The Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger : a sensitive but multi-traumatized protagonist

        Although The Catcher in the Rye is usually considered an appropriate reading for teenagers, and therefore, it seems, a classic reading in English-speaking countries high schools, I nonetheless haven’t enjoyed its reading much when I first read it in my young adult years, in what is supposed to be an appropriate age for it, but have greatly enjoyed it reading it again now in my early thirties. I remember having prejudices towards it before my first reading, and to have them confirmed thereafter and in my memory : The Catcher in the Rye, in my then faulty memory of it, was not so special a novel, revolving around an anxious, rebellious and angry teenager against his school and society, written in a not very seductive style (though this impression may be owing to the French translation I have read) and worse from my point of view, as I consider it an essential part of a reading experience, with absolutely no memory of any peculiar scenes of it or memorable characters.
        Reflecting on what makes The Catcher on the Rye an underestimated literary work among its so-called preference public and readers in general, I think the two following points, which I will further develop, may explain this disaffection :

1 – the novel actually is nowhere akin to our preconceptions of it are : Holden Caulfield, its protagonist, is a much more complex and fascinating character than a mere « angry, rebellious » teenager, by which we may be tempted to think Holden may be exaggerating his hatred of society, which would be more linked to an immature, impulsive, excessive behaviour because of his age. On the contrary, Holden is, I feel, a much more accurate observer and reader of human beings and society, and his anger has nothing to do with his age but with his sensibility and lucidity when seeing human selfishness, hypocrisy and brutality as they are.

2 – the novel, despite his apparent easy style and therefore reading experience, is much more difficult to apprehend and requires much more focus than he seems to : Salinger doesn’t spell things out explicitly, and it is up to the attentive reader to connect the dots to understand Holden’s despair and loneliness. Indeed, Holden has experienced, or witnessed, many traumatic experiences on which we will enlarge later on.

            Thus, Holden appears to me now far from the cliché image I had of him in my memory : actually, I couldn’t find a clear instance of him exaggerating things out, and all the observations he makes throughout the novel on the people he meets and debates with, strike me for their accuracy and veracity. The problem of Holden’s malaise therefore is less his supposed adolescence crisis, which could potentially be resolved with more maturity or afterthought, but a disillusioned, extralucid perception of the world, of its corruption and cruelty.
Almost all the people he knows or meets will confirm this painful realization, and brings more despair to him : people at best misreads him and treats him not accordingly despite their good intentions (Mr Spencer), at worst cheats and beats the crap out of him (Maurice, the elevator man and pimp) or, for the most cases, are too absorbed by themselves to really pay any real attention to him (Stradlater, Ackley,…). His disgust, in various degrees though, towards these people appears to me entirely justified : Stradlater’s narcissism and womanizing manners makes him care not a bit towards the girls he dates, driving Holden’s anger especially when he happens to date one of his former lovers, Jane Gallagher ; Carl Luce enjoying calling his former girlfriends as « whores » without any justification ; or Sally Hayes, an intellectual snob Holden can’t help but feel attracted to even though he knows all her flaws etc.

I gave old Sally Hayes a buzz. […] I wasn’t too crazy about her, but I’d known her for years. I used to think she was quite intelligent, in my stupidity. The reason I did was because she knew quite a lot about the theater and plays and literature and all that stuff. If somebody knows quite a lot about those things, it takes you quite a while to find out whether they’re really stupid or not. It took me years to find it out, in old Sally’s case. I think I’d have found it out a lot sooner if we hadn’t necked so damn much. My big trouble is, I always sort of think whoever I’m necking is a pretty intelligent person. It hasn’t got a goddam thing to do with it, but I keep thinking it anyway. (p. 114)

She likes shows that are supposed to be very sophisticated and dry and all, with the Lunts [an actors’ couple] and all. (p. 126)

