In the story Holden and Stradlater get into a big fight when Stradlater comes back from his date with Jane. Holden gets mad because he thinks Stradlater had sex with her and punches him in the face, which shows he has some feelings for Jane. Stradlater tackles Holden and makes him bleed all over the place. After the fight Holden goes into Ackley's room: "I had a feeling old Ackley'd probably heard all the racket and was awake. So I went through the shower curtains into his room, just to see what the hell he was doing." Holden claims that he went in to check on Ackley, but I really think that Holden wanted a friend there for him and wanted someone to comfort him, which his funny considering how much Holden says he can't stand Ackley. I think Ackely is a pretty funny character, especially when it comes to his religion: "I don't care what you say about me or anything, but if you start making cracks about my goddam religion for Chrissake--" Ackley claims that he is very religious but says things like "goddam" and "Chrissake". It's pretty ironic to me. I also think that Ackley is pretty similar to Holden, especially in the way he talks and curses all the time.
After fighting with Stradlater and getting no comfort from Ackley, Holden decides to leave Pencey for good. Holden takes a bus into New York, where he meets the mother of one of his classmates, Ernest Morrow. He finds the woman very attractive, but then again Holden finds a lot of women attractive, so he's a very hormonal young man. After talking to her for a while, Holden asks her out for a few drinks, which seems crazy because 1) he is too young to buy drinks 2) he just met this woman and 3) she is way too old for Holden. Even though she turned him down I think his attempt was still funny, especially because he kept making up stories to impress her.
After Holden gets off the bus he goes to a trashy hotel. There he goes to a phone booth and calls up this slutty girl one of his friends knows. Again he asks her out for a few drinks but she declines. I think Holden thinks if he buys a woman a few drinks he's going to get lucky, which is probably true considering the women he's asked out already. It's funny that Holden says he doesn't understand sex at all but it's all he thinks about and even though he makes rules for himself, he ends up ignoring them: "Sex is something I really don't understand too hot. You never know where the hell you are. I keep making up these sex rules for myself, and then I break them right away."
As the story goes on Holden describes his little sister Phoebe. Again I notice he describes her in a positive and proud way, like he described his brother Allie: "You should see her. You never saw a little kid so pretty and smart in your whole life. She's really smart." I notice that he only talks about Allie, Phoebe and Jane in a good way and everyone else he doesn't really care for. He especially talks about Jane in a good way: "You never even worried, with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were." I think that Holden really cares about Jane and I think he will try to get in contact with her later in the book.
I liked evrything you said here, to me Holden does seem like this immature guy that thinks of himself as better than everyone else, which obviously isn't the case. Good job :)
ReplyDeleteNice Blog! I agree that Holden doesn't seem to fond of anyone but Allie, Pheobe and Jane. Aside from them he doesn't seem to like people much.
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