Holden Caulfield Reckless

"The Catcher In the Rye", by J.D. Salinger, has been a book questioned for decades, many schools wonder if the book should still be taught in the English curriculum. I believe the novel should be taught in schools. Even though throughout the novel Holden displays reckless behavior, he shows the consequence of his actions.

Holden for the first time sees the impact of the world on children, he realizes how children, like Phoebe, are exposed to inappropriate content. Holden displays a perspective that prior to this scene we did not know he had. While, Holden was walking up a flight of stairs in the school, he felt sick to his stomach because of what he saw, “Somebody'd written ‘Fuck you’ on the wall. It drove me damn near crazy. I thought how …show more content…
But, Holden does not benefit from this at all. When he sneaks in his house to speak to Phoebe during the entire duration of their conversation she repeats the same thing, “ ‘You did. You did,’ she said. Then she smacked me again with her fist. If you don't think that hurts, you're crazy. ‘Daddy'll kill you!’ she said... ‘Daddy’s gonna kill you,’ ” (Salinger 214). Not only due to this Holden will be a disappointment to his father and his mother but his little sister that looks up to him. This makes him question what he is doing. When he tells Phoebe to meet him at the museum because she is leaving they have a very argumentative conversation, “ ‘Why can't I? Please, Holden! I won't do anything-- I'll just go with you, that's all! I won't even take my clothes with me if you don't want me to--I'll just take my--’ ‘You can't take anything. Because you're not going. I'm going alone. So shut up.’ … ‘I'm not going away anywhere. I changed my mind. So stop crying, and shut up,’... ‘I said I'm not going back to school. You can do what you want to do, but I'm not going back to school,’ she said. ‘So shut up.’ It was the first time she ever told me to shut up. It sounded terrible. God, it sounded terrible. It sounded worse than swearing,” (Salinger 267-269). Phoebe is showing traits like Holden, like not wanting to go to school and being disrespectful and rude, which he doesn’t like. Showing how Holden realizes how bad his lifestyle is, and how it is affecting Phoebe and how she is desperately is trying to cling onto him. Also Holden wants to try to save kids from ending up like him, “Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around--nobody big, I mean--except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff--I mean if