"Since I was a kid"; The Narrative of Sexual Assault in The Catcher in the Rye
This section of chapter 24 in The Catcher in the Rye has caught my attention since I first read the novel in freshman year of high school. While there has been much said about Holden's sexual crisis, many extant scholars either ignore this line, "That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid," or they refer to it as a passing building block to their, rather inaccurate, assertion that Holden is afraid of sex or cannot conquer sex due to a failure of maturity and a resistance to adulthood. There is a fundamental failure to apply a sexual assault trauma gloss to Catcher.
Sex has always been on scholar's minds when it comes to Catcher analysis. Some of the most memorable criticism's that I read for my 1950-2013 bibliography include: Carl Strauch's claim that Jane's kings in the back row is a symbol for sexual protection; Luther Luedtke's claim that Robert Burns' poem, "Comin' Thro' The Rye," is a narrative of sexual assault, and so characterizes Holden's catcher fantasy as a sexual protection; James Bryan's claim that Holden's compulsions are prompted by a desire to save his sister from his sexual capacity (thankfully, Dennis Vail attacked Bryan's argument); and the most outlandish, and therefore quite fun, claim that Holden is a secret homosexual from Duane Edwards. Its no surprise that nearly all of these scholars were writing in the 1970s, when sex, psychology, gay liberation, and free love permeated our culture. For all the sex talk, however, the gaping hole that is Catcher's allusions to sexual assault demands attention.
This is an informal discussion on the topic, and will reflect absolutely nothing of the nature of my typical academic work. Really, this is an analytical experiment about a subject that resonates with me deeply.
Moments Holden uses the term "sex," allow for a map of progression from difficult to dissect surface-meaning statements into intimate, obvious confessional ones.
Stradlater, of course, is described by Holden as a "sexy bastard;" we swiftly discover that Stradlater is the type to frisk up a girl despite her saying no, and learn its a potential repeat offense once Holden start's worrying about Jane receiving this same treatment. "I kept thinking about Jane, and about Stradlater having a date with her
and all. It made me so nervous I nearly went crazy. I already told you what a sexy bastard Stradlater was," Holden says, and his concern directly links Stradlater's "sexy bastard" status with Jane's potential danger. Strauch's argument that Jane's kings in the back row function as a sexual defense line is worthy of consideration here, as their discussion of Jane is when Holden reveals her checkers quirk earlier in the scene. The story has only just begun at this point, and yet Salinger immediately begins to weave a narrative that includes a strong theme of sexual assault.
The way Holden feels about women is, most certainly, very romantic and innocent. He is, after all, an adolescent, and he is, like Ackley kid, a very typical virginal teenager. Holden admires women for their conversational capacity, their cuteness, their aesthetic appeal: "Women kill me. They really do. I don't mean I'm oversexed or anything like that--although I am quite sexy. I just like them, I mean." One should immediately note how Holden compulsively qualifies his affection for women as outside the realm of sexual conquest; they "kill" him, but he immediately needs the reader to know that he does not see them as purely sexual objects.
Holden, in his mind, considers himself "probably the
biggest sex maniac you ever saw," and admits he "can think of very crumby stuff [he] wouldn't mind doing if the opportunity came up." The key here, if we read Holden with a hidden aversion to sexual exploitation, are that his sexual capacity is confined to his own thoughts and are not actionable. This passage reveals a tension between Holden's typically teenage sexual ideas, such as experimenting with the idea of squirting water one a girl's face, and his legitimate desire to respect other's bodily autonomy. "Sex is something I really don't understand too hot," Holden explains, "You never
know where the hell you are." I wonder, where are you, Holden? For sexual assault survivors, sex becomes confused with danger, risk, disgust, shame, perversion, and violence, which causes even regular sexual responses to become disorienting and scary. Holden's language of being lost in the "place" of the sexual realm suggests an internal sexual landscape that balances exploitation, hormonal reality, and masculine desire. The "sex rules" he attempted to outline for himself are simple limitations on his natural urges that produce uncomfortable psychological stress due to trauma, and because he says, Sex is something I just don't understand," with the telling emphasis, "I swear to God I don't," we begin to know Holden has a mysterious (even enigmatic) understanding of the erotic.
