Brainstorming

            For my paper that compares the iconic novels The Catcher In The Rye and The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, I plan to discuss how the influence of the parental figures in both books caused Holden and Huck to leave what the knew behind in search of direction in their lives, someone to simply listen to them, and to find happiness. I am confident I can come up with a compelling argument to back up my thoughts, but I need to first critically think about the different points of evidence I can use in my persuasion. That is the point of this blog post.

            At the very beginning of The Catcher In The Rye, we get a very brief description of Holden’s parents. It is literally a few sentences. That’s all. This briefness is symbolic of the roles they play in his life: they seem to be detached and uninterested in Holden. They fail to recognize Holden’s need for a parental figure. Throughout the whole novel, he is desperately searching for someone to talk to. From Ackley to Stradlater to the whore to the cab drivers to Sally to Mr. Antolini and finally to Phoebe, Holden is searching for someone to confide in. All of these figures in his life, save for dear Phoebe, fail to not be “phony”. Phoebe is the only one that Holden can finally feel happy with. He can share his feelings with his sister. This desperation to let out his struggles stems from the absence of his parents in Holden’s life. He is lost. He is depressed. He wants to kill himself. Even when he goes home, Holden sneaks around to avoid his parents. Their unapproachability leads Holden to become lost and consumed by his own thoughts after his brother, Allie, dies.

            Pap, while he is interested in Huck’s life, he brings Huck down. All pap wants from Huck is Huck’s money and intelligence. Pap eventually kidnaps Huck and traps him in a cabin in the backwoods. Pap gets drunk. He rants. He screams. He nearly kills Huck. This violence and unstable home situation lead Huck to leave and set off down the Mississippi River. Along the way, he meets Jim, a runaway slave. Over the course of their adventures, Huck comes to love Jim because he represents everything pap isn’t: a father, caring, loving, and loyal. Jim fills pap’s shoes. The two stick together throughout the book, and when Jim is nabbed by the Phelps family, Huck devises a plan to steal him back. At many points throughout The Adventures Of Huckleberry Finn, Huck could’ve easily abandoned Jim. But he didn’t. He remained loyal to him because Jim was like a father to Huck, and that was something Huck had never had before.

Themes and Episodes in Catcher

Today in class, we took a look at certain episodes within The Catcher In The Rye, and how those episodes related to the whole, or how they were important. When Stradlater comes back from his date with Jane, Holden and Stradlater get into a fight because Holden believes Jane and Stradlater had some physical play during their date that night. Holden punches Stradlater, and then continues to verbally duel with him. This aggressiveness is due to Holden’s insecurities as well as unresolved feelings about Jane. Stradlater is everything Holden isn’t –handsome, intelligent, smooth, a lady’s man, etc. Even though Holden thinks he is all of those aspects, he isn’t. Heck, he cannot even close the deal later in the book with a prostitute. Additionally, Holden has some unresolved feelings about Jane. They have been childhood friends, and still continue to be close. This act of violence against Stradlater could be suppressed feelings about Jane. This specific episode is crucial, because not only do we get a little glimpse into Holden’s clouded mind, it makes him leave Pencey early, and start his epic journey to New York

            Another episode in The Catcher In The Rye that is essential is the whole scene where he is in Central Park, and tries to convince the phony girl, Sally, to run away with him and escape the bowels of society. While trying to persuade her to flee together, Holden lets all of his inner emotions shine through. The floodgates have been released. This is Holden uncensored. He spews all of his hatreds about society at Sally in one big conglomerate of speech – about the phoniness of New York City, Pencey, the professional world, people, education, and all the like. The lines, “I hate living in New York and all. Taxicabs, and Madison Avenue buses, with the drivers and all always yelling at you to get out at the rear door and being introduced to phony guys that call the Lunts angels, and going up and down in elevators when you just want to get outside, and guys fitting your pants all the time at Brooks, and people always – ”and the “It’s full of phonies, and all you do is study so that you can learn enough to be smart enough to be able to buy a goddamn Cadillac some day, and you have to keep making you believe you give a damn if the football team loses,” clearly illustrate the extreme pessimism Holden faces when he looks at the world – he is unable to look at anything that gives him any joy. Negativity. Negativity. Negativity.

Even though he is very judgmental, he has some amazing points about the system called society. Holden is able to look past all the fakeness of the professional world. He can see past the faces people put on, the materialistic obsessions, the ‘phonyness’, etc. of the world around him. While reading this episode in particular, I connected to Holden on a lot of levels. It was refreshing to read about Holden calling everything out that is fake. I really was keen about the materialistic obsession he observes from countless humans. The reason I can sympathize with Holden on this point is I can see that same fixation in my own friend group – it is sickening. With that being, however, Holden cannot look past that fakeness and find a meaning in his life. There is no beauty to him. This inability to see any light in darkness is his major flaw in The Catcher In The Rye.

