Catcher in the Rye Shinanegans

I shall confess, the play put me a wee bit behind on readings, but I have caught up in relativety, so here I go.

The scene where Holden meets the nuns in the restaurant is fresh in my head. Like many of the scenes in the book, this one made me feel somewhat embarrased for Holden. I think we were all aware that Holden does indeed act like he's about 12 years old, but this part emphasizes why he comes off as incredibly immature. I don't believe that Holden is insane in any way: rather, he just has a rather intense Napoleon complex, which is interesting due to his complaining other character's inferiority complexes. In his psyche, he is constantly seething about every little thing, yet in conversation, Holden is a particularly meek and pathetic figure. With these nuns, he just rants about them as people in general to himself, and simultaneously attempts to offer them large sums of money ad nauseum. This demonstrated to me that Holden's problem is simply the angst of a 12 year old in the body of a 17 year old: his thoughts are sporadic simply because he doesn't know what his thought are. Therefore, he just decided to think everything. This is probably an exagerrated psychoanalysis of the average teenager, but I can forgive Salinger (a big pot of angst himself) for this inflation, for it is a necessary thing to do when telling a story. But for more of Holden's symptoms: He wants desperately to talk to the nuns about everything in his life, yet their responses keep angering him. He goes out of his way to respect them, and yet accidentally blows smokes in their faces. But seriously, who smokes in front of a nun? Way to go, Holden.

And in tribute to Holden, I decided not to make any paragraphs whatsoever.