Subject: RE: Salinger characters as role models?
From: Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Date: Sat Jun 14 1997 - 22:07:14 GMT
Said Steve Gallagher <sgallagher@lasersedge.net>:
> What were Holden's mistakes? Seymour's? (Not suicide, please.) Could
> any conscious action on either character's part have altered their
> demise? Have you learned anything from these stories?
I don't think there's anything to be learned from Holden, except maybe the
thing that could save his life: "You're not the only person who's gone
through this." That is the reason it's such an important book, and should
be sitting around everyone's house, available to any teenager who might
stumble onto it. A major problem with troubled adolescence is the
overwhelming feeling that no one cares or understands how you feel, so you
must be the most useless freak on earth and might as well be dead.
I wonder how many lives _The Catcher in the Rye_ has saved already, and
how many it could have saved, if the right people had read it at the right
time. I don't think I would be dead if I had never read it, but my life
would certainly be different.
Jon
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