Holden Caulfield: Teenage Everyman

J.D. Salinger created a teenager that is thoroughly real when he created Holden Caulfield, and, for that very reason, teenagers have resonated with Holden from The Catcher in the Rye's first debut even till now. Holden is a real teenager because of the struggles that he faces and because Salinger helped to determine what it means to be a modern teenager through Holden. The youth of the late 1900's connected with Holden because of the prevalent “repression and conformity” of that time period, and the youth of today connect with Holden because of his experiences and emotions (Andrychuck). Holden's realness is what makes him relatable.
Holden is a thoroughly real teenager because of the struggles he faces and the characteristics he exhibits in the face of those struggles. First, Holden struggles with his family life. He pities his mother and fears his father, but he does not respect either of them. According to Ground Spark, the majority of American teenagers believe that their parents do not understand them (Groundspark.org). Therefore, Holden's family difficulties make him a realistic teenager. Second, Holden struggles with subordination to authority. This is made obvious by the fact that Holden is dismissed from three different private schools over the course of his high school years for bad grades and bad behavior. Both the bad grades and the bad behavior are evidence of his lack of respect for school authorities and parental authority. According to BBC, Holden's rebellious nature is a definite reason he should be considered a realistic teenager. BBC states that the majority of teenagers end up involved in “some kind of dangerous, unhealthy, or anti-social pursuit” as they seek to make their own identity and break away from their parents (“Teenage Emotions: Teenage Rebellion”). Third, Holden struggles with peer pressure. He worries that something is wrong with him because he does not have the strong sexual urge that all of the other guys he knows have.  Even after confessing to Sally Hayes that the infatuation most teenage guys have with sex disgusts him, he still instantly reverts to talking about sex when he speaks with Carl Luce because that is what is expected of him. Needless to say, teenagers still struggle with peer pressure today. In fact, fifty percent of adolescents (ages 12-18) feel pressured to have sex at some point in their relationships (Borkar). The fact that Holden faces peer pressure and, more specifically, that fact that he feels helpless in the face of it, makes Holden a realistic teenager. Finally, Holden struggles with his transition to adulthood, making him a real teenager. His inability to make clear decisions about his life course shows his immaturity and incompetency to be called and adult, while his physical maturity makes it impossible for him to be a child. According to Joseph Adelson, in order to create a personal identity – and thus become an independent adult –  “one must relinquish one's parents as psychosexual objects, relinquish childhood ideology based on one's position as a 'taker,' and relinquish the fantasized possibilities of multiple, glamorous lifestyles” (160). Holden still specifically struggles with relinquishing the “fantasized possibilities of multiple, glamorous lifestyles,” as seen with his first desire to run away with Sally Hayes and his later desire to stow away to the West where he would not be known by anyone. That childlike thinking – though it is not the only childlike characteristic that Holden has – makes it clear that, while Holden is not a child, he is finding it difficult to embrace adulthood and create his own identity. Everyone goes through an identity acquisition stage in their psychological development, and people typically come to that stage during their adolescent years (Adelson 167). Thus, Holden is a realistic teenager. He is struggling to find an identity so that he can become independent, just as thousands of other Americans struggle to do during their teenage years. Holden's family struggles, rebellion, susceptibility to peer pressure, and difficulties with transitioning to adulthood are all characteristics that make him a thoroughly real teenager.
It was inevitable, though, that Salinger would create a realistic teenager in his creation of Holden because Salinger was not simply creating a reflection of an already existing teenage mentality through Holden. Instead, he was playing a part in the shaping of teenage mentality through Holden. According to Finlo Rohrer, adolescents were just emerging as a social class when J.D. Salinger published The Catcher in the Rye in the 50's because only after WWII did most adolescents stop working to provide for their families and begin attending high school. At that point, teenagers began to have much more free time on their hands, and they found themselves in an environment that was largely separate from the rest of the world: high school. It was in this environment that the teenage mentality was born, and it was shaped through movies, music, and – yes – books. It was at this time that Salinger introduced Holden to the world, and Holden's characteristics became a part of teenage mentality as adolescents fed on Salinger's works alongside Elvis Presley's music and movies featuring Frank Sinatra . Jonathan Yardley states:

Indeed a case can be made that The Catcher in the Rye created adolescence as we now know it, a condition that barely existed until Salinger defined it. He established whining rebellion as essential to adolescence and it has remained such ever since (Yardley).

