Holden Caulfield
| Holden Caulfield | |
|---|---|
|
An interpretation of Holden Caulfield on the cover of the 2012 book The Catcher in the Rye and Philosophy by Heather Salter and Keith Dromm. | |
| First appearance | "I'm Crazy" |
| Last appearance | The Catcher in the Rye |
| Created by | J. D. Salinger |
| Information | |
| Gender | Male |
| Occupation | Student |
| Family |
D. B. Caulfield (brother) Phoebe Caulfield (sister) Allie Caulfield (deceased brother) |
| Nationality | American |
Holden Caulfield (born c.1933) is the fictional teenage protagonist and narrator of author J. D. Salinger's 1951 novel The Catcher in the Rye. Since the book's publication, Holden has become an icon for teenage rebellion and angst, and now stands among the most important characters of 20th-century American literature. The name Holden Caulfield was used in an unpublished short story written in 1942 and first appeared in print in 1945.
Although it has been conjectured that J. D. Salinger got the name for Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye when he saw a marquee for Dear Ruth (1947), starring William Holden and Joan Caulfield,[1] Salinger's first Holden Caulfield story, "I'm Crazy," appeared in Collier's on December 22, 1945, a year and a half before this movie was released.[2]
Appearance and personality
Holden is naive and at the same time resentful of the adult world.[3] One of Holden's most striking and quintessential qualities is his powerful revulsion for "phony" qualities, a catch-all term for the perceived hypocrisy that irritates Holden. It is this cynicism that causes him to distance himself from other people, despite wanting connection as well. Holden is very much a character of contradiction; at seventeen years of age he is six feet two-and-a-half inches (189 cm) tall, and already has some grey hair – though he himself admits that he sometimes acts more like a 13-year-old than an adult. He continually fails classes.
In The Catcher in the Rye
Holden Caulfield is the narrator and main character of The Catcher in the Rye. The novel recounts Holden's week in New York City during Christmas break following his expulsion from Pencey Prep, a preparatory school based loosely on Salinger's alma mater Valley Forge Military Academy. Holden Caulfield tells his story with surprising honesty from a hospital in California in a cynical and jaded language.
In other works
The character, as Holden Morrisey Caulfield, also appears in Salinger's "Slight Rebellion off Madison", published in the December 21, 1946 issue of The New Yorker. An earlier version of this story, titled "Are You Banging Your Head Against a Wall?" was accepted for publication by The New Yorker in October 1941, but was not published then because editors found the tone to be too desolate for its readership. An edited version of this short story later became the basis of several chapters in the middle-late section of The Catcher in the Rye dealing with Caulfield's date with Sally Hayes, during which he confesses his desire to run away with her, he meets Carl Luce for drinks, and he makes a drunken phone call to the Hayes home. Unlike the similar sequence in the novel, Caulfield is on a Christmas break from school, and, in the story, the interlude with Sally is split into two occurrences. Also, the meeting with Carl Luce is considerably briefer in the story than in the novel.
Caulfield also figures as a character in the short story "I'm Crazy", published in Colliers (December 22, 1945), and other members of the Caulfield family are featured in "Last Day of the Last Furlough", published in The Saturday Evening Post (July 15, 1944) and the unpublished short stories "The Last and Best of the Peter Pans" (c. 1942) and "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" (c. 1945). "I'm Crazy" is closely related to the first chapter of The Catcher in the Rye. It begins with Caulfield standing on a hill at "Pencey Prep" watching a football game below, and develops as Holden visits with his history teacher, Mr. Spencer, for a talk about his expulsion from school and his future. Several other details match those found in the first chapter of Catcher, including a reference to the mother of one of Caulfield's schoolmates and to his own mother sending him a gift of ice skates, but the story ends with his returning home instead of running away from school. Once home, he is not shown confronting his parents, who, according to the maid, are playing bridge. Instead, he goes to speak to Phoebe. Their dialogue is similar to that which appears in the later chapters of The Catcher in the Rye. The other notable feature of the story is that his sister Viola gets her first, and only, mention in the Caulfield saga.
"This Sandwich Has No Mayonnaise" (Esquire, 1945) reveals that Holden went missing in action during the war.
Caulfield family in other works
"Last Day of the Last Furlough" relates the final day of Babe Gladwaller before he leaves to fight in World War II. Gladwaller spends part of the day with his little sister before Vincent Caulfield (later renamed D.B. in the novel) arrives. At that point Vincent is a fellow soldier about to leave for the war. Vincent announces that his brother, Holden, has been declared missing in action. Gladwaller's relationship with his younger sister can be seen as a parallel to Caulfield's relationship with Phoebe.
"The Last and Best of the Peter Pans" relates the story of Vincent's (D.B.) draft questionnaire being hidden by his mother. The events occur just after the death of Kenneth (later renamed Allie) and reveal the anxiety of Mary Moriarity, an actress and Caulfield's mother. The story is notable for the appearance of Phoebe and Vincent's statements about a child crawling off a cliff.
In "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls," Vincent (D.B.) recalls the day his brother Kenneth (Allie) died. The story is set at the Caulfield summer home on Cape Cod. Several details make their way from this story into Catcher, including the characterization of Allie; Allie's poetry-inscribed left-handed baseball mitt; Vincent's girlfriend, Helen, who keeps her kings in the back row (like Jane Gallagher); and Caulfield's critical view of others. While the cause of death in Catcher is leukemia, here it is due to an unspecified heart condition. Toward the end of the story, Kenneth and Vincent are on the beach. Kenneth decides to go swimming and is knocked out by a wave. Holden, just home from camp, is waiting on the porch with his suitcases as Vincent comes back with Kenneth's unconscious body. Kenneth passes away later the same night. The story was reportedly sold to a magazine, only to be taken back by Salinger before publication.
