The Antihero in Literature. The Catcher and the Rye - Essay Example

and Number The Antihero In recent years, the antihero has become increasinly popular within films and books. The hero was once the star of these stories as a shining example of all that is good with a desire to save the world. However, society has evolved to the point where the hero is not always the most interesting character. The antihero or outsider, on the other hand, tends to be more complicated in terms of their personality, goals, and motives. Audiences have become more accepting toward these outsiders and this is reflected in the success of certain books and movies. The key to these modern stories; however, is that the antihero eventually joins the society in which he or she lives within the book or movie and becomes somewhat heroic through their actions. Perhaps one of the most well known antiheroes is Holden Caulfield, the main character from The Catcher in the Rye. By no stretch of the imagination can Holden Caulfield be considered a villian within this book as many antiheroes are. However, Caulfied is most certainly an outsider as he does not feel a part of the world that he lives in. In Caulfield’s opinion, he is ignored and overlooked: “Sometimes I act older than I am –I really do—but people never notice it. People never notice anything”(Salinger, 9). According to an article entitled “What is an antihero?” the antihero is “someone with some of the qualities of a villain, up to and including brutality, cynicism, and ruthlessness, but with the soul or motivations of a more conventional Hero”(“The Gallery of Antiheroes and Villians”). Caulfield is not particularly brutal or ruthless, but is fairly cynical as he wanders from his boarding school to the city to his own home seeming to be completely bored, irritated, or unhappy with everyone around him. For example, in speaking with a boy he goes to school with, Holden regards him with a mixture of digust and bordeom and reacts to him in a way that indicates his strangeness: “All of a sudden—for no good reason, really…I felt like jumping off the washbowl and getting old Stradlater in a half nelson…So I did it”(Salinger, 30). Stradlater yells at him, but ultimately brushes it off which is a prime illustration on how characters within the novel do not pay attention to Caulfield and do not take him seriously. The society within The Catcher and the Rye is not particularly connected to Holden Caulfield. The interactions that Holden appears to have with other people is very minimal. For the most part, the reader is kept within the confines of Caulfield’s mind and it is within his mind and thoughts that the reader is exposed to other people within his society and these people are always tainted with Caulfield’s opinion of them which may not always be an accurate account as these characters get very little opportunity to show their true colors throughout the text.There are only a handful of incidents within the novel where Holden Caulfield actually speaks to and interacts with other characters. One such instance occurs when he is staying in a hotel and a prostitute is sent to his room Instead of having sex with her, Holden decides that he wants to talk with her: ““Don’t you feel like talking for a while?” I asked her…She looked at me like I was a madman. “What the heck do you want to talk about?”…She sat down in the chair next to the desk again. She didn’t like it though, you could tell”(Salinger, 95). Unlike Stradlater, she doesn’t really ignore him or brush him off; however, she does seem confused and put off by his unusual behavior. Holden Caulfield does not have much impact on society at large as noted by these two specific examples. Either people react to him as he if he is a noboby such as Stradlater, or they see him as a strange and unusual person who makes them uncomfortable like Sunny the prostitute. However, there is one person that Holden appears to have some impact on: Phoebe, his sister. Near the end of the novel, Caulfield visits his sister and interacts with her. Caulfield experiences a strong desire to see his sister again and this indicates to the reader that he does have some positive feelings toward certain people which had not been entirely clear up until this point, but he does cover up his emotions by saying how much Phoebe cares about him: “She likes me a lot. I mean she’s quite fond of me…I figured I’d better sneak home and see her…”(Salinger, 156). When Holden tells Phoebe that he is going to run away and not come back, she become very angry and tells him that she is going to run away with him, “Can’t I go with you? Holden? Can’t I?”(Salinger, 206). This indicates that Phoebe looks up to her brother and holds him in very high esteem which is completely different from how other people look at him and treat him for the most part. Once Holden sees the kind of influence he has over Phoebe, he decides to go back home and live with his family for a while which illustrates that he isn’t entierely cynical if he voluntarily chooses to give up the isolated lifestyle he was leading up until this point. Holden Caulfield, ultimately, is more influenced by society than society is influenced by him. Mostly, Holden causes other people to feel nervous or uncomfortable around him. For some people, Holden is a nobody who does not warrant their attention. A strange reaction to Holden occurs with an old teacher of his—Mr Antolini—who Caulfield visits at one point in the novel: “I woke up all of the sudden…I felt something on my head…what he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor…and he was sort of petting me…on the goddam head”(Salinger, 191-192). Although this action between Mr.Antolini and Holden Caulfield cannot be described as that of ignorance or devaluation, it is an extremely uncomfortable interaction which further illustrates that most of the society within this book does not connect with Holden or have an abnormal connection with him. Phoebe reacts to him positively for the most part as she views him as something larger then life. She is the character who Holden has the most impact on which he realizes and that is why he decides to do what is right and go back home in order to keep his sister from running away with him. Overall, Holden Caulfield can be seen as an antihero because he doesn’t want to get involved with the world around him which he generally views as “phony.” It is because of Holden Caulfied’s isolative tendencies that others do not react to him in what would be considered a normal way. There are points in the novel where the reader believes that Holden likes being the way he is, but through his thoughts, it becomes clearer that there is a strong desire to connect with others and perhaps that is why he is unable to go through with running away in the end. It is unclear as to whether or not society will always react to Holden Caulfield in the same manner as they did throughout the novel, but it does appear by the end that Holden will either change his ways or at least is admitting to himself that he has a desire to connect with society: “About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about…Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody”(Salinger, 214). It would appear in this scenario that the antihero did not impact society as much as society impacted him. References Salinger, J. D.. The catcher in the rye . Boston (Mass.): Little, Brown, 1991. Print. "The Gallery of Antiheroes and Villans” Welcome To Flowerstorm! Web. 3 Aug. 2011. . Read More