Catcher in the Rye-Holdens Relationship with Women

The novel “The Catcher in the Rye” by J. D.

Salinger is about a 17-year-old boy named Holden. Holden gets in a very bad condition after his younger brother Allie dies from Leukemia. He gets mentally ill and suffers from serious depression. Holden goes through tough times in which he has a lot of trouble finding friends and keeping good relationships. Relationship and sexuality are big motifs in the novel, which come up very often. Holden is always on the look for a new friend but he always turns away in the last moment.

When Holden interacts with women in the novel, he is very different than when he interacts with men.The women characters in the book all are very important because they represent and symbolize many different things. He is very nice to younger female characters but to older females he gets sexually attracted to. When this happens he will do anything to get the woman’s attention, which leads to him being an extremely disrespectful and impolite teenager who is very immature. In general, Holden tries to be nice to people of the opposite sex and wants to create friendships but his immaturity makes him think of women as objects and his disrespect towards others will not help him get through his life.Holden is very nice to older women such as the nuns, Ernie’s mother and also Faith Cavendish.

However, he is so kind because he is sexually attracted to them and this will cause him to lie so that he can impress the person. There are several different cases when it is clear that he is intentionally rude to older woman. At one point in the story Holden calls a prostitute to his room but once he sees how young she is he feels sorry for her. Holden then says “If she’d been a big old prostitute, with a lot of makeup on her face and all, she wouldn’t have been half as spooky”(88).

This indicates that Holden would have rather done it with an older woman because he values younger girls. When Holden meets Ernie’s mother and they get into a conversation he gets sexually attracted to her. He says, “She had quite a lot of sex appeal, too, if you really want to know”(49). It is very disturbing that he says “sex appeal” instead of “beauty” because it really shows what his thinks of her.

He starts flirting with her and says many lies to get her interested. Later on he says, “Then I really started chucking the old crap around… I had her glued to her seat”(50). Once again he is very isrespectful and rude and it is also very inappropriate to think like that to a mother of a classmate. On the other hand, he is very generous to the nuns that he meets on the train to Manhattan. It is very surprising when Holden does so many nice things to them such as pick up their basket, respect their beliefs and talk very gently because before he kept complaining about everything.

Holden acts like a real gentleman, which could be because he sees the innocence in them. Holden admires them for trying to help others because later on in the novel the reader finds out that he wants to protect children from danger.During on point he says to them, “To tell you the truth, it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all, but she asked me, so I discussed it with her for a while”(100). This is the only time that he is uncomfortable talking about sexual things because he respects that they are nuns and does not want to say something impolite.

Holden even donates a lot of money when they did not ask for any and after he leaves he even thinks about them a lot and sometimes misses them.Holden’s relationship with women his age is not always bad because he sometimes sees the girl as very childlike and simple and then he automatically is nicer to the person. However, Holden does show his immature side when he tries to get together with them but then it gets hard for him to respect girls who do not have the same ideals than him. When Holden meets Sally they spend time together like normal teenagers would do.

They go to an ice rink to have some fun but at this point he was already very disrespectful. For example, Holden says about Sally “The kept walking ahead of me, so that I'd see how cute her little ass looked”(116).In this quote Holden says “her little ass” and it has a very bitter tone to it. It is already obvious that Holden does not like what she is doing and he builds on that until he explodes at the end. He has a conversation with her and finally leaves when she does not want to go away with him.

When this happens it is clear that Holden is very serious about leaving and being alone. Another girl his age is Jane and he is deeply in love with her but throughout the book he doesn’t have the guts to talk to her. Holden says he will call Jane many times but since he never does the reader knows that the haracter is not developing. Since the beginning of the novel he has been saying this but he never had the will to do it. In some parts he stands up for Jane and feels the need to protect her like the incident with Stradlater. Another experience he had with a girl his age was with Sunny the prostitute.

Holden is very gentle to her and respects her very much because he sees how young and innocent she is. He does not go all the way because he feels that she does not know what she has gotten into and he thinks that she is too young to know that prostitution is wrong.However, she says she is “Old enough to know better” and yet he still does not want to have sex with her (85). Holden also gets much more depressed when she comes in the room, which is also a sign that he feels bad for Sunny. There are not many young girls in the novel except for Phoebe. Holden has a very special relationship with his younger sister because they trust and love each other very much.

One reason why Holden is so nice to children and that he thinks they are the most important people in the world is because of Allie’s death. Holden feels that he has to protect children from bad.The first time he says it to Phoebe saying: “What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all.

I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be. I know it's crazy"(156). Holden describes him as being a protector and savior of all children. He and Phoebe got very close after the death of Allie because they only then knew how important it is to always be there for each other.Holden describes Phoebe as intelligent, funny, emotional and as a good dancer. Even though Phoebe is seven years younger than him she still figured out about his condition and spoke to him about it.

A good example of him being nice to children is when he helps the little girl in the park when she had trouble tying her skates. Phoebe represents non-phoniness because she is always herself and that is what makes her so special. In conclusion, I think Holden can have a healthy relationship but he first needs to get past his immaturity and his thoughts of him being better than women.He is very gentle with women and he tries very hard to meet up with them and talk to them but his attitude is very bad. The incident that happened with Allie really changed his life because he believed that he was the perfect boy and that he did not deserve to die.

Allies death is really the main cause of his depression and illness and his depression is why he cannot have a normal relationship with anyone because he only wants to help the innocent and the young. His attitude towards females will defiantly not work out and help him in life but I think that he can change and he will eventually get over Allies death with the help of his family.