Salinger was a creator of the teenage mentality, and Holden was his tool. Salinger created a thoroughly real teenager when he created Holden Caulfield because, before Holden was, the teenage class did not truly exist.
Because Holden is a real teenager, it can clearly be seen why adolescents resonate with him. In the mid 1900's, The Catcher in the Rye was readily glorified by the adolescents of the time as the world crawled out of the wreckage of World War II. Sylvia Andrychuck says that “the book struck a powerful chord with the disenchanted yet idealistic youth of the 1950s... conscious of repression and conformity in the age of McCarthyism.” It was specifically the “repression and conformity” of that time that led youth to idolize Holden and desire to apply his philosophy of life to themselves. Louis Menand agrees with Andrychuck, saying that Holden's cynical outlook on life gave adolescents a reason to have the cynical view they wanted to have toward life. The youth of the 1900's resonated with Holden because he gave them an attitude to have toward life that fit with the way they felt about life at the time.
Today, youth still resonate with Holden, but not for all of the same reasons that the youth of the 20th century did. Today, teenagers resonate with Holden, first of all, because his story is a story of loss. He loses his delusions about the world around him. He loses his innocence. He loses his sister's trust. He loses his love. He loses his childhood. According to Menand, youth culture revolves around loss (largely because childhood is so transient); thus, The Catcher in the Rye became a symbol of youth culture. Beyond the loss of childhood, teenagers today experience losses among the everyday happenings of middle-class American life. Menand expounds this fact also and says:

In American life, where―especially if you are a sensitive and intelligent member of the middle class―the rewards are constantly being advertised as yours for the taking, the feeling of disappointment is a lot more common than the feeling of success, and if we didn’t learn how not to care our failures would destroy us. Giving The Catcher in the Rye to your children is like giving them a layer of psychic insulation (Menand). 

The everyday losses that teenagers experience as they leave their childhoods behind and grow more and more acquainted with the adult world lead them to find the many losses that Holden experiences comforting. Looking at Holden's life, they can feel that they are not alone in their feelings of loss.
The second reason that modern teenagers resonate with Holden is that he experiences the same emotions that they go through. Roher points out that “fans of [The Catcher in the Rye] regard it as the defining work on what it is like to be a teenager. Holden is at various times disaffected, disgruntled, alienated, isolated, directionless, and sarcastic.” In Holden, all of the unpleasant emotions of adolescence can be found as he moves throughout his days alone in New York. Adolescence is not only made up of unpleasant emotions, however, and teenagers can find a like-minded friend in the joys that Holden has as well as in his struggles. The incredible medley of emotions that Holden experiences makes him very relatable for most teenagers. Bruce Brooks comments on Holden's incredible capacity for  emotion saying:

The Catcher in the Rye is windy and stony and hot and cool, brilliantly subtle and disarmingly overt, straightforward, manipulative, sentimental, pragmatic, crazy, controlled, always precise. But perhaps most important, to adult readers in ignorance, and to young readers in wisdom, The Catcher in the Rye is ineffably young (Brooks). 

Holden's amazing capacity for emotion not only makes him realistic, but it is also a part of what makes teenagers today resonate with him.
The final reason that teenagers of today readily resonate with Holden is that Holden, like them, is being forced to come out of childhood and join the adult world against his will. There are two specific aspects of adulthood that Holden is forced to come to grips with that he does not want to accept. First, “...Holden fears the biological imperatives of adulthood – sex, senescence, and death...” (Bryan 32). These are fears that all teenagers face at some point as they grow into adulthood. These biological imperatives, as well as the social imperatives that are associated with adulthood, are what will become the main influences on all of their decisions as they move into adulthood, and the unknown places those imperatives will lead them bring fear to all teenagers as they enter adulthood. The second aspect of adulthood that Holden is forced to come to grips with is the necessity of seeing the world as it is and not as he wants it to be. As he comes to recognize the world for what it really is, he struggles to find a place to bestow his love. Arthur Heiserman and James E. Miller, Jr., highlighted Holden's struggle in this area, saying:

Adultism is precisely ''the suffering of being unable to love,'' and it is that which produces neurosis. Everyone able to love in Salinger's stories is either a child or a man influenced by a child. All the adults not informed by love and innocence are by definition phonies and prostitutes (Heiserman and Miller 7). 

