Literary Analysis The Catcher in the Rye : Holden Cauffield; Complete Failure in Reaching Maturity

According to Wikipedia, maturity psychologically means the ability to respond to the environment in an appropriate manner. Since the term ‘appropriate’ is too subjective of a word, Dr. William Menninger established the progressive stages of emotional maturity as the criteria whether or not someone is a hundred percent matured. Menninger’s criteria are carefully listed with the intention that it has to be followed in order without skipping any step. According to Menninger, an emotionally immature person possesses the following characteristics:

Having the ability to deal constructively with reality; having the capacity to adapt to change; having a freedom from symptoms that are produced by tensions and anxieties; having the capacity to find more satisfaction in giving than receiving; having the capacity to relate to others in a consistent manner with mutual satisfaction and helpfulness; having the capacity to direct one’s instinctive hostile energy into creative constructive outlet; having the capacity to love; living for a cause rather than dying for it.

The concept of growing up and getting mature,  which involves fear of losing one’s innocence, confusion in dealing with the ambiguous adult world, and how to adapt ourselves are  intriguingly explored in the infamous The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger.  Using some of Menninger’s criteria, Salinger illustrates emotional immaturity through Holden Caulfield’s failure to deal with reality by having the capacity to adapt to change, his incapability to relate to other people with mutual satisfaction, and his desire to die for a cause rather than living for one. 

            Even though some may argue that Holden possess a bit of maturity based on his ability to love especially toward children and his little sister, his emotional immaturity is indubitably proven by his failure to deal with reality and having the capacity to adapt to change. He is having a problem in dealing with present truth and new reality around him. This inability makes him prefers the past over present and tries to avert reality by inventing an imaginary plot in his head. First, we can see his love for museum where everything stays the same and seemingly easier to deal with. Holden is looking for his little sister Phoebe, and then he goes to the park where she usually plays. Holden can’t find her at the park and a little girl told him she might be at the museum. He talks about this Museum of Natural Art that he used to go in a field trip when he was little and how much he likes it: “I loved that damn museum. The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. The only thing that would be different would be you” (Salinger 120-121). Moreover, it is obvious that Holden is still deeply troubled by the death of his little brother, Allie. He is still unable to get over his grief and move on. When Phoebe confronts him to mention one thing he likes in the world, he mentions his deceased brother, Allie, seemingly having trouble choosing an actual living person or things: “I like Allie. I know he’s dead! I can still like him, though, can’t i? just because somebody’s dead, you don’t just stop liking them, for God’s sake—especially if they were a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all” (171). Beside all these actions, Holden has this habit of inventing an imaginary situation like he has been shot and has a bullet in his gut whenever a bad episode happens to him. For instance, after he lost in a fight with Stradlater, his roommate at Pencey Prep Boarding School, he goes to the bathroom. Amazed by the blood on his face, he started to act like he had been shot. Second time happens during his encounter with a prostitute named Sunny and her pimp, Maurice, in a motel when he was forced to pay for the ‘service’ more than what he has agreed on. Maurice beats him up and takes his money. Holden goes to the bathroom afterwards and starts acting like his belly were bleeding. Immediately, he starts picturing himself gong to Maurice’s room to shoot him with a gun and wiping the fingerprints off the gun. This is one of a coping mechanism Holden has invented to deal with his reality, yet he puts the blames of movie. While imagining all this scenarios in his head no longer serves its purpose to make him feel better, and when the realization finally knocks him out of his reverie, he admits to himself what he really feels. “What I really felt, though, was committing suicide. I felt like jumping out the window. I probably would’ve done it, too, if I’d been sure somebody’d cover me up as soon as I landed.”(104). According to Menninger, before someone gets to the point where he could love somebody, he must be able to succeed at the previous stages. Holden fails the process of getting matured because he skips around the list and he is having it the other way around. These show how Holden is immature by failing the first stage of emotional maturity right away, which is to deal with reality and adapt to the changes.

            Hold also lacks the ability to relate to other with mutual satisfaction. Whenever he meets somebody, either stranger or people he has known for a long time, he often focuses on their depraved features and regards them with negative remarks. For instance, Holden tells us a story about an old alumnus from Pencey Prep who came to his room during Veterans Day. The old man asked Holden and his friends if they would mind letting him use the bathroom because he wanted to see if his initial was still carved in the bathroom. Instead of trying to understand his sentimentality and find a way to sympathize, Holden finds this depressing and even accuses him of being phony: “Boy, did he depress me! I don’t mean he was a bad guy. But you don’t have to be a bad guy to depress somebody. All you have to do to depress somebody is give them a lot of phony advice while you’re looking for your initials in some can door..” (169). This quote shows that Holden lacks the ability of relating to others positively to gain mutual satisfaction, he’d rather finds something to hate from somebody. It would have been easier for him to just try interacting with others without judging them and trying to look at the bright side of every occurrence in his life. He could have just appreciated the man’s fondness of Pencey Prep and try to take in the lesson from his advice that might be valuable for him, so that both parties could gain fair advantage of each other. That is him helping the man find his initials while he gets something useful for him in return.

Holden’s immaturity leads him to think about death every so often. Consequently, it makes him believe that death would be a better solution for him, instead of trying to deal with his life. His desire to die for a cause rather than living for one leads him to fail the last step of Menninger’s emotional maturity criteria. For example, he is telling us a story about how his big brother D.B used to be in the army during the war. Then he keeps going on and on about books that D.B has given to him and suddenly states his opinion about atomic bomb: “Anyway, I’m sort of glad they’ve got the atomic bomb invented. If there’s ever another war, I’m going to sit the hell on top of it. I’ll volunteer for it, I swear to God I will.” (141). This quote proves Holden’s inclination to die for a cause which is to ‘sit on top of atomic bomb’ in a war. In addition to that, he keeps pondering the idea of him dying and how people who are close to him would react to that, which is quite an immature thing to do. It happens after he got out of a bar, he is sitting alone in Central Park in the middle of the night, looking for the lake to find out where the ducks go when the lake in frozen. He finds out that the lake was, “..partly frozen and partly not frozen..” (154). The temperature was very cold and his head was wet, “I thought probably I’d get pneumonia and die. I started picturing millions of jerks coming to my funeral and all. The only good thing, I knew she wouldn’t let old Phoebe come to my goddam funeral because she was only a little kid.” (154-155). Holden sees death as the easy way out of dealing with his problems. By dying for a cause, Holden believes that he would do a good thing while being able to avoid and solve his problems altogether. His inability to reach this point of emotional maturity is somehow makes sense, since he can’t even get past the first stage, again proving that Holden is a complete immature individual.

Every adult individual must have experienced the phase of adolescence. Being a teenager who stuck in the middle of two worlds is definitely not an easy position. One must try to understand the world they used to perceive differently as a whole new world with its new ambiguity and anomaly. The Catcher in the Rye tries to depict one example of struggle of a teenager in dealing with his problems that come with a price of growing up, and Holden fails to pay the price. In conclusion, he doesn’t have the ability to complete the journey required to earn the maturity every teenager is supposed to earn. Despite his effort to grow up, he still can’t get his ultimate goal to grow up because he is trying to jump and skip around the order on Menninger’s list. First, he can’t deal with the new reality that surrounds him because he is still holding on too much on the past, making it impossible for him to succeed at the next step in Menninger’s list. Then, he finds it difficult to correlate with others in a positive manner without having to focus on someone’s negative trait. Finally, his preference to serve a purpose by dying instead of living adds to the evidence of his fiasco.

         
**the drawing is not mine. i simply googled it.