In Chapter 23 of The Catcher in The Rye, a few of Holden's usually well hidden emotions appear a little more obviously to us. Holden still gives us quite a few of his signature contradictory comments, particularly towards the end of the chapter however, they are a little more easily decoded. At the end of this chapter, Holden is in the midst of trying to run away when he says to Pheobe, "not that they would've killed me or anything if they'd caught me home, but it would've been very unpleasant" but then after hes actually managed to escape he says "I didn't give much of a damn any more if they caught me. ... I almost wished they did in a way." I think this attempted escape is more of a subconscious cry for help than anything else, by reading between the lines we can see that Holden is really feelinghopelessly alone and severely depressed. In this scene its clear Holden realizes hes doing something wrong, or at least something he knows his parents would disapprove of, and secretly I think hes hoping that someone will care enough to stop him. He begins his escape with a sliver hope that just maybe, this time it would be different and someone would come after him. However, in unfortunate accordance to most of the people Holden chooses to give a short window of opportunity to reach out to him, they fail to do so and disappoint him once again. Holden even says as he exits the building that "The elevator boy didn't even notice me". So with out the guidance of any sort of parental figure, Holden enters New York City alone again, a sort of crossing of the threshold pushing him a step further into the reality of his approaching adulthood he so desperately wishes to reject entirely. Do you think that Holden will ever be able to recover from this sort of neglect? Will he ever be able to enter the adult world and thrive?
Sydney, this was great blog post for it helped me realize the method behind the madness on all of Holden’s illegal actions. I agree with you that maybe Holden has been doing all this stuff to gain attention from someone, so he can just talk to him or her and express what he is feeling. I don’t think Holden will ever be able to recover from the neglect that he has received because I feel that this neglect has given him a sense of mistrust with adults. I also believe that he is not going to be able to thrive in the adult world for he is just not made for the adult world and the fact that he just doesn’t want to and choses not to doesn’t help either.
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