There is so much to be said about Jane. Jane plays such a monumental role in the novel: she is both lover and friend, companion and reflection, savior and curse. When Holden cannot stop himself from thinking about her, the idea of Jane is produced from his unceasing anxiety about Stradlater hurting her. "I was pretty damn sure old Stradlater hadn't given her the time--I know old Jane like a book--I still couldn't get her off my brain," he says, but notice how he incidentally places the responsibility unto Jane, the potential victim, when it comes to her bodily safety. Holden "knew her like a book," past tense because Jane, innocence, and childhood is irretrievable, and that is why he never calls her. "I really got to know her quite intimately. I don't mean it was
anything physical or anything--it wasn't--but we saw each other all the time;" this is Holden asserting for the reader, as much for himself, that intimacy with the heterosexual other does exist. That relationships that could be sexual can be safe. The final line of the paragraph reads like a direct Salinger intervention, You don't always have to get too sexy to get to know a girl," because this is Holden affirming the opposite of over-sexualization as real, as possible, not for only himself but for others, for the world.
We must discuss the incident with the prostitute, but I believe a lot of it is self-explanatory. I mean, Holden invites a woman whose sole purpose (in the story) is to provide sex-acts in exchange for money, and his response is to try to have a good conversation with her. As an immediate follow-up to his sex rules and his worries about Jane, this is Holden experimenting with his previous conclusion that you don't need to "get too sexy" with a girl to know her. The prostitute plays the role of a proxy Jane, distorted and amplified, and that is why she fails to truly partake in Holden's experiment. When Holden confesses that he is a virgin, his admission is layered with memories of failed attempts to change this status. When he gets close to sharing one example, he backs out: "One time in particular, I remember. Something went wrong, though --I don't even remember what any more." Whether Holden actually can't remember, has blocked his access to the memory, or it is to painful to recall, we can't be sure. What we can gather from this, the initial desire to admit and yet the impulse to retreat as soon as he gets close, informs us that this memory is weighted with trauma. Sex depresses Holden, as when the prostitute comes and removes her dress, and he says, "Sexy was about the last thing I was feeling. I felt much more depressed than sexy;" he states this line twice throughout the prostitute episode.
Holden then begins a new quest throughout the novel, a quest to discover "where" he is in the sexual landscape. When he meets with Luce, his psychological constitution is deteriorating as grows more and more frustrated with the world and its rejections, phoniness, and perverts. Holden meets with Luce exclusively because "he really knew quite a bit about sex and all," and as he pesters him with questions about his sex life, Holden is making an attempt to attack the sexual question from a new angle. Not Stradlater's aggression, Jane's step-father, the prostitute, or even the nun, these options have taken the sex question in its measure of violence and dissociation. No, Holden is now on the search for practical knowledge. Luce says a few things that are noteworthy in understanding Holden's prior interactions with him, such as "a typical Caulfield conversation" and "typical Caulfield questions." What are these questions? What has Holden tried to discover, and been shut down for? Clearly, Holden is desperately trying to find his place.
Finally, Holden gets closer to the truth, the origin of his need to go on the quest: "You know what the trouble with me is? I can never get really sexy--I mean really sexy--with a girl I don't like a lot." Holden needs trust, he needs closeness, safety, affection, because something has happened to him that has corrupted sexual interaction. And when Luce tells Holden, in a way that suggests this isn't the first time they've talked about this issue, that the young boy needs to see a psycho-analyst, we gather that something more serious than simple nerves is at play. This is where scholars have really failed. A person doesn't need a psycho-analyst because they're a little nervous to lose their virginity, they need a psycho-analyst when genuine trauma is preventing them from connecting with other people on a physical, even emotional, level.
At last, we are at the moment with Antolini. There are many, many thoughts in the discourse about Antolini's ambivalent role in the narrative. His wisdom is the most compelling, authentic, and emotionally considerate in the entire novel, and thus he stands out as an extreme agent of good for Holden in a world that has brutally neglected and harmed him. As we all know, Antolini immediately damages this position in Holden's life in his inappropriate act. It is the most heartbreaking, yet realistic, depiction of how sexual assault survivors end up navigating the world. Sexual assault survivors are, obviously, vulnerable. Holden in this moment is at his most vulnerable, with no where to go and no one to help him, no love he can find in this world. Antolini takes advantage of this, and not in the fashion we often see authors try to showcase how these "villains" really function. Antolini is all of the aformentioned things, kind, helpful, wise, and he is dangerous and inappropriate. These facts co-exist, and that is why Antolini is a realistic, scary example of what really happens. When someone who exploits others wears the veneer of charm, kindness, or compassion, it truly can be part of who they are. They are not fully, disregardable monsters, and that is what makes them effective perpetrators of sexual violence. It causes a deep conflict in the victim, as they hold two truths that are seemingly irreconcilable, and it causes further agony as their mind attempts to comprehend how both things can be true.
