Disillusionment and Systemic Antifragility

Holden Caulfield and His Growth in “Catcher in the Rye”

Systemic antifragility is the idea that an individual system observable to the universe benefits from applied harm that takes in the form of applying shock to the system. That applied shock acts as a forcing function for the system to utilize what is important, and what is not important, and importance in it of itself is the meaning that defines the system’s short and long-term actions. Adjusted for humans on the individual level, this takes in the form of intentional and non-intentional suffering that develops and improves the individual despite the severity of the nature of the harm itself. Disillusionment is the set of ideas that convey misconceptions and adversarial perturbations to neutral ideals and laws of reality that guide and define the actions and thought processes of an individual system. Disillusionment can be represented as a numerical value in a spectrum that changes on the instance of the individual’s self-awareness and consequently gaining more experience that guides their understanding around their environment and reality. Adjusted to “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, disillusionment can be influenced by factors of intentional and non-intentional suffering which then create a loss of faith within oneself or their respective environment around them and can induce short-termism and respective behavior that promotes short term thinking, and the suffering itself can create a non-deterministic result of whether an individual grows from it or not. Despite the vast inconsistencies and instances of Holden Caulfield’s consistent irrationality, he has exceptionally grown stronger at the end, independent of his narration.

Despite Holden’s intentional non-reliability from his thoughts, the progression of Holden’s actions represents a stronger signal that represents his strength in overcoming personal conflict. It is given that Holden’s intelligence potential was established when it was confirmed his academic performance was a result of complacency and distaste and he pursued things well that he had an interest in such as his English class given his teacher’s remarks and his own intentional effort to not do well in any other class as opposed to struggling with content. Holden demonstrates his own thoughts and internal feelings, stating how when anyone ever gives him a gift or present, that “it ends up making me [Holden] sad” (Chapter 7). Generally, the idea of a gift is to reciprocate love and compassion for an individual. Gifts are meant and designed for the intent of sharing and reciprocating love, and to bring joy. Holden’s reaction to that reciprocated gesture of love is accompanied by sadness. The juxtaposition is meant to show that Holden’s own insecurities combined with unresolved emotional debt as a result of self-hatred and fear and inexperience, along with his overall self-inflicted loneliness and the consequential disconnect from the majority of the characters in his world reinforce his dismay because he feels as if he does not deserve to be given anything by anyone because of his own incompetence, yet he yearns for reciprocated love. He behaves contradictory to his intent, because he yearns to grow, but does not know how to yet. Holden will say that he is sad because others are reciprocating love, but it is more because Holden does not see himself as one that deserves love despite his desire for it. When Holden had given a white lie to Mr. Spencer, he then emphasizes how “I’m [Holden] the most terrific liar” (Chapter 3). Throughout the story so far, Holden has contradicted his narrative intent to show the reader his anger towards the unjust design of his environment and its respective group of people and to push his ideas to the reader, yet he boasts himself proudly to be one that is inconsistent with his word and what his actions are. The ambiguous introduction to Holden’s self-awareness of his own narrator unreliability is meant to deprecate his own integrity and credibility intentionally either to indirectly signal his honesty or because he is enforcing the idea of not having full confidence within his own abilities to deal with his problems because of the weight of the world around him, even though he inflicts it upon himself, and implements escapism through lying independent of how much trouble it gets him into, as a method to handle his situation. Regardless, Holden has established a vantage point through his preamble for the reader to discern between his own unreliability given his actions versus his own expressed thoughts. He has indirectly given the constraint that his thoughts can only be verifiable to an extent if his emotional state is stable, otherwise what he actually does in the moment, guided by his subconscious behavior, is a detail to have the reader value more when judging Holden overall, given his own narrative bias as a factor of both events, to later prove and verify what to value more given his actions and his words in the upcoming situations he will face in the story. For context, Holden has little to no internal meaning and no confidence in himself for most of the story, and thus he leads himself to amplify his problems because of unresolved emotional debt with immense irrationality, self-hatred and despises others around him, labeling them as “phonies” to oversimplify his unresolved suffering internally. As Holden leaves Pencey Prep, he observes himself in the moment alone, packing and leaving within a small time