Holden Caulfield, Master of Deflection
The most memorable characteristic about Holden Caulfield is that he complains about almost everything. He is the character that created the stereotype of “teenage angst,” simply because of the sheer amount of time he spends detailing his elaborate complaints with almost every person, social setting, or societal norm that he comes across. What struck me about the things that he complains about, though, is how he makes sure to carefully avoid all of the truly traumatic things that he has experienced. The thing that I found most shocking about Holden’s account of waking up to Mr. Antolini patting his head is that he admits that this kind of “perverty” thing has happened to him “about twenty times since [he] was a kid” (Sallinger 193). This isn’t necessarily a surprising admission, considering that Holden has been in all-boys prep schools for his entire education, but what is surprising is that he has never once brought it up before as one of the many things he finds institutionally messed up about the prep school environment. He instead chooses to focus on how little authority these teachers have over him and how often they try to give him lectures, making a joke of the teachers to avoid talking about the actual bad things they've done.
This isn’t the only time that Holden glosses over something truly traumatic to talk about something less important. He briefly mentions James Castle, the boy at Elkton Hills that, while getting beat up by other students, chose to jump out of the window to his own death instead of taking back his comment that another student was “conceited” (Sallinger 170). Holden mentions this surprisingly late in the book, considering the fact that he has spent the last 170 pages talking about how terribly mean boys at these prep schools can be. While Holden mentions the more petty things that these boys have done, like their secret fraternities that don’t admit boys who are “too pimply,” and their general mistreatment of women, he chooses to wait to mention the time that this bullying directly led to a boy’s death. He doesn’t describe this event as tragic or traumatic, though, instead choosing to see it as heroic and noble, setting James Castle as some sort of martyr for a good cause. In reality, James Castle’s story is not heroic at all, it’s just tragic. There is nothing heroic about being beat up so badly that the best option is to fall to your own death; but Holden doesn’t see it that way.
Holden can’t grasp the gravity of some of his experiences. He doesn’t acknowledge that predatory older teachers are dangerous, not just another annoying thing that he “can’t stand.” He doesn’t choose to see James Castle as a tragic suicide at the hands of the abusive and dangerous nature of the all-boys schools he attends, choosing instead to view him as an iconic hero who stuck to his morals until his final breaths. Holden’s grievances with his world are not trivial; he might present them that way, his main problem with the system that he has grown up in being the amount of “phonies” that he has surrounded himself with, but the problems that he attempts to gloss over should actually be taken much more seriously. He might present his issues with boys his age as being annoyed with their phony antics and their elitist attitudes, but under that is a valid criticism that being a person who strays away from this norm can be very dangerous, and, as we’ve seen with Holden and James Castle, choosing not to conform to these norms can lead you to be a target for extreme violence at the hands of your peers. He might act like his only grievance with teachers is that they try too hard to demonstrate their authority over you, but under this is a reality that an alarming amount of adults in Holden’s life seem to have used their authority to take advantage of him. Holden actively glosses over the more real and traumatic experiences he has had with the institutions he is a part of, choosing instead to focus on surface level complaints with the way people act and dress, chalking it all up to a general sense of “phoniness” emanating from the people surrounding him.