Catcher and Huck Finn

            I have finally finished The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and have now moved onto The Catcher In The Rye. I have not ventured very far into the latter, but I already like it better The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This is mainly due to the ease of reading, which can be traced back to where the books take place: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is in the south and The Catcher In The Rye takes place in the north. The different dialect in these two regions of the country accounts for the ease of reading, and is why I prefer Salinger’s novel to Twain’s.

            The diction is not the only reason why I prefer The Catcher In The Rye to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: I can relate to Holden much more than Huck. Although both characters deal with the pressures and problems of society, Holden is easier to sympathize with because I have never had to journey down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave (yet), but I have had to deal with annoying people and situations—much like Holden does. I also really like how blunt Holden is about everything that goes on around him. “I hate this” and “He is annoying” and “He is a phony” just cracks me up. If Holden does not like you, he will let you know!

            With that being said, however, I believe Holden is extremely lost. He is always criticizing the situation and other people because he cannot figure out who he is yet. He is grasping to find his identity. He continually puts others down to make himself higher. Instead of waiting to judge someone or trying to look at things in a different light, he automatically goes to the negative. This is a bad habit, and could be due to all the traumatic things that he has gone through. Holden is a dynamic character in comparison to Huck, and is more relatable. I suppose I should read more about Holden!

Themes in Huck Finn

When Huck dresses up as a girl, he is caught. This symbolizes when you try to hide who you truly are, society will figure it out for you and catch you in your lie.  This can be seen a lot today in high school. Many people are afraid to condemn their friends for something they say or do, they try to fit into the trends they see, and believe what they are told. Don’t cheat yourself by trying to fit into what you think is the best. Make up a new mold.

The scene where Huck and Jim find a dead body in a house, Jim tells Huck to go away and not look at the body. Jim decides to take care of the body because he doesn’t want Huck to see the face of the man. In this scene, Jim wants to protect Huck from this specific danger of the world. Jim cares about Huck, and he doesn’t want this young boy to see this. Jim takes on a fatherly role, which is even more evident because the body was pap.

Humans want others to be brought down to their own level of stupidity. We like to believe we are the best ones out there, and when we do something that is stupid we want others to experience the same thing so they are also brought down. This is shown in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn when the Duke and Dauphine go around to a town ripping people off by making them pay for a show that is only two minutes long. People feel so idiotic they paid for this show, they tell other people to see so they are all on the same level.

Superior and Inferior - Themes of Huck Finn

Today in class, Mr. Delacruz asked us to come up with an episode from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that related a meaning Mark Twain was trying to convey throughout the book. Because Natalie and I are—admittedly—not very far in the book, we went with a few adventures in the beginning that we felt conveyed one of the themes about society Twain was trying to communicate to the reader: when we, as humans, believe we are superior to others based on arbitrary measures such as race, wealth, eye color, sexuality, etc., we are actually the inferior ones because we are unable to grasp the fact humans are all the same no matter our differences.

This message can be symbolized by two instances in the very beginnings of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The first episode we took a look at was at the end of chapter four when Huck gives Jim a fake quarter in hopes that the ox hairball would divulge Huck information about his pap. The hairball ‘says’ that Huck’s pap has two angels, a white one, which is good, and a black one, which is evil. We felt this symbolized the thoughts of the southerners at that time: blacks were inferior to whites. White people believed blacks were an abomination to the Earth, and whites were the best creatures to have graced this planet. By putting themselves on a pedestal above blacks, white people were unable to see that, in reality, they were the ones that were evil instead of the black slaves.

Our views are supported in the last few pages of chapter six when pap begins to drunkenly rant about how terrible the government is for letting a black man in Ohio vote. Pap couldn’t believe something like this could ever happen.  In protest, pap was going to abstain from voting for a country that would allow such a thing. This strengthens the theme we came up with because pap cannot believe a black person has the right to vote somewhere in America. Chattel. A slave can vote! Pap in unable to consider this in his feeble—and mainly intoxicated—mind. It is preposterous! By believing he is better than the voting nigger—it is extremely odd using this word—pap is in fact degrading himself as a human being.

This theme is extremely relevant in today’s world, and especially in Dewitt. Many of my friends, who will rename unnamed, are very bigoted and are quick to stereotype. Ignorance, societal grooming, and incompetence to understand morals are the biggest culprits. My friends inherit their beliefs from their parents, which is sad because people should think for themselves and not base their own thoughts off of what other morons tell them to believe. I can remember one instance when someone made a joke about someone with a disability. Everyone around began to laugh and further the original joke. I was the only one that didn’t laugh, and in fact, I yelled at this person for being so ignorant. What do they gain by putting others down? How are they much better? I was disgusted. They had such a closed mind, and it was apparent in this situation. By putting this disabled person down, my friend was degrading their own character as a human being. The irony! Although race issues have progressed tremendously since the time of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, humans still have a tendency to believe they are better than others for idiotic reasons, which makes them inferior as a result.