李佩珊
Holden’s Desire and Imagination
The Catcher in the Rye provides historical background for certain early events of
the Cold War. The author J.D. Salinger had some features similar with the principle
character, Holden Claufield. He completely cut himself off from the society,
associated with some mysterious people and even the dhyana sect who learned
Buddhism. However, Holden is a sixteen-year-old resident student. His school is full
of hypocrites and sham small groups, including the only teacher whom Holden
respects. The teacher is discovered that he may have a transsexual tendency. In this
environment, Holden can’t study without a hitch. So, he is expelled by school. When
he wanders around the cities, he meets many hypocrites. He can’t adapt to what
happens to him. “It is because that he has to wrestle not only with the usual difficult
adjustments of the adolescent years, in sexual, familial and peer relationship; he has
also to bury Allie before he can make the transition into adulthood.”（Literary
Reference Center, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University）Holden is a
teenager who lives in a turbulent decade, he hates the society and people who are
hypocritical. He feels depressed and lonely to search for moral values in a society, so
he satisfies himself by a variety of fanciful imagination that deceives himself and
other people.
Whenever Holden is alone and gets curious, he starts to imagine.
For example,
Holden likes Jane very much. When he discovers that his roommate, the “sexy
bastard” Ward Stradlater, has a date with Jane. He is about to be crazy when he thinks
about Jane and Stradlater parking somewhere in that fat-assed ED Banky’s car.
Holden is distraught and jealous of Stradlater because he wants to win Jane’s heart
and he feels Jane belongs to him. He also hates lustful Stradlater, so he can not accept
what might happen between Stradlater and Jane. Holden is so curious to know what
they have done that night, so he asks Stradlater many questions and finally gets angry.
All his expressions reveal the fact that he is fond of Jane and envies Stradlater very
much. Even though he dares not to confess his love to Jane, his action shows it
clearly. His concern precipitates his physical and verbal attack on Stradlater, so he
fights with the playboy that night.
As a teenager who is lonely and is eager to have love, Holden likes to imagine
something that is violating moral codes. For example, he is drunk and gets a girl and
they squirts water all over each other’s face. To him, it may be quite a lot of fun. His
life is boring and he feels very lonely and can not join other groups. So, he likes to
make up stories for his boring life to kill time. Nevertheless, he never takes any action.
He imagines what people are thinking and what they are going to do. In this way, he
makes up some stories through imagination to entertain himself.
When Holden sees other people’s success and feels down, he starts to imagine
that if he were a piano player or an actor, he would not even want people to clap for
him because they always clap for the wrong things. If he were a piano player, he
would rather play it in the closet. Although Holden thirsts for getting the applause
from everyone and he wants to have encouragement and admiration from his family
and friends to raise his self-confidence, he is so afraid that he can not do it perfectly.
He has no encouragement from his family and no admiration from his friends
eventually, so he still does not have confidence in himself and is always jealous of
other people’s achievement.
When Holden faces difficulties and wants himself to be brave to solve them, he
starts to imagine he is a strong man. Actually he is a coward, who just satisfies
himself through imagination. One day, he cannot find his gloves, so he starts to
imagine that he would go to the crook’s room and find them out.
He fancies that
only if he has the guts to do it, he would just stand there, trying to look tough and say
something very cutting and snotty to enrage the thief, who would probably get up to
challenge him.
In fact, Holden is afraid of the person and leaves the room without
taking his gloves back. In the end, he just goes to the restroom, sneaking a cigarette
and watching himself getting tough in the mirror. He also thirsts for doing something
illegal such as beating and killing someone in order to have the balance between his
body and mind. Ironically, he still has to face the reality is that he is cowardly and he
does not dare to take his gloves back by himself.
Holden’s real problem lies in his low self-esteem; therefore, he can only imagine
some brutal deeds such as retaliating and killing people. He is but a teenager, so he is
eager to be an adult. He imagines that he is a strong man, who dares to fight with
others to get his gloves back. He does not have self-confidence at all, so he feels
himself inferior. Through imagination, he becomes a brave man who he desires to be.
