Re: Pilgrim Books (Catcher)

Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 19 Oct 1998 10:51:34 +1000

> C, I enjoyed this idea very much.  I reread the carousel scene
> and wondeered if you understood how the rain works?

Hmm ... I've always thought of it in a sort of baptismal sense, or at very
least a cleansing. It's almost like a miracle, the way the rain seems to
come out of nowhere and at just the right time. I think the transcendent
moment often relies on this sort of juxtaposition, where everything seems
to come together in just the right way. 
 
> you see
> there's Holden who has finally understood if Phoebe reaches and falls,
> he's got to let her (meaning perhaps, that he realizing his own fall and
> already gaining some calm and some perspective)

I think that what this realisation indicated - that is, the realisation
that no matter how long he stands on that crazy cliff he can't catch all
the children - is in accordance with one of the central portents of
Buddhism, that once a person lets go of the anxiety of trying to control
things, they may travel to transcendence. It's also a little like the
Christian `via negativa' (which again is one of the ideas behind Eliot's
`Four Quartets)- that a person must totally empty themselves in order to be
filled with grace. I like the idea that Phoebe `crowns' Holden - I don't
think it's mentioned, but perhaps this time the brim is facing the right
way? This would indicate that Holden has always had this potential for
transcendence but has been using it the wrong way. I wonder if the rain
also has some resonances with Holden's description of visiting Ally's
grave, which also includes rain.
 
> help me with this last line, "God, I wish you could've been
> there."

That's a difficult one, isn't it? I have a couple of theories, but none of
them seem quite right. One - Holden has visited different teachers all
throughout the novel. Does the transcendence earn him the ability to be our
teacher (it would seem so since he is telling us his story)? Or, on the
other hand, this could be Holden's downfall, the fall that Mr Antolini
talks about - after finally releasing control he attempts to reassert it -
after all, the next chapter doesn't appear to continue the transcendence,
it just seems to return him to where he started. I don't know - I'll have
to think about this one.

> In some way, his transcendence might mean god was there...our resident
> psychoanalyst may read this part as typical of breakdowns (a grinning boy
> soaked to the bone happy because his sister rides a caousel in a blue
> coat)...and maybe he's just pleased with the relief of realizing his
> limits in helping self and others...that wanting the truth doesn't mean
> saving or hating phonies, but doing it.

I think so  - after all, Holden doesn't succeed in transforming a single
phoney. But the breakdown? I've never been able to make up my mind about
this. But I do know that a lot of religious people have been locked up as
looneys - or, to a smaller extent sent to Californian psychoanalysts by
worried New York parents. Or - and here's another spanner in the works -
are they worried that Holden will commit suicide? He's expressed the desire
a few times in the book, and depression followed by a sudden period of
elation is a recognised symptom of this. Which would make it extra ironic -
where Holden has just made the decision to live, his parents have read it
as the opposite. It would be typical that transcendence - and such
seemingly illogical transcendence - would be recognised as insanity in the
modern world.

It's raining here, too. It's very nice because it was 36C here yesterday.
The end of Chapter 25 would have to be one of my favourite Catcher moments,
because Holden does gain, for want of a better comparison, his Davega
bicycle (: And, like Sri Ramakrishna, he has achieved it `practically
without the help of any teacher'. He's realised that one has to make one's
own decision about whether or not to step over that crazy cliff.

Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
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