J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye follows 17 year-old Holden Caulfield as he journeys from the prep school he flunked out of to his home in New York City with several stops in the city along the way. Salinger creates a first-person narrative by portraying the entire story through the eyes of Holden. He also shows a potentially "crazy" character as Holden attempts to convince the reader that he is a victim of a society that has made him "crazy." I propose that Holden is not only very sane; he is smart enough to know that he can simply exaggerate "normal" adolescent behaviors and appear crazy to everyone around him to avoid responsibility for his actions.
             In his article "Holden Caulfield: Don't Ever Tell Anybody Anything," Duane Edwards argues that society "play[s] down the seriousness of his [Holden's] ambivalence, exhibitionism, and voyeurism and assign the blame for his severe depression entirely to society, to the world of perverts and bums and phonies"(554). He believes that readers make the mistake of taking Holden at his word by arguing that "Holden shares in the phoniness he loathes; that he lives by his unconscious needs and not the values he espouses; that he withdraws from rather than faces the challenge of personal relationships"(554). It is Edwards' belief that Holden essentially enjoys being "crazy" because he does not have to be responsible for his own actions when he is perceived as unstable.
             Although he is perceived as unstable, Dr. Wally Hastings argues that Holden's negative behavior towards everyone around him is normal adolescent behavior. He believes that "If one is excessively antisocial, it might be seen as a psychiatric disorder; but it is also 'normal' for teenagers to try to distance themselves from the world of adults" (Hastings). Hastings believes that Holden may exhibit some unstable behavior, but he feels that such instability is a characteristic of adolescent behavior and is a common ...