My particular group had a very intriguing discussion about the first half of Catcher in the Rye. I felt there were many good and incisive points brought up by my other classmates and me. There were different topics from things like Holden's personality all the way to the setting of the novel.
One major topic is Holden Caulfield's maturity level, which is not very high in my opinion. He is a 16 year old teenager who acts like a twelve year old during the first half of the novel. On every page there are about five profanities spoken by Holden, which shows his lack of vocabulary and immaturity. He feels that swearing is cool and popular(page 20), which also shows his lack of self esteem and his insecurity. Holden cannot handle himself in New York with others that he has come across. A good example of this is when he got into the fight with the man that sold him the prostitute(page 103). Also he got into arguments with cab drivers for some stupid reasons. He does not show much, if any, maturity throughout the first half of the novel.
Due to Holden's low level of maturity level, and his inability to adequatly interact with others, he always seems to be lonely and looking for people to talk to. Whenever he has the chance he tries to call one of his family members or friends just to talk to(page 66). Though he has a keen need for acceptence by certain people, he never is able to make meaingful friends due to his personality flaws. These flaws express themselves with his sarcastic attitude, and the way he classes everything as phony. Holden seems not to take anything seriously, and if it is not his point of view then it is wrong. Holden needs to mature if he wants to become a popular individual. I look forward to the last half of the novel to see if he matures anymore, and I look forward to further discussing this topic in the next book discussion.
I really enjoyed the second half of this book just as much as the first half, because many of the issues that were brought up in the first half were elaborated on during the second half. Holden continued to walk around lonely while he searched for people to talk to. He still seemed very alone and he was constantly trying to fit in somewhere.
Ultimately this resulted in his nervous breakdown and subsequent confinement to a mental institution. If we look carefully at the causes of this breakdown, we can see that Holden's relationships, or lack of relationships, with others was at the core of the problem. The origins of this difficulty with friendships probabaly stemed from his self-percieved "failure" at caring for Allie which was the one most important responsibility he ever had. When Allie died, Holden became scared to love or take care for others, or to be loved or cared for by others. Because Holden feels he has failed, he does not want to put himself in a situation where he might fail again. This leaves Holden feeling and keeping himself alone, not knowing or wanting to belong anywhere. There are people that do care about him, but he does not allow them to get close enough to know him. When Phoebe wants to run away with him he can not allow her to go because he is scared of letting her into his lonlier life, and having the responsibility of someone he cares about once again. So in my opinion Holden is lonely by choice, and he let Allie's death ruin his life.
Everything Holden has tried to accomplish in life he has failed, such as school, friends, responsibility, and girls. It seems he has not tried to succeed at adulthood, because of the fact that he has not seemed to care about what is going to happen to him in the future. Holden has not a clue where he belongs, or what he will do in the future. But it seems as though to get better he has to learn to accept people into his heart. He has to make friends, and start to care about people because he already has people caring for him.