And that is why, at the end of The Catcher, Holden recognizes that he is becoming the thing that he most detests: a phony. He is forgetting how to love, and it is happening largely because he is starting to see the world for what it really is and himself for who he really is, all of which is a part of growing into adulthood.  Many teenagers fall into a cynical outlook on life just as Holden did for that very reason – as they grow to see the world and themselves in a true light, they have difficulty finding a place to bestow their love.
In the end, Holden is real, and that is why teenagers resonate with him. Salinger gave Holden all of the right characteristics to make him real, but they can only be called the right characteristics because Salinger used Holden to make them the right characteristics. Youth of the 20th century clung to Holden's cynical attitude toward life as they became disillusioned about the world, and youth of today cling to Holden's like-mindedness as they become disillusioned about their world. Holden's process of growth resonates with teenage readers as they go through the same emotions and thoughts that he went through – the emotions and thoughts being ineffably more important than the situations that invoke them. Holden is real, and that is why teenagers resonate with him.

Works Cited

Adelson, Joseph, ed. Handbook of Adolescent Psychology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons Inc., 1980. 160-69. Print.

Andrychuck, Sylvia. "A History of J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye." Wayback Machine Internet Archive. University of British Columbia, 17 Feb. 2004. Web. 19 Sept. 2012. <http://web.archive.org/web/20070928072611/http://www.slais.ubc.ca/courses/
libr559f/03-04-wt2/projects/S_Andrychuk/Content/history_book_catcher.pdf>.

Borkar, Rujuta. "Peer Pressure Statistics." Buzzle. Buzzle, 31 Aug. 2011. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.buzzle.com/articles/peer-pressure-statistics.html>.

Brooks, Bruce. "Holden at Sixteen." The Horn Book. The Horn Book Magazine, May 2004. Web. 24 Sept. 2012. <http://archive.hbook.com/magazine/articles/2004/may04_brooks.asp>.

Bryan, James. "The Psychological Structure of The Catcher in the Rye." Modern Critical Interpretations: The Catcher in the Rye. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York City: Infobase Publishing, 2000. 32-33. Print.

Groundspark.org. Ground Spark, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
< http://groundspark.org/our-films-and-campaigns/thatfamily/taf_statistics>.

Heiserman, Arthur, and James E. Miller, Jr. "J.D. Salinger: Some Crazy Cliff." Modern Critical Interpretations: The Catcher in the Rye. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York City: Infobase Publishing, 2000. 6-10. Print.

Menand, Louis. "Holden at Fifty." Newyorker.com. The New Yorker, 1 Oct. 2001. Web. 28 Sept. 2012. <http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/10/01/
011001fa_FACT3?currentPage=all>.

Rohrer, Finlo. "Why Does Salinger's Catcher in the Rye Still Resonate." BBC News. BBC News, 5 June 2009. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/
8084931.stm>.

"Teenage Emotions: Teenage Rebellion." BBC. BBC News, n.d. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/humanbody/mind/articles/emotions/teenagers/
rebellion.shtml>.

Yardley, Jonathan. "J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Aging Gracelessly." Washingtonpost.com. The Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2004. Web. 24 Sept. 2012. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43680-2004Oct18.html>.

