HW 46: Research and Writing

The Catcher in the Rye is essentially about a boy who abruptly leaves college and wanders the streets of New York City for days without a purpose. The only reason explicitly given was that he was fed up with how phony the people around campus were becoming. He makes several encounters with old friends and a lot of strangers. He mentions his fantasy of being "the catcher in the rye," someone who rescues children from falling off a cliff. At the end though, even after contemplating to run away, he decides to stay and give college another go.

My topic is in regards to college majors/curriculum and career decisions. The book focuses a lot on growing up and acknowledging your purpose. We struggle between career choices just as Holden struggles between going to school or leaving it for good. Of course, his decision actually includes an option outside of an institution.

Holden's abandonment and lack of commitment toward college defies the norm. His critiques of society and their phoniness obtains him some individuality. His dream of being the catcher in the rye-catching children and saving them from the harshness of the world-ends before he even fully acknowledges it. In the end, he was unable to escape the institutions, thus demonstrating how powerful they are even in the face of a guy who has been expelled time after time.

This raises the question of individuality and whether it can only be achieved outside of institutions. Is the path of choosing a college-given major or a career, a path that can help you find "yourself?" Or is wandering the city a better way to escape all the phoniness and help you understand who you really are?

Without school, Holden is constantly searching for company or some sort of activity. Depression and crankiness kicks in when he runs out of stuff to do. Institutions are made to propel our lives, to create the illusion that we are going somewhere. From high school, to college, to graduate school, to our careers and families, the steps have been designed before we even know it had to be built. These institutions give us options yes, but these options are binded by false pretenses that tell us we are choosing the type of person we would like to be. In reality, we are all the same- tools of society.

These systems serve as distractions from the one thing that scares us most: isolation. Society is in constant search of entertainment, deathly afraid to acknowledge the fact that we each are ultimately alone. Alone, we are no one. When we are forced to become spectators of institutions (as Holden was), we recognize the phoniness. We grasp our true tool identities. When we're participators however, we subconsciously will ourselves to accept the phoniness because we are afraid to do so otherwise.