frame. He then thinks about Stratlader, stating that “Old Stratlader didn’t even wake up” (Chapter 8). To clarify, it is important to not entirely discount the thoughts that he voices alone by himself, as he is learning to understand the volatility of his emotional state over time. To continue, Holden regards him as “Old Stratlader”, and follows up with a thought concerned about him being awake to signal a formal farewell that couldn’t happen because he is sleeping, and considers him with referential camaraderie despite their conflict. It can be argued that during the moment, Holden was desperate, but his optionality was not limited because there are many more people than Stratlader. Holden’s concern for his friends override the thoughts from his previous thoughts fueled by his irrational emotional state regarding Stradlater, thus exemplifying that he values the relationship and he cares about Stradlater despite Stradleter having wronged him unintentionally regarding Holden’s sentimental work in remembrance of Allie in the past. For context, Stratlader disregarded Holden’s attempt to remember Allie given that Holden knew Allie was smarter than Holden and more capable, sparking the deeper insecurity of his own existence, and when Stradleter had no regard, independent of Holden’s sentimental connection to what he wrote, this had emotionally fueled Holden and the previous thoughts mentioned about Stradlater. Even through all of that, to an extent justified, Holden stops holding a grudge for a moment and reflects, and thinks about his friend before leaving, contrary to what one would expect somebody would do by reciprocating hate with hate given roots of human nature. Given his actions, Holden unintentionally reveals his character because his words to an extent cannot be trusted due to his emotional state, and his actions represent an individual who has the desire to resolve their suffering and deep internal pain, and does not know how, representing his core disillusionment which validates and confirms why he behaves in an irrational manner consistently throughout the story. He copes with the disillusionment of his environment with cynicism of the world around him that is self-validated with his unresolved emotional trauma and unresolved pain. Despite this challenge, he makes the choice to reciprocate love to override the error from his own irrespective and bitter view of characters in his world including Stradlater. So far, Holden has made attempts to change his behavior for the better, and it is subtle, very minor incremental changes that become compounded over time that makes the difference and proves that he has gotten stronger, and all the emotional states from all the challenges he has experienced do not exemplify his weakness, but rather the irrespective and irrational responses to the growing pains of overcoming his disillusionment of the reality and environment around Holden. Holden continues to handle the growing pains of transitioning to adulthood. Before Holden leaves Phoebe after visiting their parents’ apartment, Phoebe loans him her Christmas money, and Holden promptly reciprocates, crying because he had a visibly obvious point of reference of someone outside himself caring about him and not just pretending to so, but actually showing it by giving money, which was not close to common. Holden “took my [his] hunting hat out of my [his] coat pocket and gave it to her [Phoebe]” (Chapter 20). Phoebe then returns the hat to him, reciprocating the gesture of love back to Holden. For context, the red hat has symbolically represented as the physical representation as the tool that Holden uses to protect himself from his world, similar to how his self-validated cynicism functions. Given that the hat was always meant to protect himself from others, Holden wishes for the same for his little sister. He wants to follow through with his mission of protecting others, despite his own unresolved, accrued psychological and emotional debt. He chooses to save those around him, to think for not himself only. He reboots his irrationality from getting the desired feeling of importance and the gesture of sister exemplifies the exchange that generated the inflection point within his own self-awareness and then helps him grow. He goes beyond the cynicism he built to handle the complexities of the world around him by thinking for others, thinking of the positive instead of only focusing on the negative and being unproductive about it. Clearly, there are structural and contextual inconsistencies between Holden’s actions and what he expresses when recounting his experiences. The instance of him becoming stronger is true because he has gone through more non-intentional suffering from traumatic experiences and self-inflicted suffering of his own reaction to his environment, and there is more context to exemplify the intensity of what he was battling through, and amidst it all, he manages to give to others without any expectation, coming closer to realizing the idea of opting for more joy amidst suffering within his own environment. Holden is far from a stagnant, static character in terms of his improvement, but that all of the instances where he contradicts his emotional state amidst his own behavioral pattern of self-victimization is overwhelmed by his love and concern for the people in his world, not out of desperation or primitive and weakly rooted nature, but his own desire to become a better version of himself that has a less sensitive and immature view of his own world, generating strength.