The Externalities of Italy's Immigration Policies

Italy has a large immigrant population that is rapidly growing. Currently, there are believed to be 4.3 million immigrants in Italy, totaling 7.1% of the Italian population (Kington). In Turin itself, 3-4% of the city's residents are non-natives (Rubo). The huge influx of immigrants into Italy and, more specifically, Turin in the last couple of decades has not come without its side-effects. Most of the side-effects, however, are not necessarily the result of the immigrants coming into Italy but, instead, a result of the way that the Italian government deals with the immigrants. The externalities that result from the Italian government's policies toward immigrants affect not only the immigrants but also the Italians and the country of Italy as a whole. It is up to the Italian people to convince their government to reform their policies in regard to Italy's immigrant population.
Current Italian immigration policies give many immigrants a refugee status when they are not necessarily refugees, which means that the government is responsible to provide for them. Also, the government allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country as long as they do not work. Moreover, the government's bureaucracy makes it difficult for any immigrants to become true residents and citizens of Italy. These governmental policies toward immigrants have harsh side-effects.
The direct result of these policies is that immigrants who end up frozen in refugee status or who have arrived in Italy illegally are not able to work legally, yet they end up benefiting from Italy's many welfare programs (as free-riders) without paying taxes to support those welfare programs. The externalities that come about because of those governmental policies have a much larger impact than it might appear when looking at this one direct result of the governmental policies. First of all, those governmental policies result in higher taxes on those who have legal jobs and pay taxes to support the country's welfare programs because there is a greater demand for government healthcare that is not being accommodated by a greater number of tax-paying workers. Second, racism grows among Italians because the immigrants are living off of the Italian welfare system without contributing to it, causing a strong dislike for all immigrants among the general Italian population. Third, because many of the immigrants cannot work legally, beggars cover the large cities of Italy, reducing the attractiveness of the cities to tourists who are a large source of income to many of Italy's cities (“The World Factbook: Italy”). Finally, immigrants who get distressed because of their inability to provide for themselves end up in illegal activities such as gangs, riots, work in the black market, and stealing. This externality has two other side-effects: crime rates rise in Italy and Italy's growing black market causes greater and greater economic failure in the country. As crime rates rise in Italy, families and individuals feel less safe in their homes and neighborhoods – an externality of the government's policies that affects virtually all Italians (Schillaci). Also, as the black market grows in Italy (it is currently estimated to account for 20% of the Italian economy), the Italian Treasury is deprived of more and more money (some say 100 billion euro per year), which could have been used to provide for the large refugee population and to accommodate the greater number of citizens currently reliant on welfare in Italy (Alderman). In the end, immigrants who are unable to get legal work find themselves in poverty, and Italians – who are forced to pay higher taxes because of the immigrant population who is living off of welfare programs they do not contribute to – may find themselves in poverty or closer to it also. All of the externalities of the government's current policies toward immigrants lead up to an overall higher poverty rate in Italy and a weaker Italian economy.
What needs to be done about it? Italians need to encourage their government to be more decisive in regard to immigrants. Most of the immigrants want a stable, legal job, but they are simply unable to get one (Schillaci). If they were made legal residents, they would find legal jobs, contribute to the welfare system instead of only benefiting from it, and become productive citizens who would contribute to the overall growth of the Italian economy. If the government is not willing to allow immigrants access to Italian jobs, then the immigrants need to be sent back to their countries. Legal workers' taxes cannot support the entire immigrant population single-handed. The Italian people need to find their voice and recognize the plight of the immigrants as well as the effect that plight has on their own everyday lives. They need to encourage their government to change its policies toward immigrants so that either the immigrants will be fully integrated into Italian society, or they will be sent home. Leaving them frozen in refugee status or allowing them to live in Italy illegally as long as they do not get a legal job is inhumane. It is time for Italians to speak up on behalf of the immigrants, themselves, and their country. The government's policies toward immigrants must change.

References

Alderman, Liz. "A Daunting Path to Prosperity." The New York Times. Accessed December 7, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/29/business/economy/
italy-faces-a-long-list-of-barriers-to-growth.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Kington, Tom. "Italy Wakes Up to the Realities of Immigration." The Guardian . Accessed December 7, 2012. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/21/italy-milan-race-riots.

Rubo, Viviana. "Urban Regeneration and Integration in Turin (Italy): the Example of Porta Palazzo / The Gate Project." Forum -- Institute for Multicultural Affairs. Accessed December 7, 2012. http://www.forum.nl/Portals/Woonateliers/
Urban%20regeneration%20and%20integration%20in%20Turin%20(Italy).pdf.

Schillaci, Rossella. Altra Europa. DVD. Directed by Rossella Schillaci. Italy: Azul Film.

"The World Factbook: Italy." Central Intelligence Agency. Accessed December 7, 2012. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/it.html.