Another short story of note with relationship to Caulfield is "The Boy in the People Shooting Hat," which was submitted to The New Yorker sometime between 1948 and 1949 but was never published. It focuses on a fight between two characters named Bobby and Stradlater over Bobby's feelings about Jane Gallagher. This story appears to form the basis for several key scenes in the first several chapters of The Catcher in the Rye.
In Seymour: An Introduction a Curtis Caulfield is mentioned in passing as "an exceptionally intelligent and likable boy" who appeared on the same radio show as Seymour and the other Glass children. He is reportedly "killed during one of the landings in the Pacific."[4]
Cultural impact
Holden Caulfield is one of the most enduring characters in 20th-century American fiction. It has been suggested that Salinger himself related so closely to Holden that he was protective of the character. This was the reason he was unwilling to allow filming of the book or use of the character by other writers.[5]
- The Catcher in the Rye is required reading in many high school English courses today, although it has been banned from some school libraries by parent and teacher groups opposed to its use of profanity and perceived glorification of rebellion.
- In Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, Wendy Torrance is seen reading The Catcher in the Rye before the family moves to the Overlook Hotel, which many believe symbolizes her loss of innocence, much like Holden's.
- Holden was influential in the life of Mark David Chapman,[6] the deranged ex Beatles fan who murdered John Lennon in 1980.
- In the Family Guy episode "Jerome Is the New Black", primary character Brian is remarked upon as being fond of Caulfield as proof of his pretentious and immature personality by Quagmire, who describes Caulfield as "a spoiled brat". An unnamed character obsessed with "phoniness" also appears on the show, spray-painting "PHONY" on Peter's car after seeing him pretending to play a keyboard in a toy store. The character is listed as "Holden Caulfield" in the show's credits.[7]
- In Green Day's album Kerplunk (1992), there is a song called 'Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?'
- In Screeching Weasel's album How to Make Enemies and Irritate People, there is a song called "I Wrote Holden Caulfield".
- In the comic strip Frazz, Frazz's best friend is an 8-year-old named Caulfield, who emulates the character of Holden Caulfield by always reading books that are above his grade level, such as Catch-22 and The Old Man and the Sea. He also asks odd questions in class (e.g. "If horses don't really like spurs, why do barbed wires keep them in?").
- In the South Park episode "The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs", the fourth grade class is assigned to read the novel, which they take interest in once they hear it was only recently taken off the list of banned books. However, the boys are in no way surprised by the novel's controversial content, prompting the story for the remainder of the episode: to write their own novel as vulgar and offensive as possible to get it on the banned books list
- In the 2002 black comedy-drama film The Good Girl, the film's protagonist, Thomas "Holden" Worther (portrayed by Jake Gyllenhaal), constantly has his nose in “The Catcher in the Rye” and claims that his own life parallels that of Holden Caulfield.
- Streetlight Manifesto's song "Here's to Life," mentions Holden Caulfield as one of the several suicidal people included in the song.
- Ben Affleck's character in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, set in the View Askewniverse, is named Holden after Holden Caulfield. The character reappears in a small role in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.
- In Grow Up, by Ben Brooks, the protagonist, Jasper, says "I am Holden Caulfield, only less reckless, and more attractive" [8]
- Five Iron Frenzy's song "Superpowers" quips "I sometimes feel like I'm Holden Caulfield, sometimes Jack Kerouac".
- The main character of the video game Life Is Strange is named Maxine "Max" Caulfield, after Caulfield.[9]
- Laughing Man, a character in Ghost in the Shell, is a corporate terrorist hacker with a fascination with The Catcher in the Rye and whose character in many ways alludes to Caulfield's. "The Laughing Man" is a short story by J. D. Salinger, published originally in The New Yorker on March 19, 1949; and also in Salinger’s short story collection Nine Stories.[1] It largely takes the structure of a story within a story and is thematically occupied with the relationship between narrative and narrator, and the end of youth.
- The main character in The Land-Grandt, by B.J. Edwards, is named Hulden Caulfield Harrison.
References
- ↑ Saturday Evening Post, July 15, 1944
- ↑ William Holden (I) - Biography
- ↑ Cliffs Notes: The Catcher in the Rye - Character Analysis: Holden Caulfield. Accessed 15 February 2013
- ↑ Salinger, J.D. (2001). Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters ; and Seymour : an introduction (1st Back Bay pbk. ed.). Boston: Back Bay books. p. 225. ISBN 0-316-76694-1.
- ↑ "Holden Caulfield, It's Time We Let Go", Atlantic Wire, October 16, 2012. Accessed 15 February 2013
- ↑ Larry King Live Weekend: A Look Back at Mark David Chapman in His Own Words Retrieved May 12, 2006
- ↑ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0576970/
- ↑ Brooks, Ben (2012). Grow Up. Toronto: Anansi International. ISBN 978-1-77089-101-2. Page number?
- ↑ "Life Is Strange Director Talks About The Theme Of "Identity" And Visual Novels". Siliconera. 5 February 2015. Archived from the original on 10 February 2015. Retrieved 6 February 2015.
External links
Salinger's uncollected short stories
- Slight Rebellion off Madison.
- In Japan, most of the short stories are already translated into Japanese (compiled in two volumes) and still commercially available with the approval of Salinger's agents (ISBN 4-7521-0001-0 / ISBN 4-7521-0002-9). Even Hapworth 16, 1924 is available (ISBN 4-7521-0004-5).
Fan sites
