The Catcher in the Rye (blog three)

After his awful date with Sally he has no idea what to do with the rest of his time until he's supposed to get home on Wednesday. He eventually calls one of his friends who is in college named Luce. They decide to go to a bar together. But since that isn't for several hours hours Holden plenty of free time.

Honestly, I don't think that Holden should be left alone with free time. I mean you can see how ridiculous he gets when he doesn't have something scheduled. You could easily argue that having free time is what makes a lot of Holden's problems, if not all of them. For one thing when he isn't doing anything he tends to think about Jane. "When I left the skating rink I felt sort of hungry, so I went to this drugstore and had a Swiss cheese sandwich and a malted, and then I went in a phone booth. I thought maybe I might give old Jane another buzz and see if she was home yet." (page 175). I don't think that this is good for him because even though he likes Jane and she's one of the few things that he enjoys talking about his thoughts on her seem to be slightly self destructive. It's not that the memories he mentions are sad but he always seems sad after he thinks of her. I would like to know the thing that changed them to how they are now. The way he talks they used to be very close but now he only talks about when they used to be close but they don't seem to be very close any more from the way he talks about her. I hope that it was just something stupid he did so he can fix it.

Once Holden meets up with Luce he gets really drunk. He acts incredibly stupid and calls Sally. He originally wanted to call Jane, but thankfully he wasn't in the mood by the time he got out to the phone booth. I think that Holden probably should have just waited things out rather than to call people when he's clearly not thinking strait. "When I was really drunk, I started with that stupid business with the bullet in my guts again. I was the only guy at the bar with a bullet in their guts. I kept putting my hand under my jacket, on my stomach and all, to keep the blood from dripping all over the place." (page 195). Anyone who reads this can easily see that Holden is not capable of much of anything at this point.

After walking around awhile he decides to head back to his parents apartment just to see his little sister and then leave. Phoebe is a pretty interesting character. First of all she doesn't like her middle name and always changes it. "That killed me. Her middle name is Josephine, for God's sake, not Weatherfield. She doesn't like it, though. Every time I see her she's got a new middle name for herself."(page 208). I think that her new name may have something to do with one of three things: she is just really creative, she doesn't like her parents or forms of control and wants to rebel against them, she doesn't like herself and feels the need to change, or some combination of the three.

 I do believe that she is creative because even then I don't think that Weatherfield was all that common a name, but that seems like an odd thing to do just to be creative. It could be possible that she doesn't like her parents, this would show in the fact that she moved out of the room they gave her. I think that the third option is the most correct though. Some of the things that would possibly lead to that would be that all her siblings have left her and that her parents don't seem to be around that much. You can see that she's used to having her parents gone when Holden asks what time they'll be back. Phoebe says, "No, not till very late. Daddy took the car so they wouldn't have to worry about trains. We have a radio in it now! Except that Mother said nobody can play it when the car's in traffic." (page 211). This shows how unimportant the fact that her parents are gone is to Phoebe; she quickly skips over that and starts talking about other stuff. She's also very affectionate to try to keep people around her (or at leats that's what I think). The fact that she changes her name seems to point to the idea that she wants to change herself for other people because she doesn't feel like she's good enough as she is.