Catcher in the Rye, Post 3: A Rant of Annoyance

The first thing I want to say today is that no matter what I said in the previous posts, I've come to the conclusion that I do not like Holden. First, I'm pretty sure he's bipolar. He goes from being pretty happy, to being angry, to being annoyed, to being overwhelmingly depressed, to being pretty happy, to being confused to wanting to kill himself over the course of one night. Every time he describes someone, he will either start out as describing them as a wonderful human being, and then, over the course of the description, he will change them into the most vile creature you could think of or vice versa. It started with Stradlater, but he never can make up his mind about someone if they're good or bad. There are two exceptions, of course, two people I have yet to read a bad thing about: Allie, his young brother who died, and Jane, a girl who I'm pretty sure he's in love with. However, if he is in love with her, he's constantly making up excuses not to call her. He might be afraid, or whatever, but he won't even say that. He'll say "I just don't feel like it right now." This, to me, is the most annoying thing. On top of all this, he is constantly looking for the worst in any given situation. It's like, he won't let himself be happy. When he went to the night club with the girls, he was picking them apart as being ugly; when he donated money to the nuns, he was describing it as "awkward" and "embarrassing." He won't just let himself do something nice without picking it apart until it unravels into his own unhappiness. I feel like at the beginning of the book, Salinger fooled me into thinking I liked Holden, when, in actuality, I merely liked the way Salinger wrote. I like how he'll interrupt his own stories with memories, because I do that, too. And, it made me feel connected to Holden, but I am not like Holden. Thank God.