later, after he has had time to think about it, what does holden think about antolini?

After a bridge of some twoscore years, I recently got around to rereading J. D. Salinger's "A Catcher in the Rye".  I came away from this novel with a very different interpretation of its pregnant than when I first read it in English grade, oh so long ago.  I was shocked, non because of the narrator Holden'due south Caulfield'due south course language, his negativity, or the situations he retells, merely by what was left unsaid, the story behind his story that Salinger has woven, like the random patterns on the Nazca Plain of Caulfield'southward mind that can merely be understood when viewed at a very loftier elevation.

"Catcher" is a story of the result of kid sexual corruption.

The character of Holden Caulfield has been interpreted variously, primarily by most as a tale of teenage angst. He is angry, cynical, snarky, tearful, raging, full of sexual free energy, confused, depressed, and crazy.  He is intelligent, but lies constantly.  He alternates between moments of great tenderness and insight, and extremely provocative behavior.  He is obsessed by innocence, or rather the loss of information technology, and he doesn't know how to deal maturely with adult behaviors. He is bothered by changes in his sixteen yr-sometime torso, desirous of women but suspicious of their motives, is outwardly homophobic, but fascinated by perverted beliefs.  Information technology is from this outward appearance of Holden Caulfield that we retrieve that this is a coming-of-historic period novel or teenage rebellion.

But novels of this genre, like "Candide" and "David Copperfield," generally stop on a happy and reconciled note.   David marries the woman he should have married all along and lives happily always later on. Candide retires to his farm in America, a sadder, only wiser state gentleman.  Even in the 1954 moving picture, "Rebel Without a Crusade," which was inspired, in part, by "Catcher in the Rye," James Dean'south conflicted teen grapheme, Jim Stark, is reconciled back to his family unit. Holden Caulfield, on the other hand, winds up in what appears to exist a mental hospital, his spirit subdued, perchance due to the crude psychiatric treatments bachelor in the 1950s. His story is a descent into madness, closer to Conrad's "Middle of Darkness" in graphic symbol.

Holden's story is best understood as a long and elaborate tall-tale centered on his relationship with a Mr. Antolini, a friend of his parents and a sometime English teacher at Elkton Hills, 1 of 3 prep schools Holden attended, and the i he hates the most — Pency Prep and the Whooton School being the other two.

As Holden's emotional crisis in New York City starts to reach its meridian, he suddenly thinks to call Mr. Antolini, "the all-time instructor I ever had," presumably because he isn't "phony," even though information technology is very late at night, maybe near dawn.  Prior to this point, which is near the end of the novel, Holden makes no mention of this instructor who had encouraged him in developing his obvious writing skills. It also turns out that Mr. Antolini was a friend of Holden's parents, and presumably a trusted human being. Information technology is refreshing to read about an developed character that Holden actually likes.  But we are being set up by the author to place our trust in an evil man, only as Holden was misled by Antolini.

In affiliate 24, though it is the middle of the night, Antolini invites Holden in and provides him with an understanding ear, some comforting life advice, and a place to sleep. Mrs. Antolini, who is much older than her hubby and seemingly in a marriage of convenience, makes them java and goes off to bed. Mr. Antolini prepares himself a series of strong alcoholic drinks and smokes several cigarettes.

Fighting off slumber "all of a sudden" and yawning evidently, Mr. Antolini prepares Holden's bed on the burrow.  Holden is comatose inside minutes.

Holden is startled and awakes merely to find Mr. Antolini sitting on the flooring abreast him and touching him.

"I woke upwards of a sudden.  I don't know what time it was or annihilation, but I woke up.  I felt something on my caput, some guy's manus. Male child, it really scared hell out of me.  What it was, it was Mr. Antolini's mitt.  What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor correct next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting me on the goddam head.  Male child, I'll bet I jumped about a thousand feet."

Frightened by this apparently sexual advance, Holden immediately dresses and hurriedly leaves the apartment, while Antolini makes some feeble excuses for his behavior.  Holden's physical reaction is telling:

"Boy, I was shaking like a madman. I was sweating, too.  When something perverty like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kinda stuff's happening to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it."

