第三名
姓  名 鄭友沁 學  校 國立台中女子高級中學 年  級 二 年 一 班

 

 

The Catcher in the Rye

“Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody.” These words echoed in my mind on the night I finally finished reading The Catcher in the Rye. A wise man once told me that books have the power to magically cleanse your soul from the dust of everyday life. That man was my father. I had never fully comprehended this until that night, as I ruminated about the book while lying in the gleam of the moonlight. I imagined being Holden Caulfield, the core of the book, the grotesquely cynical lad of my age, and as my imagination plowed the path for me towards the entrance of his world, my heart awakened from its somnolent state and started beating again.

Flunked out of Pencey Prep, on a freezing Saturday of December, Holden stood on a hill overlooking the campus as thoughts disorderly swirled around in his head. He decided to pay his senile history professor, Mr. Spencer, a visit for his last farewell, only to receive several mildly disapproving remarks directed at him for his lack of efforts on his academic career. After the visit, he then got into a fight with his roommate Stradlater upon knowing that he was taking Jane Gallagher out on a date. Jane played a great part in Holden’s childhood memories as he vividly remembered how they had used to play checkers, and that Jane would refuse to move any of her kings. I could easily sense Holden’s enthusiasm when talking about the girl he apparently adored, which gave off the impression that he was not exactly how he pretended to be.

Feeling drained and disheartened by his milieu, Holden decided to leave earlier than planned. When he arrived in New York, all on his own, he felt the urge to give someone a buzz. However, after he spent twenty minutes in the phone booth crossing everyone he knew off his list, he ended up taking a taxi to a nearby hotel. This part saddened me the most, for Holden’s desperation was almost dripping from the pages, and under his armor, I could see clearly his strong desire for approval from someone he cared for.

My fascination for Holden intensified when he started talking about his family. He left no doubts about his adulation for his siblings D.B., Allie, and Phoebe. He even described himself as “the dumb one” in the family. Not feeling like going to sleep, Holden found himself down in the lobby of the hotel, where he tried to acquaint himself with the three women whom he thought, ironically, abominable. This depicted Holden as a conflicted soul. He abhorred the world he lived in, but time after time, he couldn’t escape from the confinement of it.

Eventually, Holden decided to go home, mainly for his little sister Phoebe. He sneaked into the house in the middle of the night, for fear of getting caught by his parents, and talked to her for a little while. In this part, it was obvious that Holden was eager for Phoebe to offer him the comfort he had been seeking throughout the entirety of the book. He yearned for the release from his self-hatred and self-imprisonment so freighted with the weight of the world.

Near the end of the story, Holden was suddenly struck by the idea of becoming a recluse. Only, he didn’t make it. He merely closed off with the rather vague indication of him “getting sick” and returning to school. Feelings of angst and hatred were worn away by the passage of time, and Holden was holding on to his recollection, fearing that someday he would get distracted and forget what he had stood for in the beginning.

To me, this was not merely a story of another person’s life that I was peering into; instead, it was a mirror through which I was constantly staring at my own reflection. Holden, I realized, was in fact a personification of the voice I had always been too scared to let out. I saw that life is not about acquiescence after all. It is about how you displace angst and hatred by a fiery cone of passion for your loved ones.