Holden learns to gauge greater control over his emotionally irrational behavior with respect to his expectations of others in his reality and his own state of victimization, creating liberation, and consequently, strength. For context, according to Holden Caulfield, someone who is considered a phony is someone that does not align with Holden’s malleable views and heuristically misaligns with Holden’s high expectations. He states how the adults in the club that he sat around with are considered as “the phonies applauding”, and how if anyone sits long enough with the adults, that they would “hate everyone in the world” (Chapter 19). Holden’s contempt for adults lies upon the ideas that the adults are conforming to society, and how conformism breaks Holden’s rules and suddenly he makes the generalization that they must be phony. Holden has anger and resentment towards people he barely understands or knows, which shows the gap of his groundedness with the laws of human nature in the reality he is in, independent of his views. The misalignment between Holden and the characters around him creates an inferiority complex for Holden fueled by primitive emotions relating to jealousy and self-hatred, and mainly insecurity which then guides his self-inflicted state of victimization and his contemptuous outlook of others. If people are not perfectly parallel with Holden’s expectations, then they are phonies according to Holden, which is used as a medium for his victim-like mentality. Over the course of the narration, Holden removes himself from his own state of victimization and does not take the chaos around him personally. His entire life, Holden has remained in a state of self-validated victimization coupled with unresolved emotional debt. Holden optimizes thinking with irrational pessimism given his limited sample size and understanding of human nature. His own personal frustration rooted in his self-inflicted victimization clouds his thinking, logic, and reasoning ability. Despite this, he continues to reciprocate and give to others as a way to grow and fix his own internal problems by changing his focus and perspective. Holden meets an inflection point within his own self-growth and his definition of his own meaning in life is able to be more ingrained, in which the meaning resides in protecting others during the loss of innocence, to be ultimately the catcher in the rye. He reacts to seeing his little sister during the event of being at the carousel. He exclaims that he “was damn near bawling, I [Holden] felt so damn happy”. He has always stated his physical reaction to his internal emotions of crying as a response to cope with the pain associated with his personal challenges as a victimization technique, but during the event taking place, he is physically reacting to himself experiencing joy and letting himself experience it. He finally allows himself to think clearly and to help himself by working to help others that he cares about, that to ultimately save others and execute his mission, that he must save himself in the process to be successful. Holden has repetitively protected himself and his behavioral victimization with cynicism and self-hate because he felt he did not deserve to unlock and execute a positive outlook on his life, and does the opposite for once during the story, generating the pivotal moment of reducing his longer-term state of self-inflicted victimization. He signals his love and companionship for his sister as a way to make amends to his own guilt of pushing away others at a whim of mistake due to Holden’s high expectations, and he actually thinks for others and will let himself reduce his own irrationality, reducing his self-centeredness to reduce his self-hatred, making him stronger. He makes it clear that he isn’t cut off from the world, and that he does have connections but that he is often misunderstood and misunderstands his reality because of his pessimistic view of his reality influenced by much time spent in isolation. The reciprocative exchange between himself and Phoebe earlier and him experiencing Phoebe at the carousel and sharing time with someone he loves, and his own self-reflection during that moment was able to help him solidify and realize his goals into his physical reality, reducing the cloudiness and victimization he had always inflicted upon himself.

In conclusion, Holden removes his state of behavioral event loops rooted within victimization and complacency. Holden’s ideological silo of imagining that everyone around him is working against Holden was an idea that guided Holden for most of the story, but then the inflection point of having an individual give him something important and meaningful itself generated the code to reprogram Holden’s intentional state of emotional instability, and not understanding himself amidst the partially self-inflicted chaos induced from his childhood trauma of Allie’s death, depression and loneliness, and self-abuse. He overrides his behavioral irrationality guided by the emotional debt he never addressed over time. He overcomes his self-hatred and learned to not necessarily “cope” with his own insecurities, but focusing on embracing both the good and bad in his life, but focusing on the positive moments more often. Holden is the archetype of humanity, one in which he shows over and over again his inconsistencies, weaknesses, and habits and how he goes against his own moral code at times but doesn’t ever let go of it, and then over time, learns to grow through thinking long term for himself, and gracefully removing himself slowly from the faults of his own human nature. Holden has clearly shown his anger and emotional response to his challenges because he did not deal with his problems because he did not feel loved. Holden defines the archetypal dichotomy of systemic complexity and simplicity. If anything, Holden is a representation of the human race. Humans mess up, break things, go against their own rules, break their own rules, behave inconsistently at times, give in to irrationality and the primitive emotions of their ancestors, but they never let go of the higher being, the greater goal, and albeit they face the enigma of existence and its importance, they collectively move forward and always do. Most importantly, they grow up. Humans regress and destroy themselves internally more if not for others, but they learn, they grow, and they update. If they hadn’t, they would not be existing today, let alone Holden. Despite his frequently unreliable narration, Holden has come out stronger at the end.