Throughout the entire book, and even looking back, I am fascinated with Holden's obsession to childhood. This book is known as a Coming of age story, but an unusual one at that. Holden is an interesting protagonist to the idea of coming of age as Holden's central goal is to resist the idea of maturity.
There are many instances throughout the book where you see him protest the ways of maturity, assimilating with things that are fixed in society, things that don't change. However, Holden never quite acknowledges that the concept of adulthood scares and perplexes him. Instead he describes how this concept is superficial and phony (a theme that re-occurs a lot throughout the book). Inversely, the world of childhood is innocent, curious, and honest. His goal in life is to preserve this idealistic world that he has invented, to stop children from calling over the cliff into a superficial and phony world. Over the course of these few days, Holden combats and cuts himself off from the adult world by protecting himself with this metaphorical armor of skepticism, perhaps cynicism.
To me this denial of maturity defeats the purpose of growing up or coming of age. The whole concept of coming of age is to accept the personal and mental growth in both maturity and age, through both experiences as well as learned characteristics. Holden seems to revert to childhood ways in situations that would require or challenge his personal maturity. He gets caught up in childhood, the people he loved in his childhood, and things that seem to stand steady and stuck in their roots.
While I loved the book, and it was definitely a nice transition from Portrait, I am stuck in my thoughts on the outcome. I struggle to find more than a few instances where he "came of age", something that I think should be more apparent in a book of this sub-genre.
I agree in that it is pretty vague where Holden 'comes of age'. I think there might be one moment that fits the criteria: when Holden, despite wearing his hat, becomes soaked in the rain and feels 'so damn happy'. If the hat represents his childhood, Holden realizes that although it has offered him a lot of protection from reality of adulthood, growing up is inevitable. Just like he will eventually get soaked in the rain. And he seems to accept this: Holden doesn't complain about the storm and allows himself to become drenched (in reality?).
ReplyDeleteI agree with Lindsay, and it makes sense that this change is subtle because after all, the book covers like three days of his life. Also, in that same scene, Holden doesn't ride the carousel (which is usually considered a kid's ride!) despite being asked twice by his sister which is interesting.
DeleteI think that Holden does hold onto the ideas of childhood and his dream job is to be the catcher in the rye and stop other from growing up and this seems to be keeping him from finishing his own coming of age. But I do think that he changes. I think that when he gave his answer to Phoebe's question, he knew that it was not good enough but couldn't come up with anything better. We also see that after his talk with Mr. Antolini and his last talk with Phoebe, he is about to recognize that he has had a problem and think about whether he needs to change something. I think that while he does cling to his ideals, especially of preserving childhood, we do see him progress and make some realization of his coming of age.
ReplyDeleteI think that Holden does come of age by the end of the book. At the beginning Holden does not listen to what Spencer has to say, and tries to discredit everything that he is saying so he does not have to face reality. In a similar scene at the end of the book, we see Holden having a conversation with another teacher. With Mr. Antolini, we see Holden trying to listen to the advice that his mentor is giving and actually thinking about his future. If nothing else, this willingness to listen to the people around him and to take an active role in his future seems like progress towards coming of age.
ReplyDeleteWhile I would agree with you on a lot of your points, I would argue that this fits perfectly in the "coming of age" genre despite not having ONE defining moment of "clarity" or an epiphany. I think that the *process* of writing the book in a way is Holden's coming of age process, and that by the end of writing the book he is quite different than he was at the beginning. Even if we don't surface value see a lot of "change" in Holden we dive into the depths of his internal fears and struggles throughout the book and I think him writing them down is a vital step in moving forward with his own life.
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