I think Holden Caulfield is a good person. There may be some bad things about him, but the good far outweighs the bad. For example, in chapter 10, Holden writes, "The band was putrid. Buddy Singer. Very brassy, but not good brassy—corny brassy. Also, there were very few people my age in the place. In fact, nobody was around was my age. They were mostly old, show-offy-looking guys with their dates" (Salinger 69). Even though that's pretty mean, he writes what he thinks is right, which is a lot better than someone who tells you what you want to hear. Later in the chapter he meets three girls, two of which are pretty ugly from what he describes. But even though he says that he dances with all three of them, which is kind of him. Another thing that is bad about Holden is that he lies a lot. Especially about his name. In chapter 8 he lies to Ernest Morrow's mom about his name and in chapter ten he also lies about his name to those girls. But when you think about it, Holden is actually carefully protecting his identity. He doesn't want people to know he's in New York, so he uses different names so people won't find out. Also, he doesn't know the people he's talking to, so, he's being safe too.
The last thing I want to say about Holden is that he's a real person. He says what he wants to and he doesn't care if people don't like it. Even though he seems mean, these are the feelings he's expressing about the people. He doesn't ever say those things to their face, so he's not hurting anyone else's feelings.
I agree with your point of view saying that Holden is a good person. I believe most people think he is mean because we can read his thoughts. We fail to realize, that even in our own minds, we don't always see the positives in people. I think that Holden is compassionate, this is shown by dancing with the 3 girls, he seems to put up with their antics, which most people couldn't and wouldn't be able to handle.
ReplyDeleteI like what you say about somebody saying something kind of mean but true is better than somebody saying what you want to hear. I definitely agree with you there and I think Holden's personality embraces this idea when dealing with people. However, he is rarely telling the whole truth when he does tell someone the truth, and whatever he's saying is always intertwined with some lie that he feels he has to preserve. This probably ties into what you were saying about him always using a fake name and perhaps trying to conceal his identity.
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