Are you the catcher in the rye?

Life is in motion, it goes faster and faster, especially when you are a teenager. Information moves around us and we tend to lose our concentration, and we cannot find our purpose in life. Everyone is wondering what we will do with our lives and try to make us understand that our future depends on our present to carry our chores, but the problem is that we don’t know what we want. We don’t even have clear thoughts, nor do we have a preference for something. Why waste time in things that depress us?

«»Well. . . they’ll be pretty irritated about it,» I said. «They really will. This is about the fourth school I’ve gone to.» I shook my head. I shake my head quite a lot. «Boy!» I said. I also say «Boy!» quite a lot. Partly because I have a lousy vocabulary and partly because I act quite young for my age sometimes. I was sixteen then, and I’m seventeen now, and sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen. It’s really ironical, because I’m six foot two and a half and I have gray hair. I really do. The one side of my head–the right side– is full of millions of gray hairs. I’ve had them ever since I was a kid. And yet I still act sometimes like I was only about twelve. Everybody says that, especially my father. It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true. I don’t give a damn, except that I get bored sometimes when people tell me to act my age. Sometimes I act a lot older than I am–I really do–but people never notice it. People never notice anything.» 

Caulfield is a high-society boy that does not know what to do with his life, especially because he is tired of always judging and having opinions about every aspect of his surroundings. He is always thinking without acting, and while he does that, he never thinks of others, but himself. His life isn’t that interesting, he pretends it is but, in the end, he knows he has failed in everything. He doesn’t have time to listen to others but he wants to have someone to listen to. He wants to be a grown up but also a child. There is always a problem with him because he is always judging people for what they do, or think they do bad, instead of looking at the positive things. 

» I’d only been in about two fights in my life, and I lost both of them. I’m not too tough. I’m a pacifist, if you want to know the truth. I had a feeling old Ackley’d probably heard all the racket and was awake. So I went through the shower curtains into his room, just to see what the hell he was doing. I hardly ever went over to his room. It always had a funny stink in it, because he was so crumby in his personal habits. «» Almost every time somebody gives me a present, it ends up making me sad. »

«An unexplored life is not worth living,» said Socrates and that is what Caulfield is missing, the lack of exploration of his life; that is why everything bothers him and makes him feel depressed. He judges something as wrong, but he ends up doing the same things. He knows he is a part of the society he doesn’t want to belong to. 

» Anyway, what a gorgeous job for a guy around sixty-five years old. Carrying people’s suitcases and waiting around for a tip. I suppose he wasn’t too intelligent or anything, but it was terrible anyway. »

The way he examines life is filled with details and that is what he values more; that is why he thinks he is the Catcher in the rye, the only person that is capable due to his sensibility to see and expects the details others do not even mind. He sees that we need more decency in the way we live and treat others.  

» That’s the trouble with these intellectual guys. They never want to discuss anything serious unless they feel like it.»

We need to stop over-thinking things because it takes up our time and makes us weak because we depend on others to feel good instead of being capable of doing it by ourselves. Once we act, then we can have a purpose in life, but if we sit around waiting for it, we will never get it. 

» Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody. »