts as though he were thirteen, the age at which he lost his brother. This in itself is practically stating that he has been unable to progress into adulthood since this event. Clearly, this is the story of a psychologically damaged sixteen year old who suffered the traumatic event of his brother dying three years previous. Though he might not realize that he is doing so, is his telling the reader that he is not recovered from this event yet. He is crying out to the reader to listen to what he is not telling with his words. Works Cited Bryan, James, “The Psychological Structure of the Catcher in the Rye.” PMLA, vol. 89, no. 5 (Oct 1974) 1065-1074. Marks, Barry, Reiman, Donald, Martin, Dexter, Bhaerman, Robert, “Holden in the Rye.” College English, vol. 23, no. 6 (March 1962) 507-508. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye. Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1945. Seng, Peter, “The Fallen Idol: The Immature World of Holden Caulfield.“ College English, vol. 23 no. 3 (Dec. 1961) 203-209. Vail, Dennis, “Holden and Psychoanalysis.” PMLA, vol. 91, no. 1 (Jan. 1976) 120-121. Read More