Just like the previous instance where Holden began to confess and yet retracted, Holden demonstrates this same impulse as he recounts the Antolini incident. "Then something happened," Holden says, "I don't even like to talk about it;" but, because Holden has been talking to us, and wrote the novel to tell the reader the "madman stuff," he knows he must continue. This is a moment where Holden could have retracted, and yet he sticks through it, he endures. That's what healing requires. It requires discussing the traumatic incident. As a sexual assault survivor myself, putting the memory into words, making a narrative from the scattered pieces, feels like legitimizing its reality in your history. Its extremely difficult to discuss, because for some of us, like Holden, we don't want it to be true, and in speaking it outloud it becomes true because now someone else knows.
I'm going to dissect Holden's recollection very carefully:
"I woke up all of a sudden. I don't know what time it was or anything, but I woke up. I felt something on my head, some guy's hand:" this is Holden recounting in stiff, step-by-step memory. This happened, this happened, this happened. He tells it with the same ignorance he had when he awoke to a confusing situation.
"Boy, it really scared hell out of me." Because this is the only insertion of emotion at this point, its difficult to tell if this fear was only due to surprise or from being touched.
"What it was, it was Mr. Antolini's hand." This is Holden going backwards and adding post-clarity information to the memory itself. Recognizing the facts of a traumatic event often requires a later assertion of obvious truths of the matter. In the moment, Holden wasn't necessarily thinking "Antolini's hand is on my head." He felt the hand, and then saw it was Antolini, and his mind was sent into panic.
"What he was doing was, he was sitting on the floor right next to the couch, in the dark and all, and he was sort of petting me or patting
me on the goddam head." Is this Holden viewing the memory as it plays in his head? Is this Holden searching the images of the memory as it appears in his consciousness? Is this Holden figuring out the position that makes logical sense? Is Holden aware of the reconstructive element?
Holden asks, "What the hellya doing?" to which Antolini replies, "Nothing," yet Holden immediately repeats "What're ya doing, anyway?" before revealing that the emotion he experienced was embarrassment. Holden went from feeling scared to embarrassment as soon as he began to understand what was happening. Remember again how, when concerned for Jane, he placed the responsibility on her to keep her sexual privacy. His conversation with Luce, as well, informs us that Holden cannot be intimate with someone, by any degree, unless their is a high structure of familiarity. The embarrassment Holden feels is from exposure, vulnerability, and shame. His immediate need to exit the situation is a flight response, the urge to run away. And later, when he concludes that he really will run away from the state, its only a further extension of his desire to escape the embarrassment felt from this moment.
"I started putting on my damn pants in the dark. I could hardly get them on I was so damn nervous." Salinger refers to Holden's pants, a very private and sensitive article of clothing that physical makes someone sexually vulnerable. Yes, Salinger refers to Holden's tie and such later on, but the fact that this is the high density moment of the episode throws all these aspects into close, interlocked meaning-making.
"I know more damn perverts, at schools and all, than anybody you ever met, and they're always being perverty when I'm around." Once again, this is the novel's method of building a background narrative before the start of Holden's "madman stuff." Holden isn't actually meeting more perverts than anybody else, that's the key: he is someone who has been preyed on extensively. I am not victim blaming, (as I mentioned, I am a victim myself), but rather elucidating the truth of the matter around Holden's idiosyncratic language.
"Old Mr. Antolini was sitting now in the big chair a little ways away from me, watching me. It was dark and all and I couldn't see him so hot, but I knew he was watching me, all right. He was still boozing, too. I could see his trusty highball glass in his hand." I think the creepiness here speaks for itself. This is a man who is, without a doubt, preying on Holden at this point. Drunkenly, with hardly any shame as he stalks Holden all the way to the elevator.
In conclusion, we arrive at the passage that started this entire interest of mine into a brief exploration of the text as a sexual assault survivor story. It all comes down to these lines, "When something perverty
like that happens, I start sweating like a bastard. That kind of stuff's happened to me about twenty times since I was a kid. I can't stand it." These lines reveal so much about the entire novel, and they cast Holden's sexual dilemma into an entirely new light.
Informal analysis by Zooey