There are many violent thoughts in his mind such as plugging someone to make his
blood leak all over the place. In the bathroom, he imagines that he had a bullet in his
guts when Old Maurice plugs him. Then he holds onto the banister and all, with blood
trickling out of the side of his mouth a little at a time. He walks down a few floors on
his guts, blood leaking all over the place. On the way, he meets old Maurice and
shoots him right through his fat hairy belly. The imaginative plot reveals that Holden
is living after a turbulent time. He experiences the Second World War and he feels
American society changes. Holden hates the society and people who are hypocritical,
so his mind is full of opponents and guns. In a transitional phase between adulthood
and teenage, he is eager to be an adult. However, he is afraid of the adult world-- the
real world, so he just imagines that he is an adult and what kind of person he wants to
be.
Holden likes to fantasize that he is a leading character in movies. Holden has
much pressure from his family and his school life is boring. As a result, he needs to
find a way out to make his life more interesting. His brother, D.B., is writing
screenplays in Hollywood.
Regarding his brother as a model, Holden often keeps
his diary in a story line and in a conversational style. For example, he imagines that he
has a bullet in his guts and he fights with Old Maurice fiercely. Standing in front of
the mirror, he imagines that he is shot and how he escapes. He attempts to imitate the
movie screenplays of his older brother, D.B. “Although the reiteration of the
performance reveals the true nature of his state, he frequently equates the emotion
with a sense of isolation. Holden maybe realize that he is falling apart, so he seeks to
obscure the recognition by referring to everything as “crazy” and facetiously likening
himself to a “madman”. ”（Literary Reference Center, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg
Professor of English, New York University）
When Holden feels lonely, he perceives that imminent death is approaching to
him. He says every time he comes to the end of block and steps off the cub, he has
that feeling that he would never get to the other side of the street. He thinks he would
just go down, down, down, and nobody will ever see him again. At the same time, he
is continually talking to his brother Allie. After facing the Cold War’s cruel staff and
Allie’s death, he is unable to accept loss and panic over death. Although his actions
are inconsistent and ambivalent, we always know something comprehensible in terms
of his reaction to the loss of Allie.
Holden often imagines what may happen in the war. This imagination often
encourages him to be a brave man. He wants to be a real man and go to the battlefield
to fight with his enemies because a great and brave man can sacrifice himself in the
war, an emergency in which many people lose their lives suddenly.
Holden wants to perish the people who have low standard of morality. He hates
them very much. He goes to Phoebe’s school to say goodbye and to return her
Christmas money. He is upset to find “fuck you” scrawled on a wall. Holden imagines
he catches the person who writes them and smashes the head of the mean person on
the stone steps. But he knows that he doesn’t have the guts to do it. He worries about
the consequence if his sister and other children see the wall. Their innocent minds
will be affected by the words, so he wants to rub them off. However, he does not
dare to do so. He thinks that, even if he rubs them off today, someone may write
more tomorrow, so no place will be nice and peaceful. The common practices of
corruptible society are an eternal fact that is very difficult to change. So, he feels very
helpless about the corrupt society. He does not want any children to be contaminated.
It inspires him to be a catcher in the rye in order to preserve their pure and innocent
minds.
Although Holden has so much imagination, he has a great dream in his mind. He
does not want any children to be contaminated by the adult world. He perceives the
world around them is ugly. Therefore, he often imagines that he is standing on the
edge of some crazy cliff to catch everybody if anyone starts to go over it. He means if
they’re running and they do not look where they are going, he has to come out from
somewhere to catch them. To be a catcher in the rye, Holden’s ambition is to be a kind
of secular saint, willing and able to save children from disasters. “Holden longs to
protect children, including himself, from the fall away from the innocence of
childhood into the decadence of adulthood. He is a romantic, unrealistic idealist on a
quest for his identity.”（Literary Reference Center, Edwin Haril Miller, the professor
of English at New York University） I agree with Miller, because Holden realizes that
the society is full of corruptions; therefore, children are likely to be contaminated. He
would like to preserve their pure and innocent minds. He is a really kind and sincere
person because his great dream is not for himself but for others. If he can help them,
including his little sister, it will be the best situation. Such imagination is not only for
satisfying his desire but also encouraging himself and many teenagers who do not
have goals to live up to their own expectations.