He [Ernie, a pianist] was putting all these dumb, showoffy ripples in the high notes, and a lot of other very tricky stuff that gives me a pain in the ass. You should’ve heard the crowd, though, when he was finished. You would’ve puked. They went mad. They were exactly the same morons that laugh like hyenas in the movies at stuff that isn’t funny. I swear to God, if I were a piano player or an actor or something and all those dopes thought I was terrific, I’d hate it. I wouldn’t even want them to clap for me. People always clap for the wrong things. […] Anyway, when he was finished, and everybody was clapping their heads off, old Ernie turned around on his stool and gave this very phony, humble bow. Like as if he was a helluva humble guy, besides being a terrific piano player. It was very phony – I mean him being such a big snob and all. In a funny way, though, I felt sort of sorry for him when he was finished. I don’t even think he knows any more when he’s playing right or not. It isn’t all his fault. I partly blame all those dopes that clap their heads off – they’d foul up anybody, if you gave them a chance. Anyway, it made me feel depressed and lousy again, and I damn near got my coat back and went back to the hotel, but it was too early and I didn’t feel much like being all alone. (p. 91-92)

        In addition to his abilities to perceive people’s flaws, Holden mostly surprises me with two qualities that are less apprehended by general readers but are essential as to make the idea, the prejudice of seeing him as an immature teenager irrelevant and wrong : he is well aware of his own weaknesses and flaws, and most importantly, he has genuine compassion for most of the people to whom he has before pointed out their defects.

The trouble was, that kind of junk is sort of fascinating to watch, even if you don’t want it to be. For instance, that girl that was getting water squirted all over her face, she was pretty good-looking. I mean that’s my big trouble. In my mind, I’m probably the biggest sex maniac you ever saw. Sometimes I can think of very crumby stuff I wouldn’t mind doing if the opportunity came up. (p. 67)

She started jitterbugging with me – but just very nice and easy, not corny. She was really good. All you had to do was touch her. And when she turned around, her pretty little butt twitched so nice and all. She knocked me out. I mean it. I was about half in love with her by the time we sat down. That’s the thing about girls. Every time they do something pretty, even if they’re not much to look at, or even if they’re sort of stupid, you fall half in love with them, and then you never know where the hell you are. Girls. Jesus Christ. They can drive you crazy. They really can. (p. 78-79)

I felt sorry as hell for him, all of a sudden. [towards Mr. Spencer, his history teacher, who shows concerns about his future after he was sent off] (p. 16)

I felt sort of sorry for him, in a way. [towards Ackley, a boardmate who doesn’t brush his teeth] (p. 26)

You could also hear old Ackley snoring. Right through the goddam shower curtains you could hear him. He had sinus trouble and he couldn’t breathe too hot when he was asleep. That guy had just about everything. Sinus trouble, pimples, lousy teeth, halitosis, crumby fingernails. You had to feel a little sorry for the crazy sonuvabitch. (p. 41)

I don’t hate too many guys. What I may do, I may hate them for a little while, like this guy Stradlater I knew at Pencey, and this other boy, Robert Ackley. I hated them once in a while – I admit it – but it doesn’t last too long, is what I mean. After a while, if I didn’t see them, if they didn’t come in the room, or if I didn’t see them in the dining room for a couple of meals, I sort of missed them. (p. 201-202)

          His abilities to read things and people, but also himself, in a accurate manner, the corruption and hypocrisy he sees in most situations, makes him look more like Hamlet than the average unjustifiably angry teenager. But one could find Holden a much more lovable character than Shakespeare’s, he who has compassion, and proves unable to fight or hurt people purposedly, contrary to Hamlet who hurt Ophelia, was on the verge of killing his own mother and killed Polonius remorselessly.

         The second main interesting point I’d like to point out is related to the multiple traumatic experiences Holden has been through that may be at the root of his despair, of his constant search of comfort to escape a loneliness that preponderates over him throughout the entire novel. The main one is the death of his younger brother Allie, which regularly haunts Holden, and we realized that he is still grieving at this tragic loss, and occasionally feels guilty over the rare moments he has misbehaved towards him. As for Hamlet who lost his father just before the play and from this event discovers the corrupted nature of his uncle and his mother, Holden’s loss of Allie before the novel has started has made him even more aware of the world’s corruption and hypocrisy, in comparison to the kindness and intelligence of his deceased brother. The reason why so many readers do not seem to notice this detail may be due to Salinger’s refusal to make Holden say explicitly he is grieving over his brother, though all the rest seems to point to this direction : his angry reaction right after Allie's death, during which he injures his hand severely, to the point of him not being able to attend his funeral (which may have aggravated his guilt) since he had to stay in the hospital ; his fond memory of Allie’s baseball glove, in which he wrote some poems, to the point he made a description of it for Stradlater’s homework ; his guilt for not having invited him to a bike ride, a seemingly anodine event that comes to haunt Holden regularly ; many literary references, in which Holden appears unusually passionate, in particular to Mercutio from Romeo and Juliet, or the disciples’ cowardice towards Jesus, are better understood if we can see in them a veiled reference to Holden’s guilt for not having behaved well towards Allie in some rare occasions while he was alive. Holden, though he addresses the reader frequently, is nonetheless reticent to say explicitly his despair over his brother’s death. These two literary references, if we link them to Holden’s obvious despair over Allie, are much more poignant than they first seem to be : it is Salinger’s art of writing not to spell things out, not to make the link explicitly, that ultimately makes The Catcher in the Rye a much more misunderstood novel, less appreciated than it ought to be, among inexperienced, less careful readers.

