by Nicolas D. Sampson
The Catcher in the Rye is a modern classic that belongs to the literary genre of young disillusioned outcast protagonists and their tumultuous quests for meaning.
The novel hinges on a simple premise: teenage frustration.
It goes like this…
Holden Caulfield, a senior high student, is a thinker who has trouble blending in. As things stand, he faces yet another expulsion from school. He shows us (tells us) what he feels by taking us on a journey through his boarding school, just as he’s ready to take off, and from there to New York where he roams around for a few days and nights in December, until Wednesday (when he can finally go home).
Should he go home sooner, he explains, his parents will know he’s been expelled again.
So he roams the city, killing time, and faces challenge after challenge. Manhattan is an arena of traps and pitfalls, clowns and charlatans. It’s a playing ground for the absurd, a city that pretends to be something it’s not, and the young man scorns it. Reality depresses him. From scene to scene and person to person, he drifts on, a lost soul desperate to hold himself together.
The problem is that Caulfield doesn’t appreciate the nuances of life. He holds the world to ideal(ized) standards, which none can meet. His approvals are scant, and they carry a caveat. He hates people who put on a show, who say things they don’t measure up to. Everyone is phony and contrived, he concludes. Society is a charade not worth playing, a game where everything hinges on a misguided sense of properness that sucks everyone deep inside its winter.
And in his effort to find shelter in the cold, Caulfield falls prey to the attitude he loathes. He’s obnoxious, selfish, dismissive, snobbish, and doesn’t give a damn about the people he interacts with. He means well, or so it seems, but things come out sideways or upside down. Or get lost in the process. Everything is complicated, and Caulfield has no real answers.
Nevertheless, he seems oblivious to his many shortcomings, and even if he does realize what he’s doing, deep down, it makes no difference. The charade absorbs him, deep inside a world of isolation and callousness, rendering him a digit among digits, a stranger among many more. He’s just a boy among beasts and harlequins in search of company in a spectacle of loneliness.
Caulfield, in other words, is an ideal narrator. (An inspired authorial choice!) Neither didactic nor pedantic, he speaks without a filter, revealing how ironic life is. He casts light on the dubious pillars upon which civilization rests. His voice resonates with an immature yet appealing sense of reason, which we, the readers, have in all likelihood also experienced when growing up, to each our own. We identify with Caulfield, we understand him on some level and can’t shoot him down. He’s troubled and confused and on the brink of disaster. He’s the young adult we carry inside us, at war with the world at large, gawking at the perversity of life. We can’t crucify a child with issues, insecurities, and a heightened perception.
Could we?
The sad truth is, the young narrator is too perceptive for his own good and too infantile to handle what he feels. We can’t blame him for it, but we can sense it, and in his trials we recognize none other than ourselves. The problems we face in this world, to this day, the lunacy that underscores our system and the damage we suffer in its grip – it’s all there, compressed into a youth’s tale of angst. Caulfield’s fallout is our cautionary tale, the wakeup call we need, now more than ever. His principal flaw encapsulates and informs us. A critical mind that falls prey to the attitudes it criticizes – what’s not to identify with? He shines a light on our nature, suffering pitfalls we can avoid in turn, or at least handle better. We see how life traps us in its ever-increasing folds, at its countless edges and drop-offs. We remember what it was like once, to be young and visionary – when we were under the influence of others, living by their rules, contributing none of our own. How it felt when we were forced to do things that made no sense. How some things still don’t make sense, but we do them anyway because that’s the way it works. We’ve come to accept some aspects of life, finding reason in the unreasonable logic that drives our world – why? – so we can get by.
It’s important to remember what we once held dear (what did we, in Caulfield’s age, aspire to? what dreams did we have?) back in the day. Remembering our childhood purity, to each our own, which we left behind over the years in our effort to belong and be respected, can be useful. It reminds us not to take our lives for granted.
Fail to reach into our past to identify what has shaped us, and we set ourselves up. We can’t outgrow our Caulfield stage, and our life remains a depressing affair. Into a desolate terrain we march, through a dark winter that never ends, desperate for warmth and purpose.
To make sense of our depressing and conflicted existence, it helps to examine the illusions that make up today’s world, i.e. the simulated. The novel exposes with dexterity some of the acts and tricks, copies and simulacra we put out there to mimic what we deem important. Caulfield, so dependent on purity, spots the counterfeits with ease, pointing out in his trademark candor how meaningless and hollow they (we) are. To him they’re just veneers, lacking the essence of the originals. Smoke and mirrors, tricks and treats. From movies and stage plays, to Christmas celebrations, greetings and pleasantries, to our reenactments of old happenings (myths?) such as the Nativity, and the traditions that power these commemoratives – they all have something to do with the veils that envelop us. Everything we experience is an epiphenomenon, the reification of opinions that become ends in themselves. The rot of expedience spreads, and so does the belief that this is a natural way to live, as if deception and disillusionment are sine qua non. We learn to mislead ourselves, and it comes with a price. Christmas celebrations feel hollow, rife with pretense and cynicism, show and self-righteousness and all kinds of posturing. The joy of having a drink is associated with status and money, with getting laid, with displaying one’s power. The city is a jungle where beasts operate behind masks of civility and propriety. Everyone is lost in translation, speaking words they don’t mean, putting on a show. Our language, once forthright and deep, is now complex but deracinated, and so are the motives of our world, intricate but removed from the better parts of human nature. Our community is sophisticated and dysfunctional. We’ve strayed from the path and have lost touch with each other – and ourselves – and then wonder why our dreams fall by the wayside. We’re no more than children looking for a way through. Disoriented and disillusioned, we play in the rye fields, tumbling down the treacherous cliffs that border our jaded adult world.
In the end, we realize that nothing in this life is fair. The world is a civilized wilderness littered with traps and snares, adventures and challenges that shape us. Mind-boggling and ferocious to the point of hopelessness, even cruelty, but also instructive: a reminder that our time on this earth is precious and that our every choice counts.
That’s the takeaway. Every choice counts. Do, learn, do better next time, and maybe, should the occasion arise, guide those who are lost, especially the young, through the dark fields that swallow them.
The trick is to commit to the journey and let it inform our way ahead, errors and all.
Those of us who make it through are deeply changed. Our suffering notwithstanding, we’re better off having made the journey. Facing our limitations with an open mind and the will to make sense of the nonsense, we grew up and learned not only how to engage the world, but also how to fit in, to each our own. But the scars we collected along the way remain with us. The dark night has shaped us and never leaves us. The chill has settled inside our bones and, once in a while, it resurfaces, casting doubt on the world. We view our surroundings with renewed suspicion, even spite, and whatever we come across suffers our entitlement. We engage with the world like before, when we weren’t at our best, fueling a fresh wave of disillusionment, a thick cloud of dejection and a new generation of Caulfields.
And the cycle repeats.
Nicolas D. Sampson is a writer-producer. He is a graduate of ASU (AZ) and Cambridge University (UK) in social psychology. His work has been published in Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature; The Scofield; LIT Magazine; and The Hong Kong Review, among others. His poetry collection Όμορφη η Υφήλιος (Our Beautiful World) was published in Greece by Armos Books.
Copy editor: Nancy He
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