Holden and Love

The first time I read The Catcher in the Rye was in seventh grade, and it was kind of my first love of a novel. Rereading it now, I still love it, but it’s obviously not the same as before. I read the book earlier as being about a bitter teenager who was angry at everything and everyone, maybe only sparing his sister because she was still a child. But what I didn’t notice before that truly struck me is how much Holden actually cares about people. Not only that, but it’s the root of his bitterness about phony people. Love and the challenging of gender norms now seem to me to be the most important parts of the novel.

I think he really cares about Jane; he thinks about her like a human and in his descriptions of their time together he seems particularly empathetic. He enjoys talking to Mrs. Morrow, and the nuns, and he finds interesting things in their conversations. He wants to save face with all of the people he meets in order to make their interactions as pleasant for them as possible. He evidently loves his mother, and his love for Phoebe is no secret. He wants to talk to people and know them for who they really are.

Perhaps he doesn’t always show his love though. Why didn’t he go down to say hello to Jane? Why do people look at him funny when he tries to start conversations? Perhaps, like with consent and pacifism, Holden doesn’t fit into the mold of 1950s American society. Men weren’t supposed to be emotional or caring. We see him hiding these parts of himself all the time, trying to act tough. He’s kind of phony too, although perhaps he hates this part of himself (really, the worst part of finding people phony is realizing that you are too).

For Holden, phoniness means being ingenuine in one’s actions, and furthermore, to seem kind but in malice. The director of the school is a good example; he feigns kindness but to avoid the less wealthy or odder looking parents. Or Stradlater, who acts like a hotshot and covers his gross habits for his sexual exploits. Holden feels disgust at a world where people are being kind to get what they want. At the root of his disgust with phoniness is unkindness. Maybe he sees his lies as different; the only person he hurts (maybe) is himself, but he doesn’t really try to get anything from anyone else.

Holden perhaps doesn’t directly do this, but as a whole the novel challenges masculinity and what it entails. At the beginning of chapter 17, he talks about how depressing it is to see how all the girls who will get married to guys, and how all the guys will just talk about their cars and stuff, and they’ll just have kids and a house and whatnot. For Holden, it’s depressing that relationships and marriage aren’t about love, but rather about fitting some binary gender norm. Everything has a place and nothing was about love or wanting something real. It’s about achieving something material and expected (like sex for high school boys, or later a marriage and house and being the breadwinner). Girls, to Holden, seem to just submit to the same system. Maybe this is why he never went to say hello to Jane; he doesn’t want to see her become just a another girl going out with any other guy; a part of that society that devalues human relationships based in love and equality.

Holden doesn’t do anything about this though, because he doesn’t have the vocabulary to express his displeasure with society. That’s what has resonated with me about this book every time I’ve read it; he feels stuck. As the book progresses, I think the feeling of being stuck or being pushed into adulthood too quickly becomes increasingly intense. There is no way to escape the tide of society or growing up. We want to retain the kindness and love that seemed so easy in childhood. But it all ends up just feeling like a merry-go-round.