He’s dead now [Holden’s brother, Allie]. He got leukemia and died when we were up in Maine, on July 18, 1946. You’d have liked him. He was two years younger than I was, but he was about fifty times as intelligent. […] He was also the nicest, in lots of ways. He never got mad at anybody. People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily, but Allie never did, and he had very red hair. […] God, he was a nice kid, though. He used to laugh so hard at something he thought of at the dinner that he just about fell off his chair. I was only thirteen, and they were going to have me psychoanalyzed and all, because I broke all the windows in the garage. I don’t blame them. I really don’t. I slept in the garage the night he died, and I broke all the goddam windows with my fist, just for the hell of it. I even tried to break all the windows on the station wagon we had that summer, but my hand was already broken and everything by that time, and I couldn’t do it. It was a very stupid thing to do, I’ll admit, but I hardly didn’t even know I was doing it, and you didn’t know Allie. (p. 40-41)

Boy, I felt miserable. I felt so depressed, you can’t imagine. What I did, I started talking, sort of out loud, to Allie. I do that sometimes when I get very depressed. I keep telling him to go home and get his bike and meet me in front of Bobby Fallon’s house. […] he wanted to go [on a bike ride with Holden and Bobby], and I wouldn’t let him. I told him he was a child. So once in a while, now, when I get very depressed, I keep saying to him, ‘Okay. Go home and get your bike and meet me in front of Bobby’s house. Hurry up.’ It wasn’t that I didn’t use to take him with me when I went somewhere. I did. But that one day, I didn’t. He didn’t get sore about it – he never got sore about anything – but I keep thinking about it anyway, when I get very depressed. (p. 107)

When the weather’s nice, my parents go out quite frequently and stick a bunch of flowers on old Allie’s grave. I went with them a couple of times, but I cut it out. […] It wasn’t too bad when the sun was out, but twice – twice – we were there when it started to rain. It was awful. It rained on his lousy tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained all over the place. All the visitors that were visiting the cemetery started running like hell over to their cars. That’s what nearly drove me crazy. All the visitors could get in their cars and turn on their radios and all and then go someplace nice for dinner – everybody except Allie. I couldn’t stand it. I know it’s only his body and all that’s in the cemetery, and his soul’s in Heaven and all that crap, but I couldn’t stand it anyway. I just wish he wasn’t there. You didn’t know him. If you’d known him, you’d know what I mean (p. 167-168)

‘I know he’s dead ! Don’t you think I know that ? 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 about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that’re alive and all.’ (p. 184-185)

I kept walking and walking up Fifth Avenue […]. Then all of a sudden, something very spooky started happening. Every time I came to the end of a block and stepped off the goddam curb, I had this feeling that I’d never get to the other side of the street. I thought I’d just go down, down, down, and nobody’d ever see me again. Boy, did it scare me. You can’t imagine. I started sweating like a bastard – my whole shirt and underwear and everything. Then I started doing something else. Every time I’d get to the end of a block I’d make believe I was talking to my brother Allie. I’d say to him, ‘Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Allie, don’t let me disappear. Please, Allie.’ And then when I’d reach the other side of the street without disappearing, I’d thank him. Then it would start all over again as soon as I got to the next corner. But I kept going and all. I was sort of afraid to stop, I think – I don’t remember, to tell you the truth. (p. 212-213)

I’m sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don’t care too much for the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down. I like almost anybody in the Bible better than the Disciples. (p. 108)

I felt much sorrier when old Mercutio got killed than when Romeo and Juliet did. […] It was Romeo’s fault. I mean I liked the best in the play, old Mercutio. I don’t know. All those Montagues and Capulets, they’re all right – especially Juliet – but Mercutio, he was – it’s hard to explain. He was very smart and entertaining and all. The thing is, it drives me crazy if somebody gets killed – especially somebody very smart and entertaining and all – and it’s somebody else’s fault. Romeo and Juliet, at least it was their own fault. (p. 120-121)

          Another traumatic experience in the novel doesn’t concern Holden directly, but a former girfriend of his, Jane Gallagher. The same pattern can be observed in this case as in Allie’s one : it is never explicitly said that Holden is in love with Jane, or still has strong feelings for her at the very least, but this can be assumed from how fondly Holden speaks of her, but mostly, how much disturbed he is at the idea of Stradlater’s dating her, how he doesn’t dare to see her even briefly while he has the opportunity, how he nervously questioned Stradlater when he comes back from his date, and ultimately tries to punch his comrade at the idea of them making out at the back of the car Stradlater had borrowed.

‘Jane Gallagher. Jesus’ I couldn’t get her off my mind. I really couldn’t. ‘I oughta go down and say hello to her, at least.’
‘Why the hell don’tcha, instead of keep saying it ?’ Stradlater said.
I walked over to the window, but you couldn’t see out of it, it was so steamy from all the heat in the can. ‘I’m not in the mood right now,’ I said. I wasn’t, either. You have to be in the mood for those things. […]
‘Listen, Give her my regards, willya ?’ […]
He went back to the room, but I stuck around in the can for a while, thinking about old Jane. Then I went back to the room, too. (p. 34 et 35)

I sat there for about a half hour after he left. I mean I just sat in my chair, not doing anything. I kept thinking about Jane, and about Stradlater having a date with her and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradlater was. (p. 36)

‘Did you ?’
‘That’s a professional secret, buddy.’
This next part I don’t remember so hot. All I know is I got up from the bed, like I was going down to the can or something, and then I tried to sock him, with all my might, right smack in the toothbrush, soi t would split his goddam throat open. Only, I missed. […]
‘What the hell’s the matter with you ?’ he kept saying, and his stupid face kept getting redder and redder.
‘Get your lousy knees off my chest,’ I told him. I was almost bawling. I really was. ‘Go on, get offa me, ya crumby bastard.’
[…] I can hardly even remember what all I said to him. I told him he didn’t even care if a girl kept all her kings in the back row or not, and the reason he didn’t care was because he was a goddam stupid moron. He hated it when you called him a moron. All morons hate it when you call them a moron. […]
‘You don’t even know if her first name is Jane or Jean, ya goddam moron !’ (p. 45-46)

She was a funny girl, old Jane. I wouldn’t exactly describe her as strictly beautiful. She knocked me out, though. She was sort of muckle-mouthed. I mean when she was talking and she got excited about something, her mouth sort of went in about fifty directions, her lips and all. That killed me. And she never really closed it all the way, her mouth. It was always just a little bit open, especially when she got in her golf stance, or when she was reading a book. She was always reading, and she read very good books. She read a lot of poetry and all. She was the only one, outside my family, that I ever showed Allie’s baseball mitt to, with all the poems written on it. She’d never met Allie or anything, because that was her first summer in Maine […] but I told her quite a lot about him. She was interested in that kind of stuff. (p. 84)

        Stradlater’s narcissism, uncare about Jane’s feelings, made Holden’s nervousness and anger worse as he cares for Jane, especially after he found out that she has likely been abused by her father-in-law. Salinger never again explicitly says what happened between Jane and her father-in-law, but we can conjecture the worst thing as Jane cannot or wouldn’t allow Holden to kiss her on her lips and refuse to make love with him, though she had showed obvious signs of affection towards him. This relationship may also explain, retrospectively, Holden’s reticence to force girls he dates and his apprehension towards sexual relationships, as evidenced with the episode where he met the prostitute and his various reflections on the matter afterwards.

[…] all of a sudden this booze hound her mother was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. […] he looked like the kind of a guy that wouldn’t talk to you much unless he wanted something off you. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn’t answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was any cigarettes. So the guy asked her again, but she still wouldn’t answer him. She didn’t even look up from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn’t even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then all of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checher-board. On one of the red squares – boy, I can still see it. She just rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don’t know why, but it bothered hell out of me. So what I did was, I went over and made her move over on the glider so that I could sit down next to her – I practically sat down in her lap, as a matter of fact. Then she really started to cry, and the next thing I knew, I was kissing her all over – anywhere – her eyes, her nose, her forehead, her eyeborws and all, her ears – her whole face except her mouth and all. She sort of wouldn’t let me get to her mouth. Anyway, it was the closest we ever got to necking. […] I asked her […] if Mr Cudahy – that was the booze hound’s name – had ever tried to get wise with her. She was pretty young, but she had this terrific figure, and I wouldn’t’ve put it past that Cudahy bastard. She said no, though. I never did find out what the hell was the matter. Some girls you practically never find out what’s the matter.
I don’t want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something, just because we never necked or horsed around much. She wasn’t. I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn’t sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. […] You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.
One other thing I just thought of. One time, in this movie, Jane did something that just about knocked me out. The newsreel was on or something, and all of a sudden I felt this hand on the back of my neck, and it was Jane’s. It was a funny thing to do. I mean she was quite young and all, and most girls if you see them putting their hand on the back of somebody’s neck, they’re around twenty-five or thirty and usually they’re doing it to their husband or their little kid – I do it to my kid sister Phoebe once in a while, for instance. But if a girl’s quite young and all and she does it, it’s so pretty it just about kills you.
[…] Old Jane. Every time I got to the part about her out with Stradlater in that damn Ed Banky’s car, it almost drove me crazy. I knew she wouldn’t let him get to first base with her, but it drove me crazy anyway. I don’t even like to talk about it, if you want to know the truth. (p. 85 to 87)

The thing is, most of the time when you’re coming pretty close to doing it with a girl – a girl that isn’t a prostitute or anything, I mean – she keeps telling you to stop. The trouble with me is, I stop. Most guys don’t. I can’t help it. You never know whether they really want you to stop, or whether they’re just scared as hell, or whether they’re just telling you to stop so that if you do go through with it, the blame’ll be on you, not them. Anyway, I keep stopping. The trouble is, I get to feeling sorry for them. I mean most girls are so dumb and all. After you neck them for a while, you can really watch them losing their brains. You take a girl when she really gets passionate, she just hasn’t any brains. I don’t know. They tell me to so, so I stop. I always wish I hadn’t, after I take them home, but I keep doing it anyway. (p. 100-101)

        It is also noteworthy that Holden never meets Jane in the present timeline, though he tried to call her but didn’t manage to talk to her, as she is one of the very few persons Holden seems to genuinely care, along with his kid sister Phoebe, and unlike Sally Hayes who he manages to reach and encounter during his lonely errand. But probably such a meeting would have undermined Holden’s joy and comfort he found at last when he managed to see Phoebe at night, and mostly, during the afternoon he spent with her in a zoo.

          At last, two additional traumatisms can be noticed and may have played a role also in Holden’s despair, besides the two mentioned above. The evening Holden spent in Mr Antolini’s place, a former teacher of his, ends in an unexpected but traumatic way : Antolini appears at first to be one of the few persons with whom Holden can be understood and find comfort, but he most likely turns out to be a potential pervert, considering how he caresses Holden while the latter is asleep. Holden’s panic and reflections afterwards suggests a potential betrayal of trust from previous adult persons, though Salinger doesn’t go into further details, and may therefore explain his general distance and distrust towards people. The other and last traumatic experience is the death of one of Holden’s former comrades who killed himself after he had been harassed and beaten by other comrades who were exacting revenge on him after he called one of them a conceited person and won’t take it back. Holden is furious to see that the indirect murderers were only expelled and not sentenced to a more serious penalty for the cruel things they had done, and certainly must have felt uneasy about it as Holden, like his deceased comrade (James Castle), never hesitates to speak his mind and is unwilling to apologize or yield when he thinks he is in the right (p. 183), as his beating by Maurice the pimp shows it and seems to mirror.

          All the listed traumas certainly take part in shaping Holden’s despair and show a mostly cruel, inhumane vision of the world and people. Holden is constantly deceived, betrayed, by most of the people he encountered, he sees through their hypocrisy, lack of compassion, their selfishness, or sometimes cruelty. For this reason, The Catcher in the Rye is by some extent similar to Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit, where Bardamu only meets detestable, morally ugly persons.

[…] there was a lady sitting next to me that cried all through the goddam picture. The phonier it got, the more she cried. You’d have thought she did it because she was kindhearted as hell, but I was sitting right next to her, and she wasn’t. She had this little kid with her that was bored as hell and had to go to the bathroom, but she wouldn’t take him. She kept telling him to sit still and behave himself. She was about as kindhearted as a goddam wolf. You take somebody that cries their goddam eyes out over phony stuff in the movies, and nine times out of ten they’re mean bastards at heart. I’m not kidding. (p. 151)

A million reasons why. It was one of the worst schools I ever went to. It was full of phonies. And mean guys. You never saw so many mean guys in your life. For instance, if you were having a bull session in somebody’s room, and somebody wanted to come in, nobody’d let them in if they were some dopey, pimply guy. And they had this goddam secret fraternity that I was too yellow not to join. There was this one pimply, boring guy, Robert Ackley, that wanted to get in. He kept trying to join, and they wouldn’t let him. Just because he was boring and pimply. I don’t even feel like talking about it. It was a stinking school.
Even the couple of nice teachers on the faculty, they were phonies, too. […] There was this one old guy, Mr Spencer. His wife was always giving you hot chocolate and all that stuff, and they were really pretty nice. But you should’ve seen him when the headmaster, old Thurmer, came in the history class and sat down in the back of the room for about a half an hour. […] After a while, he’d be sitting back there and then he’d start interrupting what old Spencer was saying to crack a lot of corny jokes. Old Spencer’d practically kill himself chuckling and smiling and all, like as if Thurmer was a goddam prince or something.
[…] It would’ve made you puke, I swear it would. Then, on Veteran’s Day. […] You should’ve seen this one old guy that was about fifty. […] He said he wanted to see if his initials were still in one of the can doors. […] He kept talking to us the whole time, telling us how when he was at Pencey they were the happiest days of his life, and giving us a lot of advice for the future and all. Boy, did he depress me ! I don’t mean he was a bad guy – he wasn’t. But you don’t have to be a bad guy to depress somebody – you can be a good guy and do it. 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 – that’s all you have to do. […] God, Phoebe ! I can’t explain. I just didn’t like anything that was happening at Pencey. I can’t explain. (p. 180-182)

        But Salinger’s novel has much more warmth than Céline’s one : when Bardamu is a character one could hardly find sympathetic, Holden on the contrary is a more positive hero, as he is still a good person, who can’t stand hypocrisy, greed, cruelty as he himself is incapable of it. Most importantly, he has more compassion towards most of the persons he meets and towards humanity in general, while Céline has an uncompromising, bleak vision of life mostly devoid of any sympathy. In particular, he has great sympathy for his mother’s grief too, which again shows that Holden is not in a mere adolescent crisis which mostly manifests in an unfounded resentment towards one’s parents.

One thing about packing depressed me a little. I had to pack these brand-new ice skates my mother had practically just sent me a couple of days before. That depressed me. I could see my mother going in Spaulding’s and asking the salesman a million dopey question – and here I was getting the ax gain. It made me feel pretty sad. […] almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad. (p. 55)

I’m a goddam spendthrift at heart. What I don’t spend, I lose. Half the time I sort of even forget to pick up my change, at restaurants and night clubs and all. It drives my parents crazy. You can’t blame them. My father’s quite wealthy though […] he’s always investing money in shows on Broadway. They always flop, though, and it drives my mother crazy when he does it. She hasn’t felt too healthy since my brother Allie died. She’s very nervous. That’s another reason why I hated like hell for her to know I got the ax gain. (p. 116)

[…] there were about a million girls sitting and standing around waiting for their dates to show up. […] It was really nice, sightseeing, if you know what I mean. In a way, it was sort of depressing, too, because you kept wondering what the hell would happen to all of them. When they got out of school and college, I mean. You figured most of them would probably marry dopey guys. Guys that always talk about how many miles they get to a gallon in their goddam cars. Guys that get sore and childish as hell if you beat them at golf, or even just some stupid game like ping-pong. Guys that are very mean. Guys that never read books. Guys that are very boring – But I have to be careful about that. I mean about calling certain guys bores. I don’t understand boring guys. I really don’t. […] Maybe you should’t feel too sorry if you see some swell girl getting married to them. They don’t hurt anybody, most of them, and maybe they’re secretly all terrific whistlers or something. Who the hell knows ? Not me. (p. 133-134)

        In Voyage au bout de la nuit, there are hardly any characters with whom one can feel sympathy : Molly is hardly humane and more a cliché of the prostitute with a golden heart ; Bébert the child is hardly developped besides his quick death. In The Catcher in the Rye, Holden, in a world dominated by selfish and cruel persons, still manages to encounter a number of genuinely good-hearted persons : the two nuns he meets by chance at a café (p. 123-124) ; Jane Gallagher with whom he had shared good moments though he doesn’t meet her in the present ; a hat-check girl with whom he has a brief but warm moment (p. 165) ; and mostly, his younger sister, Phoebe. With her, the novel is endowed with one of the most lovable female characters ever created in literature : one can’t help sharing Holden’s love and fondness for her, and the novel finishing with Holden finally finding (momentary ?) peace after such turmoil preserves the book from presenting an all-around dark and hopeless vision of life as Céline does, which to me seems truer to life itself, which is a mixture of despair and joy, made of contrasts instead of being one-dimensional, one way or another.

You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She’s really smart. […] you ought to see old Phoebe. She has this sort of red hair, a little bit like Allie’s was, that’s very short in the summertime. In the summertime, she sticks it behind her ears. She has nice, pretty little ears. In the wintertime, it’s pretty long, though. She’s only ten. She’s quite skinny, like me, but nice skinny. Roller-skate skinny. […] You’d like her. I mean if you tell old Phoebe something, she knows exactly what the hell you’re talking about. […] The only trouble is, she’s a little too affectionate sometimes. She’s very emotional, for a child. She really is. Something else she does, she writes books all the time. Only, she doesn’t finish them. They’re all about some kid named Hazel Weatherfield – only old Phoebe spells it ‘Hazle’. Old Hazle Weatherfield is a girl detective. She’s supposed to be an orphan, but her old man keeps showing up. Her old man’s always a ‘tall attractive gentleman about 20 years of age’. That kills me. Old Phoebe. […] She’d interrupt you all the time. She’d give Allie or I a push or something, and say, ‘Who ? Who said that ?’[…] And we’d tell her who said it, and she’d say, ‘Oh’, and go right on listening and all. She killed Allie, too. I mean he liked her, too. She’s ten now, and not such a tiny little kid any more, but she stll kills everybody – everybody with any sense, anyway. (p. 73-74)

‘You did get kicked out ! You did !’ old Phoebe said. Then she hits me on the leg with her fist. She gets very fisty when she feels like it. ‘You did ! Oh, Holden !’ She had her hand on her mouth and all. She gets very emotional, I swear to God.
‘Who said I got kicked out ? Nobody said I – ‘
‘You did. You did,’ she said. Then she smacked me again with her fist. If you don’t think that hurts, you’re crazy. ‘Daddy’ll kill you !’ she said. Then she flopped on her stomach on the bed and put the goddam pillow over her head. She does that quite frequently. She’s a true madman sometimes. […] I tried pulling it off, but she’s strong as hell. You get tired fighting with her. Boy, if she wants to keep a pillow over her head, she keeps it. (p. 177-178)

She was still standing there on the sidewalk, but she turned her back on me when I came up to her. She can do that. She can turn her back on you when she feels like it. ‘I’m not going away anywhere. I changed my mind. So stop crying and shut up,’ I said. The funny part was, she wasn’t even crying when I said that. […] she wouldn’t answer me or anything. I sort of tried to get hold of her old hand, but she wouldn’t let me. She kept turning around on me. […] All she did was, she took off my red hunting hat – the one I gave her – and practically chuckled it right in my face. Then she turned her back on me again. It nearly killed me, but I didn’t say anything. (p. 223)