About final revelations...

After his clandestine visit to her sister Phoebe in his house, Holden achieve to get away successfully without anyone noticing his presence.

Having no place to go and no money, he walked down to Mr. and Mrs. Antolini’s apartment. Mr. Antolini was a sophisticated guy, a pretty heavy drinker and an intellectual. Afterwards, they had a conversation about why Holden flunked his subjects and was kicked out of school. Mr. Antolini, in his casual philosophical style told him that he had a feeling that he was riding for a kind of terrible fall, a feeling that he was dying nobly, for some highly unworthy cause.  After that, he gave him a paper with a message that was written by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stekel…

Here’s what he said: “The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.”

He continued advising Holden, and concluded that he should come back to school, past the disagreeable situations, because once he got to past it, he will be closer to what he want, to the kind of information that will be very dear to his heart.

Holden stayed to sleep there, but he had a surprise during the night. He woke up because he had caught Mr. Antolini patting him on the head. That really perplexed him, and he ran away of the apartment wondering if Mr. Antolini was a pervert or only liked to pat people.

”How do you know you’re going to do something until you do it?”

Freaking out, Holden is completely bewildered about his life. He imagined plans to escape and live in a cabin in the middle of the forest, with no people, no situations or things. His lunatics’ ideas had sense for a moment, so he decided to say goodbye to Phoebe and meet her near her school.

Phoebe appears with a suitcase to surprise of his brother. She would not let him go, at least, not alone. That was not in Holden’s plans, so inevitably they fought.

By the end, they go for a walk where they find a carrousel. This is a decisive moment for Holden… He observes his sister enjoying the play, and express that is happy, happy for the first time in the whole book. He is captivated for the innocence of a child, but old enough to refuse the invitation to go with her. The guy is standing there, accepting that he is not part of the ritual but still had the not blinded eye that works for spectators of beauty.

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One thing I like a lot you mean?

Something that really caught my attention was the relationship between Holden and his sister, Phoebe. 

Holden went to his house only for visit her, in secret, because his parents were out at that time.

He and Phoebe had a gorgeous conversation. But, why was gorgeous? They did not say anything extraordinary, however, was the first time that Holden felt himself talking to another person in the entire book. It felts as a natural and spontaneous stream of consciousness by Holden, as I was reading him, but finally, face to face to Phoebe.

Our main character always says that she is only a girl, but half of the times she can understand exactly “what the hell are you trying to say.”

Suspicious, Phoebe noticed that the presence of Holden before Wednesday was strange, and guessed that he was kicked out of school.

“Daddy will kill you! Oh, what did you do it?”

In short, Holden supported that Pencey was one of the worst schools he ever went to and furthermore was plenty of phonies.

After all his explanation, Phoebe declared probably, the truth and Achilles’ heel of his brother.

 

“You don’t like anything that’s happening.”

 

Bomb. Try to deal with it. “Because you don’t. You don’t like any schools. You don’t like a million of things. You don’t.”

 

“Name one thing.”

 

Holden couldn’t concentrate, and finally, he answered that he liked his brother Allie and doing what he was doing right now. Sitting there with her, and talking, and thinking about stuff.  But the problem was, according to Phoebe that his brother was dead. Holden yelled that he knew it, but you don’t just stop liking people because they are dead, especially if they were a thousand times nicer than the people you know that are alive at all.

Wow, you know that you are reading a good book when you need to stop and take a deep breath to continue. Certainly, at this point, as Holden will say, the book “killed me, it really did.”

“- I like now. I mean right now.

-That isn’t anything really!

- It is so something really! Certainly it is! Why the hell isn’t it? People never think anything is anything really. I’m getting goddam sick of it.”

Next, Phoebe inquired him to name a real thing, like a scientist or a lawyer. He answered in a way that might take away the masks that people daily wear. He said that lawyers were all right, but it doesn’t appeal to him. Why? It is all right if you are a lawyer and you go around saving innocent people. But they usually don’t do that. They make a lot of dough ad play golf and play bridge and buy cars… Even if they go around saving guys’ lives and all, how do you know that they did it because they really wanted and not because they only wanted to be a terrific lawyer, with everybody congratulating them?

By the end… “How would you know you weren’t being a phony?” Do we want to succeed for being better people or do we want to succeed only for appearing and demonstrating that we are good people, great hot-shots?

Is the world an entire fake, a circus, a simulacrum, a competition?

I don’t know the answer. But may be never, sometimes or always?

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