The image
displays Holden's abuse of alcohol as a coping method for his problems,
whenever he is at a bar he attempts to get an alcoholic beverage, the emphasis
on the alcohol represents Holden's reliance on it
During the chapters 15-21 in the book The Catcher in The Rye Holden makes plans with sally to watch a play,
later Holden goes to eat breakfast at a sandwich bar where he encounters 2 nuns
who are school teachers, after having a nice chat about Romeo and Juliet Holden
donates 10 dollars and reflects upon the capitalist world. Holden takes a cab
to central park to reminisce about phoebe and visit the museum. Later Holden
goes to meet Sally at the hotel, and takes a cab to the theatre where Holden is
irritated by the actors as they are full of themselves. After the movie the two
go skating at the rink where Holden has an outburst requesting that they run
away irrationally and live on his bank money, after talking and complaining
about the phoniness of his school. Afterwards Holden meets up with Luce, who
used to talk about the boys about mature subjects, but during their meeting at
the bar Luce is irritated by Holden’s childish questions and comments, and Luce
leaves. Holden later gets very drunk, and decides to go home, as he wants to
see phoebe.
In the chapters 15-21 Holden feels like making irrational
and rash choices simply because his life is our of control and he feels like
there is no other choice “when the dough runs out, I could get a job somewhere
with a brook and all and, later on, we could get married or something.” This is obliviously an insane idea as it is
clearly visible that it would never work, Holden wants to run away from
everything as things are too stressful and overwhelming for him. A similar
thing happened to me in the past. At the time I was under intense stress from
tests and parental pressure, I felt like doing irrational actions as a last
ditch stress relief method; I had ripped books at the time and broke my watch.
I think I did those actions to be spontaneous, I felt like a switch flipped and
I no longer applied sense and logic to my actions and I did them because I
wanted to out of frustration rage and stress. I believe Holden shouting at
Sally and begging her to go along with him on his journey is of the same
reason.
During the chapters Holden is at the at the climax of his
emotional distress, where he makes irrational decisions, uses substance abuse
as a coping method, and has complete disregard for the consent of others.
Firstly Holden yells at Sally when they were at the skating rink after Sally
refuses to go with Holden on an unrealistic and impractical journey to run
away. “’why not? Why the hell not?’ ‘stop screaming at me, please’, she said”
Later on Holden talks to Luce but Luce does not want to talk to Holden about
his childish questions and comments about sexual intercourse but Holden is
ignorant to it thus resulting in Luce’s departure. At the bar they were at
Holden gets very drunk consuming numerous alcoholic beverages despite being a
minor, “I kept sitting there getting drunk and waiting.” Shortly afterwards
Holden calls Sally waking Sally up, this shows Holden’s lack of concern for
others. At the end of the chapters Holden decides to go home marking the end of
his irrational decisions and the start to recovery.
There were 2 questions that I pondered while I read the
book, firstly, why does Holden call Sally in the middle of the night despite
having a recent argument, and why does Holden decide to go home when he is so
drunk. For the first question I believe that Holden wanted to call Sally to apologies
but couldn’t due to his state of intoxication, making things worse. As for the second
question I believe that Holden did not go home because he realized that he
cannot live in a hotel for much longer, but for his desire to see phoebe, his
budget running out is merely a lucky confidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment