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Chapter 11
Walking out of the lavender room, Holden begins to think.jane gallagherand fears that Stradlater has seduced her. Holden first met Jane when her mother was irritated to see the Gallaghers' Doberman Pinscher pottying her on the lawn. He introduced himself to her a few days later, but it took him a while to convince her that he didn't care what her dog was making of her. Remembering Jane's smile, Holden admits that she is the only person he showed Allie's baseball mitt to. The only time he and Jane did anything sexual together was after she got into an argument with Mr. Cudahy, her stepfather. Holden suspected that his stepfather was trying to "get smart" with Jane. Desperate with thoughts of him, Holden decides to go to Ernie's, a Greenwich Village nightclub that D.B. I used to be a regular before I went to Hollywood.
Chapter 12
In the cab to Ernie's, Holden joins the conversation.Hörwitz, The taxi driver. He asks what happens to the ducks in Central Park during the winter, but the two get into a fight when Horwitz thinks Holden's questions are stupid. Ernie's is full of what Holden calls high school and college jerks. Holden notices a guy who looks like Joe Yale with a beautiful girl; He tells the girl how a boy almost committed suicide in her bedroom.
Suddenly, an old friend of Holden's brother, DB, recognizes him. The woman,Lillian Simmons, ask for D.B. and introduces Holden to a Navy major whom he is dating. Holden sees the note blocking the town hall as she complains about how handsome Holden has become. Instead of spending time with Lillian Simmons, Holden leaves.
Chapter 13
Holden walks back to his hotel, even though it's forty-one blocks away. He ponders how he would deal with a person who stole his gloves. While he wouldn't do it aggressively, he wishes he could threaten the person who stole them. Holden finally comes to the conclusion that he would yell at the thief but didn't have the courage to hit him.
Holden then remembers about drinking withRaymond Goldfarbin whoton. back at the hotel,Moritz, the elevator operator, asks Holden if he's interested in a little dick tonight. He offers Holden the hooker for five dollars. When he arrives, he doesn't believe Holden is twenty-two as he claims. Holden finally tells the hookerSunnythat he had just had clavichord surgery as an excuse not to have sex. She is angry, but he pays her anyway, though they argue over the price of her. He gives her five dollars when she asks for ten.
chapter 14
After the hooker leaves, Holden sits in a chair and talks loudly to his brother Allie, which he usually does when he's down. Finally, he lies in bed and feels like praying, even though he is "sort of an atheist". He claims that he likes Jesus, but his disciples tease him. Apart from Jesus, his favorite is the madman who lived in the tombs and cut himself with stones. Holden says that his parents don't agree with religion and that none of his brothers go to church.
Maurice and the prostitute Sunny knock on the door and demand more money. Holden argues with Maurice and threatens to call the police, but Maurice says that his parents would find out that he spent the night with a prostitute. When Holden starts to cry, Sunny takes the money from her wallet. Maurice punches her in the stomach before she leaves. With Maurice gone, Holden imagines that he took a bullet and shoots Maurice in the stomach. Holden would like to commit suicide by jumping out of a window, but he doesn't want people to look at his bloody body on the sidewalk.
Chapter 15
holden callsSally Hayes, who attends Mary A. Woodruff School. According to Holden, Sally seems quite intelligent because she knows a lot about theater and literature, but in reality she is quite stupid. She hosts a matinee with Sally, but she continues to talk to Holden on the phone despite her disinterest. Holden tells her that her father is a wealthy corporate lawyer and that her mother hasn't been well since Allie died. At Grand Central Station, where Holden checks his bags after leaving the hotel, he sees two nuns with cheap suitcases. Holden remembers his roommate in Elkton Hills,dick scumwho had cheap suitcases and complained that everything was stuffy. He talks to the nuns and gives them a donation.
Analyze
In Chapter 11, Jane Gallagher continues to occupy a large part of Holden's mind, and the stories about her reinforce other themes that crop up throughout the chapter.The Catcher in the Rye. Jane Gallagher's story reminds the reader that Allie's death had a huge impact on Holden. For Holden, information about Allie is kept secret and private and can only be shared with certain people. This also gives more weight to the earlier chapter in which Holden writes an essay on the baseball glove for Stradlater. This information, which he once considered so private, comes as part of an essay written for others that suggests Holden repressed certain emotions regarding the death of his brother that may eventually surface.
The chapter also reinforces Holden's recurring suspicions of adults. He believes that Jane Gallagher was abused by her alcoholic stepfather, which reinforces Holden's belief that all authority figures are dangerous. This also explains part of the reason Holden has such a jaded view of sexuality, as he can link it to acts like Mr. Cudahy's predatory behavior towards Jane. We'll see later that Holden himself has suffered at the hands of what he calls "perverts" when he comes out.Mr. Antolini. So for Holden, sex has become disgusting and nothing to celebrate. Rather than being related to love, it is something that is his own decrepit entity, completely removed from matters of the heart.
Still, there's a major hint here about Holden's hypocrisy and convoluted position as protagonist or antagonist. He seems incapable of the love necessary to achieve sexual satisfaction and therefore seeks sexual gratification that he finds not only morally repugnant but also deeply unsatisfying.