Though he has a penchant for exaggerating his numbers, his claim that he has had multiple encounters with pedophiles throughout his babyhood is a major alarm bell.  Holden seems to want to forget nigh information technology, just he can't.  Like many victims of child sexual assault, he start to doubt himself — perhaps he was wrong — wonders if he should render to the Antolini household, and blames himself for what just happened.   In Penn Station, he becomes unreasonably afraid to cross the street, has a bout of diarrhea, and collapses unconscious to the floor of a public bathroom.

Although Salinger doesn't explicitly say then, Holden shows all the signs of having been drugged with a allaying, perhaps in the coffee served past Mrs. Antolini.  Rereading chapter 24, Mr. Antolini's rambling advice on opening upwards the size of his mind through education.  It becomes clear that Antolini is grooming Holden and, through innuendos, leading him into considering the homosexual lifestyle.

"'In one case you lot become past all the Mr. Vinsons [a reference to Holden's "Oral Expression" teacher, i.eastward., an inferior teacher] , you're going to start getting closer and closer – that is, if you desire to, and if you wait for information technology and wait for it – to the kind of information that will be very, very honey to your middle.  Amongst other things, you'll find that you're non the first person who was ever confused and frightened and fifty-fifty sickened past homo behavior. You're past no means alone on that score.  You'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now.  Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. Yous'll larn from them–if yous want to.  Just equally someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It'due south a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And information technology isn't education. It'south history. Information technology's poetry.'"

What the hell is Antolini going on about? He pretends to exist talking virtually scholarship, but this is a very abstract and confusing conversation to accept with anyone in the early morning hours. Like a typical pedophile, Antolini believes that Holden, who he calls a "handsome boy," wants to exist sexually awakened past an older homo.  Antolini is reassuring Holden that the homo-boy sexual experience, though initially confusing, frightening, and even sickening, is actually cute and poetic. He even offers to share erotic literature with Holden.

Antolini touts his ain superior qualifications.

"'I exercise say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with–which unfortunately is rarely the instance–tend to exit infinitely more valuable records behind them than men who are simply brilliant and creative.  They tend to express themselves more than clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through to the end…. Do you follow me at all?'"

Read as a pedophile appeal, Antolini is boasting of his broad and sophisticated knowledge of sexual practices.  Why carp with having sexual activity with "bright and creative" amateurs, when you can have sexual practice with a scholarly man? "Do you follow me at all?"

Holden obviously doesn't. Even if he were not dealing with the furnishings of his drugging, Holden is clearly attracted to women.  He wants to have sex with immature women such equally his sometime girlfriend Sally Hayes, stripper Faith Cavendish, his brother'south girlfriend, Lillian Simmons, the prostitute Sunny, and numerous bar flies. Holden is unable to consummate any of these relationships which leads the reader to believe he is probably gay.  But in the context of homosexual sexual abuse, Holden's fantastic obsession with having sex activity with a woman becomes a course of compensation, a style to "evidence" to himself that he not "a flit."  To Holden, these women are props, girls that he doesn't really care nearly.  He is not really interested in having loveless sex. Holden is bothered by how his roommate Stradlater routinely has forced sexual intercourse with women in the back of Coach Ed Bankey's car.

Holden has an abiding beloved for his babyhood summer friend, Jane Gallagher.  Jane and Holden are the same age, play checkers, lawn tennis and golf game, and hold easily on walks and in the movie house.

"I got to really know her quite intimately.  I don't mean information technology was annihilation physical or anything –– it wasn't ––simply we saw each other all the time. You lot don't have to get to sexy to know a girl."

Different the cocky-centered, outspoken, and somewhat frivolous Sally, Jane is introverted, merely sincere and scholarly.  And they share a secret. Jane is being sexually abused by Mr. Cudahy, her step-father, a failed playwrite and drunken lout who walks around in his underwear and fifty-fifty naked in front of Jane.  Holden relates how Jane becomes oddly unresponsive in his presence.

