Hold On, Why is Holden a Bad Person?

A tiny dissertation/review on The Catcher in the Rye

Truth be told, I was really conflicted before I picked up “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D. Salinger. Whomever I spoke to about the book said that they either hated it or that they found it “not worth my time”, because of the way the main character, Holden, was acting. They called the book “a pain to get through” and Holden a “pompous ass”. They were right, of course, but that didn’t stop me from absolutely adoring the book. Because yes, Holden is not a good person, but then again he’s 17, and he’s trying to understand the role he plays in life. He’s not a good person, sure, but he’s not supposed to be, either. With that said, let’s dive into the intricate world of Holden Caulfield.

"I’m just going through a phase right now. Everybody goes through phases and all, don’t they?"

The Catcher in the Rye is a book by J. D. Salinger which centers around themes of growing up, responsibility and coming of age. The main character, Holden, is an adolescent boy who is going through the struggles of growing up. In the book, Holden is constantly in conflict, fighting against someone to be able to live as he wills. The type of conflict, though, fluctuates within the book. However, the most eminent one is, without a doubt, person vs. self. Holden is ceaselessly in conflict with himself, constantly going back and forth between wanting to being himself and yearning for acceptance from the society he lives in. This causes him to have conflicting ideas and thoughts regularly, confusing and tampering with his journey to be himself.

This is where the misinterpretation begins. People usually misunderstand Holden's character and act like he's a bad person who doesn't care about anything but himself. And while I do understand where they are coming from, I could not disagree more. Holden is, admittedly, a lot of things. Yet, self-centered is not one of them.

"I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."

Even from the aforementioned quote alone, one can easily state that Holden is not an egocentric person. His dream, the thing he wants to do most is to protect children. He wants to keep them away from harm by catching them from going over “some crazy cliff”. Not to mention that in said dream, there’s nobody around except himself, which highlights his yearning for responsibility. Furthermore, Holden specifying that there’s “nobody big around”, implies that he didn’t have that “big” person to protect him from the cruelties of life, pushing him to undertake this burden in hopes of helping others. This need of helping others, specifically people that are younger than him, is accentuated when Holden gives up on running away for the sake of his little sister. He shoulders the responsibility that he had been running away from during the entirety of the book, in hopes of his sister having a brighter future than himself.

With that said, I don’t think that Holden is a protagonist that should be looked up to. His footsteps aren’t ones that ought to be followed and nor are they ones Holden himself should have taken. However, it is crucial to understand that Holden isn’t the antagonist of the story either. He doesn’t make the lives of people worse, he’s just a bit lost, so he stumbles around, trying to navigate his way to adulthood, grappling with the complexities and responsibilities that come with it.

By and large, Holden isn’t liked by people, and he shouldn't be. He's not a good person. But he isn't an inherently bad person either. He's just a boy, akin to Phaeton, dare I say, trying to take the reins of life into his hands, flailing them around aimlessly, trying to understand how it works.