Holden and I both like kids a lot, but I sometimes wonder why that is. I guess one reason is that they could just as easily exclude us as the adults do, but they don't. Kids are fun and funny to talk to and watch, as shown by Holden's desire to "chew the fat" with Phoebe and his amusement when he notices that the skater in Central Park is wearing twenty lumpy sweaters. I think another thing that is nice about kids is that they are spontaneous and carefree. Holden has this mentality that we are on a conveyor belt and our lives are out of our control. I've definitely thought about that before, but I have trouble not continuing on the path that is set out for me. I'm planning on taking a gap year next year before I got to college, which isn't even that original, and I've been met with resistance from people who don't understand why I am not just going straight to college. I think one of the reasons I am drawn to kids is because they don't have any expectations of you. Maybe the reason Holden and I love kids is because we can live vicariously through them. My childhood was pretty great, and it seems like Holden's was, too, so kids are a great way to get back to that time.
Monday, February 9, 2015
The Kids Are (More Than) Alright
While we were talking in class about Holden's feelings towards kids, I felt myself identifying more and more with him. As was mentioned, Holden is in this awkward stage between being an adult and being a child. He is trying to spend time with people who are much older than him and they don't take him seriously. Everyone can tell that he is young -- not quite a kid but definitely not an adult -- and they don't respect him, much to Holden's dismay as he sees himself as mature, responsible, an adult. I totally understood how Holden was feeling because I often feel lonely in my Brazilian family. All of my cousins are much older than me (they range from 14 to 26 years my senior) and are starting to have kids, who range from 7 to 16 years younger than me. It is hard to know where I belong because I am technically in the same generation as my older cousins but they think of me as being the same generation as their kids because I am closer in age to them. This wasn't an issue for me when I was a kid, but now that I've grown up a bit and taken on a lot of responsibility, I definitely don't see myself as a kid. Holden thinks all of the adults in his world are phonies and get angry at them for not respecting him as the adult that he sees himself as, so he seeks companionship in kids. In the past few years, I've also turned to the company of the children in my family, so I really identify with Holden here.
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If we accept that Holden sees himself as an adult but enjoys the company of kids over the condescension of "other adults," perhaps he's trying his best to be the kind of person he wants to meet, who he believes an adult should be: an interested listener who finds pleasure in interesting company, regardless of age. But its interesting that in his talk with Sally, he mentions all this possibility. Somehow, he's not quite an adult, in the sense that he feels himself to have a level of freedom that doesn't exist for true adults. I guess in a sense, he's trying to reconcile what he sees in the so-called adults around him with his own vision, and it just isn't happening.
ReplyDeleteYou make a really good point in this, and I never really even considered it. I never really stopped and thought about his significance of his relationship with Phoebe in terms of age--I simply took the relationship as granted since they were siblings. But, now comparing myself to him, I find myself at an odds. I don't often find myself clicking with young kids that well. I'm not typically excited about a babysitting jobs, and in general I just don't know how to act around kid. Your observation about how honest and carefree and expectation-less kids are, though, makes so much sense to me. Holden's love for Phoebe is because of her honesty and because of how matter-of-fact she takes life to be.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, Holden also seems to fear the prospect of becoming an adult. I think he has a natural tendency to associate adulthood with "phoniness." Nonetheless, he does long for intelligent conversation. He seems to feel that certain children or a teenagers could provide him with said intelligent conversation better than an average adult could. One thing is clear, however: Holden is confused and he needs to accept that the is aging and either can support it or fight it.
ReplyDeleteWhile Holden may look back on childhood in a much more positive light than looking forward to adulthood, and I like your idea that kids are more accepting than adults, but even in the skating scene Holden is definitely disconnected from all the kids down on the skating rink (sort of like Stephen up on the hill). I think the problem for Holden is that only adult relationships will satisfy, but he is not sure how to go about doing that. He's different than a lot of the characters we meet in the novel and so naturally it's going to be hard for him to find fulfilling adult relationships without thinking they're "phony", but he's going to have to find them to be happy and the more he doesn't do that and hangs around skating rings remembering the past, the harder it's going to be to move forward.
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