"…of a sudden this alcohol hound her female parent was married to came out on the porch and asked Jane if there were any cigarettes in the house. I didn't know him also well or anything, but he looked like the kind of guy that wouldn't talk to you much unless he wanted something off yous. He had a lousy personality. Anyway, old Jane wouldn't answer him when he asked her if she knew where there was whatever cigarettes. So the guy asked her over again, but she still wouldn't answer him. She didn't even await upwards from the game. Finally the guy went inside the house. When he did, I asked Jane what the hell was going on. She wouldn't even answer me, then. She made out like she was concentrating on her next move in the game and all. Then of a sudden, this tear plopped down on the checkerboard. On one of the reddish squares—boy, I can notwithstanding run across it. She merely rubbed it into the board with her finger. I don't know why, but information technology bothered hell out of me."

Holden sits down adjacent to her to comfort her in her distress. This intimate moment is followed by an explosion of passion between them, including kisses all over her face, "except her rima oris and all. She sort of wouldn't let me get to her oral fissure."  Like Holden, Jane wants a true dear making, not the abuse that involved forced kissing nigh the mouth.  Holden claims not to know what was bothering Jane, but, in the same breath, he imagines that Cudahy "tried to get wise with her."

Holden is unable to bring himself to see or call Jane, even though she is visiting Pencey, literally in the building next door.  This can be explained in terms of his own distressed state of mind.  He doesn't want Jane to see him in his agitated state.  What is perhaps harder to explain is why he allows Stradlater, a known womanizer, to leave with Jane in the first identify.  Holden could easily accept offered to have Jane out himself. Instead, he attacks Stradlater only after he returns from his appointment with Jane.

The answer is that Jane knew him "the summertime before final" when Holden was thirteen or fourteen, shortly after the decease of his brother Allie, and presumably before Holden experienced his ain string of victimizations.  Jane is an icon of innocence, a hobbling flower.  He hasn't seen her in a year and a half. Has she retained her innocence, or has she go a slut, a woman who gives away her sex favors to the BMOC?  Does Jane still beloved him?

When Stradlater returns from his date, it becomes articulate––to Holden at whatsoever rate–– that he indeed had intercourse with Jane.  Stradlater doesn't boast most his conquest, leading Holden to think that "something had gone funny."  Jane had resisted Stradlater's seduction.  This is why Holden explodes in anger.  Stradlater has made her a victim all the same again.

All throughout the narrative, Holden hints at his victimization.  Holden calls practically every adult and schoolhouse mate "a phony," a person who pretends to be something that they are not or who is hiding a shameful truth. Holden'southward journey begins long before his adventures in New York. He showtime encounters sexual activity abuse while he is at the Whooton school.

It is non clear from the narrative who abused him first, but Carl Luce, Holden'southward educatee counselor at Whooton may have been involved. Holden considers calling Luce when he first arrives at Penn Station, but changes his mind, saying "I didn't like him much."  Even so, he changes his mind when his date with Sally Hayes goes badly.  Holden notes that Luce, who is three years older (19), is an intellectual who had the highest IQ at Whooton. Withal, he considered him to be a "fat-assed phony."

Luce was well-versed in perverse sexual practices, and would enterain the younger boys with titillating stories:

"The only thing he ever did was requite us these sex talks and all, late at night when there was a bunch of guys in his room. He knew quite a bit about sex, especially perverts and all. He was telling usa about a lot of creepy guys that go around having diplomacy with sheep, and guys that go effectually with girls' pants sewed in the lining of their hats and all.  And flits and Lesbians.  Onetime Luce knew who every waltz and Lesbian in the United states was.  All you had to do was mention somebody–anybody–and old Luce would tell you if he was a flit or not."

Holden suspects that Luce's sex talk and carnal knowledge was a cover for his own secret homosexuality. Every bit advisor to the younger boys, Luce was also unusually obsessed with the details of their sexual practice lives:

"He said that you could turn into one [a flit] practically overnight, if you had the traits and all. He used to scare the hell out of us. I kept waiting to turn into a flit or something…. When we were at Whooton, he'd brand you depict the most personal stuff that happened to you.  Only if you you started request him questions about himself, he got sore."

On meeting Luce at the Wicker Bar, apparently a coming together place for homosexual men, Holden attacks Luce sarcastically.

"'Hey, I got a flit for you,' I told him. 'At the end of the bar. Don't look now. I've been saving him for ya.'"

"'How'southward your sexual practice life?'" I asked him.

"'What are you majoring in?' I asked him. 'Perverts?' I was only horsing around."

