Catcher in the Rye

Adam McRae

Period 2

It's nothing new, that everybody feels depressed at some time or another in their lives. However, it becomes a problem when that depression is so much a part a person's life that she can no longer see the happiness right in front her. (As tragically happens to the young boy, Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger's novel, The Catcher in the Rye.) Mr. Antolini accurately views the cause of Holden's depression as his lack of personal motivation, his inability to self-reflect and his stubbornness to overlook the obvious which collectively results in him giving up on life before he ever really has a chance to get it started.

Holden lacks the essential ability to motivate himself, which he needs to survive in the 'real' world. He continues to be kicked out of every school he attends because he fails to apply himself, his simple reasoning being "how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't" (213). Everybody else in his life tries to encourage him to care about school and his grades but it doesn't make any difference. From the start of the novel Holden's history teacher at Pencey tells him "I'd like to put some sense in that head of yours, boy. I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to help you, if I can" (14). But the fact of the matter is he can't help him, Holden has to help himself. The drive to succeed has to come from within him, "I mean you can't hardly ever do something just because somebody wants you to" (185). In order for Holden to succeed he has to want it for himself. The only problem being Holden is unable to will him into doing anything he is not genuinely interested in, therefore missing out on further knowledge he could acquire that would truly entice him. Holden gives up on school because he fears if he were to bestow his efforts upon his undesired subjects he would consequently become one of the 'phonies' he had spent his entire life hating.

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Nevertheless Holden has so much personal pride he refuses lower him to that level. For if he does, in his eyes, he will be the same as all those other "Phony Ivy League bastards" (85). As a result of Holden giving up on school, he is unable to proceed with the natural evolution that must occur for him to move on in society. Mr. Antolini later points out to him "Learning is a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry" (189). His goal for Holden being to see school as something he loves and not something he is being forced to do. Mr. Antolini tried to give Holden a reason to be motivated and in which case not to give up so easily.

Holden is quite skilled at citing exactly what is wrong with other people. However he never acknowledges his own faults. He was sure the entire world was out of step with him. As Alan Stewart explains, "Holden seemed to divide the world into two groups. He was in one group, along with a few other people such as his little sister, Phoebe, and Jesus; everyone else was in the other group". Being the reason that he felt, "people were always ruining things for you" (87). Only, Holden can not understand that everything he hates in other people was really inside of himself. He is a hypocrite and unable to self-reflect. As he continues to build up his hatred for the people around him, he fails to notice the seclusion he is forcing upon himself. As a result of Holden's alienation Mr. Antolini feels Holden is headed for a terrible fall. "This fall I think you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling" (187).

Through the course of Holden's childhood and teenage years he basically alienates his emotions from whom he is as a person. Holden brings his brother