Holden Caulfield and Capitalism
Why did Holden lose his path?
Other blogs will provide other answers. Holden is, as is pointed out in the book, a ripe subject of psychoanalysis. I propose that Holden Caulfield’s lost state is, at least in part, resultant from his interactions with the status of capitalism. Throughout The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield presents the figure of a man (or, really, a boy) lost- he has rejected the mainstream, consumerist-industrialist, all-American path of [high school college job wife kids family], associating it with the “phoniness” and seeking flight from it on many occasions.
Holden makes his disdain for consumerist industrial capitalism clear from the start. On the second page of the book, he says of his brother D.B. “He's got a lot of dough, now. He didn't use to. He used to be just a regular writer, when he was home . . . Now he's out in Hollywood, D.B., being a prostitute.” D.B. is not a literal prostitute- that would be something of an odd career choice given his background- he has, in Holden’s eyes, sold himself in the basest possible way, giving up his deepest and closest talent, writing, in exchange for the trappings of capitalist success- big paychecks and fast, expensive cars (the fast, expensive car is also a symbol of the traditional masculinity against which Holden chafes. I don’t think I’ll get into that for the time being). Even earlier, he asks Ackley about how he might go about joining a monastery, and he takes a particular interest in a pair of nuns- in my eye, he does not damn them as “phonies” precisely because they make charity without asking anything, absolutely anything, in return- the ur-null of capitalism.
Holden Caulfield is, throughout the book, very interested in leaving- leaving Pencey Prep is the first thing, but in his conversations with Sally and Phoebe, he makes it clear that he’d quite like to leave modern society as a whole; first it’s “take a vacation in ‘Massachusetts and Vermont, and all around there’,” then it’s “”standing on the edge
of some crazy cliff’ and catching kids, then it’s “‘a little cabin somewhere with the dough I made and live there for the rest of my life.’” What these have in common is that he is trying to leave the capitalist world which cultivates the damnable quality of being “phony:” although he participates in capitalism at least initially in two of the three scenarios, it is only a means to an end, a path for him to escape said system and go live somewhere where everyone’s real quiet and they stop bothering him about chasing that path in life.
This is not the whole story- as I have alluded to earlier, there are many other facets to Holden’s struggle, such as his interactions with and friction against the projected image of Western masculinity. Let these ideas gently seep into your brain and mix with all the other ideas you’ve read. Or don’t. I can’t really do anything about it.
There’s some kind of association to be made here with Fight Club, but time is getting a little unfriendly.
Ciao
Very interesting post! I also thought Holden's encounters with money is very interesting. He seems to regard the idea behind the money more than the money itself, as in the fight over the 10 dollars and donating it to the nuns. I think this goes along with what you are saying in that he doesn't care as much about the money as the writer (in the case of his brother). Great post!
ReplyDeleteGoing against the norm often provides the person with a sense of satisfaction and cleverness: you know something that others don't and find the justification in hating the existing system. Simultaneously, no matter how absurd these contrarian ideas are, you can always push yourself into believing such things. This is not to say that Holden's "standards" are absurd, but I think that this idea fits well within the narrative of "a sad and passionless teenager trying to find ones own meaning in life". Anything that would provide a sense of being special is like an oasis to a thirsty traveler. I honestly think that Holden is a bit pathetic for his desires to leave and such because he really doesn't show any significant proof that he would be happier in a different society; hell, Holden might hate every permutation of a society and want to "leave". This mindset could just be the manifestation of irrational and infinite discontent. I guess you could say that there isn't any effective way to foreshadow Holden's happiness in a different society, but honestly he should just play the cards that he has been dealt. Life goes on, I guess.
ReplyDeleteGood post!
This is a really cool post, and I agree with everything you said. I think at its root, a lot of the phoniness Holden sees has to do with capitalism. His example of not knowing whether lawyers are doing it for money, or because they really care about helping people stands out to me in particular. I'm not sure if Holden would come out and say that he hates capitalism itself, or if he just hates capitalism because of how intertwined it is with American adult life.
ReplyDeleteI think the connections Holden makes between capitalism and phoniness are pretty interesting, since financial motive and prestige is one thing that Holden constantly points out as characteristics of phonies. The only examples I can think of are the piano guy from the night club as well as DB, and Holden only ever appreciates when people do things out of genuine good will, or for the sake of some kind of art, like the nuns and DB before he went to Hollywood. And while he never explicitly acknowledges it, I agree that it does seem like capitalism is at the root of a number of his complaints.
ReplyDeleteThe mention of _Fight Club_ at the close of this post has me intrigued--I assume you mean the film (with Edward Norton and Brad Pitt playing two sides of the same character's broken psyche) and not the novel (which features a deeply unreliable and discontented narrator, a bit like Holden in some ways). Many years ago, near the turn of the century, I taught a class at the U of I called "The Marginally Sane in Literature and Film since 1940," and it included the film _Fight Club_ on its syllabus (which had only been released the year before). We also read _The Catcher in the Rye_, as another example of a character/narrator who seems both brilliant/enlightened and crazy/insane. And we also read _The Bell Jar_! I view all three as nice examples of a character or narrator who struggles with obvious mental health issues but who also has a compelling degree of social criticism in their "madness"--who seem often RIGHT about the things they complain about. _Fight Club_ is more explicitly critical of capitalism as such, but if you take Holden's complaints about guys who only care about their cars or their fancy luggage or their social status, it's not hard to extend those gut-level complaints to a more worked-out critique. Holden needs to go to college and take some sociology and economics classes--he'll be right there behind Marx!
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