The conflict in Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
is an internal one. The protagonist,
Holden Caufield, wants to interact with other people on an adult level be then
he begins to retreat back into his childlike self and considers everyone to be
“phony”. It is not clear what causes
this issue. Perhaps he is scared of
becoming an adult soon and is not sure how he should act. He is in his teenage years which are the
border line between being a child or an adult.
This is the time when people are expected to begin acting more like
adults, but sometimes it can be hard to let go of one’s childhood. Holden misses the innocence of when he was
younger and wants to save other children from the realities of growing up. I am not a psychiatrist and Holden mostly
focuses of a select few days of his life with reflections to when he was
younger, but does not give his entire life story. This makes it difficult for me to say exactly
what the reason for his partial insanity is.
I does seem, however, that he is just going through a phase where one
does not want to leave behind their childhood and memories but knows that he or
she needs to adapt to the adult world and it can be a difficult transition to
make.
The
conflict gains just about as long as the story goes on. Holden is constantly saying that something
kills him or makes him depressed. He
also asks people several times, "You know those ducks in that lagoon right
near Central Park South? That little lake? By any chance, do you happen to know
where they go, the ducks, when it gets all frozen over? Do you happen to know,
by any chance?" (Salinger 33). Through the course of the story, in the
back of his mind, Holden is worried about what happens to the ducks during the
winter. He wants to make sure that they
are ducks are able to survive and find out how.
This reminds me how Holden wants to make the next step in becoming an
adult but is not sure how. Maybe hearing
that the ducks were able to make it through the next phase of their life in the
winter it would reassure him that he can do it too. An example of the conflict rising is when
Holden asks Sally to run away with him and they could live in a cabin. Sally thought that this was absurd, which of
course made Holden depressed, and he reacted to her rejection of the idea by
calling her a pain. This shows that he
is not capable of associating with people in a proper way.
The
conflict does not really go away be the end of the story. Holden does go to see a psychoanalyst but he
is still having problems. He starts to
miss everyone that was mean to him in the story earlier. He says, “It's funny. Don't ever tell anybody
anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” (Salinger 115) While his mental issues have not completely
left, there were three times that I can remember when Holden actually said that
he was happy. The first was buying a
record for his sister Phoebe (Salinger 63), the second was remembering going to
the museum when he was younger (Salinger 64), and the third was watching Phoebe
ride the carousel (Salinger 114). All
of these events are of his sister Phoebe, the person he is closest to, or a
memory from his past. This further
suggests that Holden is having a difficult time moving on with his life.
Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1951. Print.
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