Paul’s Case and Catcher in the Rye March 30, 2008
Posted by fs2004 in Uncategorized.Tags: Catcher in the Rye, Cather, Paul's Case, Salinger
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Paul’s Case and The Catcher in the Rye were so similar that if I were Willa Cather, I would have filed a lawsuit claiming that J.D. Salinger violated copyright laws. Both stories indirectly address teenage boys being mentally instable. Both stories involve running away to New York City. The stories, however, have very different endings. Paul ends up killing himself, and Holden ends up in a mental institution. (Did anyone else notice this similarity when reading?) From a critical standpoint, I liked Catcher in the Rye better because it went into more detail and Holden was an even more developed character than Paul was.
Remember last year, with Huck, when we talked about the ‘outsider-narrator?’ Holden, Huck and Paul are all in the same family; disaffected adolescents who are largely uninvested in the values and attitudes of the culture that spawned them. Just like you can’t see the forest through the trees, or think clearly about the game while playing it (Take that!), it’s hard for an insider to look critically at society and its values. What distinguishes Holden from Paul? Charisma, for one thing. A real yearning for a human connection, for another. Even the people Paul seems close to, or drawn to, are means to the end for him.