Run for Your Afterlife
MISSION: UNDERSTAND HOLDEN’S FEARS
Holden Caulfield lies on his back, blinking truth-tainted eyes at a terse blue sky. His fingers knotted in the dew-slicked grass, Holden bites his lip wishing it would bleed, never looking away from the white whispers of clouds that he used to think were lost feathers from the edges of angel’s wings. Actually, there were a lot of things he’d thought about the sky that had been proved wrong recently. For example, rain—Holden had seen rain as the emotion-wrought tears of God, but lately people had been making him believe that the cool droplets were simply another form of misery that battered down on the face of the Earth. Likewise, Holden had always viewed snow as puffs of laughter that floated from angel’s lips; however, mere days ago, society had filled him in that it was just an icy winter weapon to hurl forcefully at the back of a passersby’s head. “What a loser,” the one-dimensional citizens of New York scoff, and shuffle on past him. True, Holden is not the typical hero of a story, not the popular jock or the geek who somehow manages to make his entire life a beautiful sight. No, he doesn’t have it easy. Yes, Holden is twisted, and sometimes he lets himself down, backing down before he’s really accomplished anything. But, in contrast to all of this, the truly admirable quality about him is just how fixated he is on youth and innocence. Though no matter how noble his purposes, Holden truly is lost. Mirror, mirror, on the wall—who is the most cowardly of them all? You know you’ve lost when you can’t even look yourself in the eye. Mirrors become your enemies, honesty your fears, and you duck your head to escape from the only thing that really frightens you anymore: your own image. You wake up some mornings in a cold sweat, the expressions of your peers echoing through your mind. You dreamed of them eyeing you haughtily, their faces uniform, their eyes rimmed with disappointment and anger. Their faces tentatively hating, meeting your wide-eyed gaze, watching you like a hawk. Waiting. Speculating. Judging. The way they look at you, fearing you and hating you and criticizing you. You’ve done bad things, and you do them nearly every day, but you simply can’t accept the way their eyes skim over you in disgust. You’re too afraid. Too humbled. And too much of a coward. Holden Caulfield is exactly that person. Apprehensive, misunderstood, and hypocritical. He lives every day musing over just how fake and deceptive society is, casting scornful eyes over everyone he meets, calling society a place full of “phonies”, yet never being able to face the fact that he was really the biggest phony out of all of them. Holden talks about all the violent things he would do if he had the guts, but he is never strong enough to finish much of anything, not even a phone call to an old friend. This is highly symbolic of the sort of person he is. Holden Caulfield claims to wish he could raise a fist. Holden has been betrayed a lot through his years, though not in the ways you might expect. Most people are betrayed by a friend, a family member, or an old teacher. But Holden is different. He was, instead, betrayed by society itself. Holden Caulfield is an emotional, intelligent character who is highly troubled, fascinatingly paranoid, and deeply spiteful. Holden is a cynical boy who has never quite lived up to his own standards. Holden has been sickened by the barely-there morals of society and, specifically, how Hollywood stole his older brother D.B. away from him. Ever since his young, innocent brother, Allie, died of Lieukemia, he has never trusted the harsh world around him, the shallow politics and organized religions in which people seek comfort. Holden refuses to hold onto anything, because he is afraid that, like Allie was, it will be ripped away from him. He wishes he could be tough, wishes he could die for a cause, wishes he was someone who people would remember. Although he tries to convince himself that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks, this is an impossible goal. In the back of his mind, he has always cared, and he always will. Holden values innocence above all else. His role model is Allie—the youthful, oblivious type who trusted everyone and feared nothing, and never had to grow up. Allie was such an inspiration because he never got the chance to be tainted by society. Holden has realized that by now, he is much too old and questioning to ever go back to those small, breathy years of discovery and new thought. He has given up on his own innocence and decided that he really does have a purpose: to protect the purity of others. Holden dreams big, although admittedly his hopes are crushed often. Yet, he has never given up on the dream of saving the youthful happiness of children. Society being his enemy, he couldn’t be more disgusted by the idea of the big, bad world spoiling the fresh hearts of kids. Holden’s soft side is completely evident. He feels responsible for suffering all over the place. In fact, he has a red hunting hat which he calls his “people hunting hat.” He wears it forward when he wants to be dependable, reserved and poised, and backwards when he’s aggressive, harsh and straight-forward. Holden gets angry sometimes, unpredictably and unexpectedly, and immediately snaps at certain people. His People Hunting Hat is used, almost, as a safety blanket. Something to clutch to, a portal which he uses to step outside of himself and become a stronger, more indignant person. The hat is what Holden uses to build the lie that he really is strong and he really can protect those who he loves. The most important thing Holden will ever learn is that he can’t keep his little sister Phoebe from growing up. He can’t stop her from getting hurt. The best thing he can do is be there for her when she needs him, and bandage her wounds when she actually does get hurt. Holden describes Phoebe as thoughtful, quirky, and smart. Her tongue sharp and her mind pure, Phoebe is one of the last things left in Holden’s life, one of the last innocent hearts he has a chance to protect. Phoebe is funny and intellectual, always making up different names for herself and writing mystery stories in her notebooks. Holden looks at her tenderly, with the love of a sibling and a guardian, and sees another beautiful white mind that it is his duty to protect. It hurts to face the facts, though—the only person who can really protect Phoebe is herself. One of Holden’s most depressing and vivid memories include missing Allie’s funeral. The most sickeningly fascinating part is the reason for his missing the service. Holden was in the hospital with a broken hands, knuckles bloodied and bones shattered. When Allie died, he “slept” in the garage that night, gaining a lot of pain and little sleep. In his rage and depression, he put his fist through the windows, a bottled-up teenager who lost one of the last things he had to care for: his brother. Holden has always been opposed to organized religion, and he is disturbed by the fact that people really go to visit the graves of the dead, standing on the ground where decaying people lay. Holden cannot quite grasp the idea that funerals provide closure. Holden was never granted that closure, that one last reassurance that Allie honestly would rest in peace. He still hollowly thinks that Allie’s soul is still with his body, in contrary to the idea of release to the heavens as many churches believe. Holden pictures Allie as an untouched body buried in the soil, capped only with grass and a headstone, getting wet in the rain and hot in the summers. Holden is disturbed by this idea; though he’s never come to realize that the funeral service may have spared him these beliefs. For this reason, Holden may inwardly worry that he himself may someday be graced with the same fate, being a stripped spirit sleeping, forgotten, beneath the dirt. Six feet under the earth, remembered by nothing more than the name, date, and epitaph on a tombstone. Holden is disturbed to think that one day, he’ll only be viewed as one more lost life. One more rip in the system, one more existence that the world has let fall through its fingers. Holden is dying to make a difference to the people in his life who ‘matter’, and his fear is to fade away entirely without changing a thing. Allie, don’t let me disappear…
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