In chapter 12, Salinger goes on to explain Holden's great dissatisfaction with those around him in that chapter. He continues to display a latent hostility towards everyone he meets, be it Lillian Simmons or Horwitz. In most of these encounters, Holden expresses a false sense of cordiality towards the people he meets, but describes only the more negative traits of him. While expressing his own false appearance, he becomes obsessed with the falseness of others and finds only cynical interpretations of her behavior, such as when he suspects that the "Joe Yale" guy is telling the girl about the suicide attempt. while he tries to kill her. feel . What he then boils over is a primal anger towards others who can find joy in the mundane, something Holden is completely incapable of. He's not only stupid, but deep down he's poisonously angry at the impenetrability of his own defenses.
This animosity becomes even more pronounced when he argues with Horwitz, who to a lesser extent challenges Holden for his silly questions. Holden's anger seems to be directed more at his own social situation: he hates "preschool idiots" and "Joe Yale" types, people who walk in similar circles. This turns out to be a special form of self-loathing. A high school student expected to attend an Ivy League university, Holden loathes those who are most like him. In fact, he would rather call himself Pencey's caretaker than take responsibility for his own privileged position. He finds romance in pretending to be oppressed, in pretending to be oppressed.
It might be too easy to say that Holden is simply facing an existential dilemma. He questions her soul less and clings more to her to avoid the pain of life. After Allie's death, it seemed, he was plunged into a true vision of life's suffering and couldn't bear it as the trivialities of everyday life washed over him. He hates people mainly because they can't see what he's doing: that life is short and unpredictable, and love isn't worth giving because it can be taken away.
In Chapter 13, Holden appears in that chapter as a frightened young man, acknowledging his own cowardice. He believes that he is incapable of taking on another Pencey student and fighting him in defense of his property, a claim that contrasts with his earlier fight with Stradlater. In this case, however, he fought Stradlater out of sheer impulsiveness. In fact, if Holden ever strikes back, it's never out of a belief that he'll justify himself, but out of an apparent obsession with self-destruction. He wants to be hit. He wants to be in pain. Maybe he's the only thing that makes him feel alive.
Furthermore, when a decision requires a degree of foresight, Holden cannot commit to it. This inability to enforce decisions is also demonstrated during Holden's encounter with the prostitute, which also serves as a reminder of his view of women as purely virginal or incorrigible prostitutes. The prostitute questions Holden's age, as others have throughout the novel, proving once again that no matter how old Holden appears, he presents himself as a child to the adult characters around him.
Holden's behavior becomes increasingly self-destructive as Chapter 14 progresses. Despite knowing that Maurice and Sunny are threatening him, he persists in arguing with them despite the fact that they are only disputing a five dollar charge and he believes they are in grave danger. During this encounter, Holden again reveals himself to be a boy and bursts into tears as soon as Sunny and Maurice take his money, but he shows more than extreme adolescent discontent. Holden fantasizes about murdering Maurice after he leaves, but only thinks about it in passing. Rather, the biggest threat Holden poses is himself. His behavior towards Maurice and Sunny suggests that he doesn't care about being hurt and even he seems to take a perverse pleasure in pain, which Maurice inflicts when he uses it as an opportunity to role-play like a movie gangster.
Salinger cites several examples that point to Holden's masochistic attitudes, such as his admission that his favorite Biblical character is one who mutilates himself. These details accumulate as the chapter progresses, until Holden's final revelation that he is contemplating suicide. Although he ultimately dismisses the idea of jumping out of a window because of the details of his death, it is a clear sign of Holden's desperation. Salinger makes it clear that Holden will commit suicide, possibly the reason why he is in psychiatric treatment at the beginning of the book.
In Chapter 15, Holden returns to his normal self and haunts after the harrowing events of the night before. He treats Sally Hayes in the same way as the other characters he meets or mentions throughout the novel: outwardly friendly and warm, while masking a fundamental contempt for her values and idiosyncrasies. Holden continues to expand on his family history, this time expanding the scope of Allie's death to include other family members. In fact, the death of his brother had a significant impact on Holden, but it also had devastating consequences for the rest of his family. We sense that the family has never recovered and that everyone has distanced themselves, perhaps in self-defense. Only Holden and Phoebe stayed close to her, but even he leaves her on purpose so she'll never be in any pain if he disappears forever.
Holden continues to delve into sex when he meets the nuns at Grand Central and wonders how they react to "sexy" literature.Romeo and Juliet. This encounter hints at the Madonna/prostitute complex established earlier by Holden. He believes that nuns are so disconnected from any sense of sexuality that they could not reasonably participate in erotically themed works. This perhaps explains his superficial inclination to become a monk. The idea of sealing off her sexuality and separating her from himself is appealing mainly because he has tried, albeit without success.
The most important revelation of this chapter, however, concerns Holden's sense of class arrogance. Although he chastised Stradlater and others for his snobbery in earlier chapters, in this chapter Holden emerges as such a snobbery, condescending to others over his cheap bags. He believes that the common factor that unites people is not intelligence or talent, but social class defined by consumer tastes. This further establishes Holden's sense of hypocrisy: while he denounces the behavior of the class to which he belongs, he shares his behavior and even accepts that value system as reasonable.