Luce, visibly annoyed by this questioning, reveals that he has a Chinese girlfriend, who is in her thirties, a sculptress, and a new immigrant from Shanghai. When asked why, Luce says he prefers "Eastern philosophy" which regards sex activity as both "a concrete and a spiritual experience." Holden mocks him, suggesting that he, too, should become to China to better his sex life.  Regardless if Luce is gay, he is in an unusual human relationship where he is serving the sexual needs of an older, dominating woman.  Given Luce's background, this is just another sexual adventure and possibly a encompass for his preference for gay men.

While at Elkton Hills, Holden witnessed the murder of an introverted, and possibly gay student, James Castle. Castle has called some other student, apparently a nifty, of beingness "conceited."  The corking and his friends face Castle in his room to extract an amends:

"…he wouldn't do it. And then they started in on him. I won't even tell you lot what they did to him––it's too repulsive––only he still wouldn't take information technology back, old James Castle."

Castle then "jumped out the window" rather than have back the insult.

The account is difficult to empathise the fashion Holden tells information technology. To call another pupil "conceited," meaning excessively vain, is hardly an insult to warrant a severe response leading to a decease by suicide.  Information technology'south easier to conclude that James Castle was anally raped and the thrown out the window.

This estimation is reinforced by the appearance of the Elkton Hills instructor and secret pedophile, Mr. Antolini. He verifies that Castle is really expressionless, picks upwards the body, and so carries him to the infirmary. In re-reading these passages, it seems likely that Mr. Antolini and Headmaster Hass, "the phoniest bounder I e'er met in my life," concocted the suicide story to prevent the details of his murder from reaching the parents. But the other students would take known what really happened. It was an open hugger-mugger.

Equally a teen, I was led to run across Holden Caulfield as a rebel against … something.  Something was incorrect in Holden'due south universe.  Every bit teenagers would, we took it to mean that there was something incorrect with the world as a whole.  Equally in the movie, "A Rebel Without a Cause," where James Dean'southward character Jim Stark is rebelling against something unnamable, maybe his parents, maybe his eye-class suburban upbringing, mayhap conformity.  But none it makes much sense. If yous read "Catcher" in the same way, you will come up away with this vagueness.  Holden is looking for dear, tenderness, existent relationships.  Simply everyone he knows, except for his sister, Phoebe, is purely self-centered and is only interested in using Holden.  He sabotages virtually all of his relationships and takes on personae of being more mature and sophisticated than he really is.  He is as large a phoney as all the phonies he despises.

So, there it sits… until you lot realize that Holden Caulfield has been sexually abused past his trusted teachers. Holden is a victim, non of society, but of real predators, many times over.  He can't talk about it direct with anyone, not fifty-fifty yous the reader.  He is revealed in the end to be the resident of a mental hospital.  He has constructed the story you lot have just read for another psychiatrist.  Even so, despite his opportunity to exist truly honest, he does not mention the crusade of his distress directly.  He represses his homosexual feelings.  He may have fifty-fifty taken pleasure in his repeat sexual encounters.  He cannot carry the idea that he might exist the very debauchee that he rails against.

The phoniness that Holden condemns is acquired by our desires to come across the world as perfect and perfectable.  We resist having open up discussions virtually things that we are aback of, merely that occur with some regularity.  Holden does his all-time to expose the seamy underside of life among the urban upper centre-grade, but he is existence unfair. The story is conspicuously not accurate. The timeline of the story unrealistically packs a month's worth of experiences into a few days. The encounters seem just too pat, intended to print and manipulate. We don't even know if his encounters were partially real or totally imaginary. (Holden boasts near his ability to fool people with his alpine-tales.)

Presuming that Holden is not being entirely dishonest, I see this narrative, as manipulative every bit it is, every bit a reaction to abuse.  He is a teenager whose psychology and personality take been tragically damaged by pedophilia and our tendency to condemn those who expose uncomfortable truths.

Students should read "Catcher in the Rye," not as a tale of mindless teenage rebellion "against lodge," simply equally an example of how teachers and other trusted adults tin can manipulate children into madness.

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Source: https://stereorealist.wordpress.com/2017/04/20/the-secret-rape-of-holden-caulfield/

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