fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2759 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2759 ⌋

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Notes:

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I thought it was alright to. But it's strange how many people relate to Caulfield since while reading it I thought, "This kid is manic depressive. He needs serious therapy." SPOILER FOR A BOOK THAT HAS BEEN OUT SINCE YOUR GRANDPARENTS WERE TEENAGERS: In the end, it turns out I was right.

I felt the same way and I didn't love it because I just couldn't relate to Caulfield on any level.

That is why I related to him, and probably lots of other people. That's why I think it's weird that it's popular for so-called open-minded people to read the book and say nothing but "Shut up, privileged white boy."

Seriously, especially when a lot of them are probably white and privileged themselves...

Yeah, I don't think being privileged had anything to do with his mental problems. He would be just as messed up if he were lower or middle class. He has a mental disorder not Affluenza.

A lot of people don't understand clinical depression. At all. They think that if you don't have anything to be "truly" upset about (whatever that means), then you're just whining. They don't get that part of why depression sucks is that it fucks with you even when nothing is objectively wrong.

People are open-minded and understanding about just about everything except mental illness.

THIS. The whole 'just snap out of it' attitude goes hand in hand with the 'how dare you behave this way when there are wars/famines/diseases' attitude. They just cannot comprehend that no matter how much you want to snap out of it, you can't, because you can't control it. And it sucks.

To be fair, a lot of teenagers do "snap out of it." I spent the entirety of my teenage years, indulging my hysterical moods until I grew out of it. But Holden Caulfield is different because he's traumatized by his brother's death.

There's regular teenaged hormone shit and there's neurotransmitter dysfunctions. There's overlap, but seriously, the normal funks of adolescence are not mental illness and it does us no favors to conflate the two.

The fact that you are equating "hysterical moods" with "depression" kiiiinda shows that you don't get it.

No, it's more like - I experienced real depression (am experiencing real depression) following the death of a family member, whereas I recognize that I was indulging my moods when I was younger.

(no subject)

(Anonymous) - 2014-07-24 14:50 (UTC) - Expand

Plus, he even has a good reason to be upset. He's still not over the death of his sibling, clearly.

Yeah, no kidding. Holden does have problems, and they are very real problems. But they are, for the most part, psychological and not physical - but that doesn't make them "not problems". Ugh at these people who champion mental illness, but only when it applies to social groups they have a special interest in.

Man, this so much.

Exactly this. Maybe one reason I'm so defensive about Holden is that I was also clinically depressed as a teenager. If a boy whose brother just died isn't aloud to be depressed about it without being "whiny" and "privileged", then what sympathy could I expect?

He was a sad kid with plenty to be sad about, even apart from being at an age when life in general can be overwhelming. I have never understood readers who can't sympathize with him. Most of my problems aren't the end of the world either but they still hurt.

I couldn't stand him because he's critical and judgmental of everyone else. Being depressed is one thing; being an asshole is another.

By the time I got around to reading this book I was old enough that I just wanted to give Holden a hug and try to find him a therapist.

(My dad was an English teacher for 30-odd years, and he gets all defensive on Holden's behalf. "He's a good kid. He's just sad and troubled!" Dad was always pretty good with troubled students, not surprisingly.)

My grandparents weren't teenagers when that book came out! My dad was a young teenager, though.

My grandparents were in their early 30s and my parents were 3 and 1.

I did relate to him a lot, even though we come from different backgrounds. But I was pretty depressed in high school, and so his feelings of isolation, impulsive random thoughts, and this grounding fantasy of being the "catcher in the rye" just struck home with me. Of course, I wasn't as overboard as him, but I felt bad for him. He needed help, but refused to really go to anyone for help, even as he had people who would try to help him or potentially could have changed things for him, and he kept putting himself in stupid situations. He brought it all on himself, but I guess I mean I felt I really did understand his thought processes, and most of it made perfect sense while I was reading it - only after I put the book down it was like, wtf, dude, why are you doing this to yourself.

Not my grandparents, they got Hemmingway.

*whispers* One of my grandparents was in her 40s when it came out...

A lot of people who either love it for the wrong reasons or hate Holden for supposedly being little more than a rich white boy seem to overlook the whole thing about Holden's brother being dead and him seemingly suffering from depression. I remember the confirmation of his psychological issues being kinda vague, but throughout the entire book I definitely felt like he needed some help.

Edited 2014-07-24 01:46 (UTC)

This. I mean, the fact that it was heavily implied (or outright stated, I don't remember) that he had been narrating the book's events from a mental hospital of some sort should have been a big clue to readers that Caulfield had serious issues that he needed to work through. Even a lot of the book's characters seemed put off by his erratic behavior