The Catcher in the Rye (blog 2)

Holden decides to leave Pency Prep after he just can't deal with his roommate Stradlater anymore. Basically Holden is just really mad because Stradlater went on a date with Holden's old neighbor and didn't really treat her the way Holden thought she ought to have been treated. Apparently Holden cared about this girl a lot. Sradlater gets mad at Holden and knocks him out by accident. I wouldn't blame him though Holden was acting kind of crazy. Holden decides to leave the school even though he isn't technically supposed to leave until Wednesday. I think this is an irresponsible thing for him to do. It sort of sets the stage of how childish he is since this is a coming of age story. To me it seems like Holden is just running away from his problems.

Holden then heads out on what seems to me a ridiculously long night. To map out the events he takes a train from Pency Prep to New York, takes a cab ride to a hotel, goes to a bar, takes a cab to another bar, and then comes back to the hotel where he gets a prostitute. I know that it really wouldn't be that difficult in New York where you can find what you want within a block or two of you but being from a small town with practically nothing in it and no subway to get anywhere makes doing all of that in the twelve hours of so that it's dark seem like mission impossible. I know I'm not from Peyton but that one seems like a bit of a stretch.
The next day he seems dead set on seeing someone he actually knows. He tries to call the person he wants to see the most, the girl he had a fight with Stradlater about, but her mother answers and Holden doesn't want to talk to her he just hangs up. I thought this was kind of rude and a dumb move by him at first but then I realized that they didn't have caller ID back then, plus he was at a payphone. He calls this other random girl he knows and invites her to the movies. After the movies he pretty much goes crazy on her and asks her to run away with him so they can live in the woods and someday get married. She's pretty polite about it but you can tell she thinks he's crazy.

This showed that Holden is a very in the moment type of guy. He really doesn't like this girl and says he never would have ran away with her even if she had said yes. On the other hand he says that in the moment he really did mean it. I think that this goes back to him leaving school early just because he wanted to, or rather just because he was mad. So far in the story he has showed that he isn't responsible or really capable thinking things through when an idea strikes him.

On another note, this book doesn't really seem like it was written all that long ago. There are some key points that you can look at and say that they definitely didn't happen now. For example, tickets to a new play certainly wouldn't be cheaper than new movie tickets now. But on the other hand the general activities don't seem very different from what people do today.