Teenage Depression: An Analysis of Holden Caulfield from the Catcher in the Rye
Author: Joyce Weihan Chen (陳薇涵)
**This essay provides a general comment for the thesis. Please refer to the text for more
specific comments.
The main argument of the thesis is that the depression of Holden Caulfield is a reflection
of Salinger's own experience with PTSD. The author has a great breadth of knowledge
(presuming that the un-cited facts are correct: using quotations and citations more often
would make the statements much more authoritative!) and is able to apply the knowledge
creatively to the text. At several points in the thesis, the author makes very interesting
and creative analytical leaps: the author juxtaposes Caulfield's behavior with medical
diagnostic descriptions to show a new way of interpreting some of his behavior. More
impressively, perhaps, the author clearly has a confidence to write about a broad range of
causes and symptoms of depression. This clearly represents a wealth of research.
To further improve the thesis, the author's should better present the knowledge
and creative insight in a well-structured way. This is not to say that the thesis lacks
structure; rather, the thesis does not make its structure clear within the text: Specifically,
the thesis needs to draw connections between many of its different parts. When it
describes a section of the book, then describes depression, it needs to make the
connection between them explicit. Often, the thesis needs to use transition phrases to
make it clear what the connection is between the different paragraphs. All of this will
make it much easier for the audience to understand the Authors insight. More generally,
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it would help to make it clearer what the purpose of the thesis is: it seems at times unclear
whether the author is using Caulfield to analyze depression, or using depression to
analyze Caulfield.
The author could also cut out many parts of the texts that, while good and
accurate, distract from the central purpose. In some ways, this text could constitute two
separate projects: one, an impressive overview of the causes and symptoms of teenage
depression. The other, an analysis of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield in light of J.D.
Salinger's experience with mental illness and the factors in Caulfield's life that could
contribute to teenage depression. Linking these two projects is the structure that will turn
this great analysis into a great thesis.
A final note: The English in this paper is great in many ways. Specifically
because it's so good in general, it's important to note that transitional phrases like "yet",
"however", and "on the other hand" can only be used between two sentences that are
meant to have opposite, opposing, or contradictory meaning. These phrases help the
reader understand how you interpret the relevance of the text, so making mistakes with
them can mislead the reader.
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