Esther's Pretty Cool Honestly

Okay. I'm gonna pull an English class trope. "I like this narrator even better than the last one!" says student, not yet triple-digit pages into the book. "They're just different!". But I'm serious this time! Here's why:

There are a few things that make Esther more immediately relatable than the occasionally frustrating and inexplicable Holden. Like many Uni students elementary and middle school experiences, including my own, she is able to "game" education, but for her she still gets straight A's in college. I mean the Class Dean "knew perfectly well [Esther] would get a straight A again in the chemistry course", so she uses this time to work on her English craft instead (Plath, 35-36). Some might say this is lame of her to do, but Esther is the only one in her class who can ace the material even though she HATES it, so it's sort of a deserved courtesy to excuse her from the academic duties. This gives her some credibility over Holden (to me at least) since she tries AND massively succeeds in a school setting, but still has gripes about parts of her education. I couldn't help but get kind of skeptical of Holden's world-weariness when he admits that he barely ever tries but is still totally disillusioned with education. Like could you exert yourself and then make your conclusions? Perhaps a bit unfair on my part, since Holden has some personal issues and all, but this is about my personal feelings towards Esther in relation to Holden, so put it in the pros column for Ms. Greenwood over here. Her ability backs up her criticisms.

Also, though this might be bogus of me, Esther's mental situation is simply easier to understand and deal with from a real-life standpoint than Holden's. Don't get me wrong, both are going through stages of serious depression, but the picture for Esther seems more lifelike and believable (tough self-questioning, extreme loneliness, "moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo") than Holden's does (Plath, 3). Though I really hate to bash Caufield for this, his own existential depression seems absolutely unsolvable. Like head-bashingly frustrating. To be completely transience-phobic is somewhat understandable from the grief of losing Allie and Jane, but it's sooooo hard to imagine anyone ever talking through it with him, or helping him in any substantial way. Even Phoebe calls him out super hard, telling him that "[y]ou don't like anything that's happening" (Salinger, 187). Not to say Holden's emotions are any less "real" than Esther's or anything like that, but Esther's is easier to understand, and when one comes to grips with either of their mental makeups, her's generates more sympathy for me at least. The fact that she knows and articulates that she's "supposed to be having the time of [her] life" contains a self-awareness that is critical in my own acquainting with Esther (Plath, 2). It's still quite early in the book, but the personal dislocation she's experiencing seems more dire than Holden's did at the same point (Doreen scene especially so, and right off the bat) and with the fact of her problems being simply more tangible, Esther's literary manifestation of depression garners more immediate emotional connection.

Unlike Holden for the bulk of his own novel, there's a few things Esther really does enjoy and wants to do with her life. Again, these qualities help to form a more believable protagonist that I can get behind. She's clearly a talented and fairly dedicated writer, considering her English major and winning of essay contests. She has a pretty good sense of humor, even if it's at the expense of others, and isn't quite as mean-spirited with her caricatures as Holden can be. Then there's the funny yet subtly important stuff, like how she REALLY likes hot baths, and is a serious New England foodie. Esther says she "love[s] food more than just about anything else" and that she can't think of many things "a hot bath can't cure", so these seem to be intimate personal details despite some conversational hyperbole (Plath, 24, 19). It's honestly startling and refreshing to have a protagonist who enjoys certain aspects of life so early in the book, and isn't always criticizing nearly everything and everyone. To clarify yet again, I don't necessarily believe Esther is a more entertaining or inherently better narrator character, but that she is simply more of a real person, and for coming-of-age novels, I think that's extremely valuable from a reader sympathy standpoint.

So yeah, Holden can come across as a lame-o with his stream of mean remarks, and his own mental state can seem more like a cosmic affliction rather than Esther's lifelike portrayal of depression. It's tough to articulate, since depression definitely can seem like an impossible circumstance, where even those in the best of situations can have it. But for the scope of each novel, The Bell Jar has done a better job in showing the finer nuances of its protagonist's mental state, and (in my opinion) builds likability with Esther more effectively.

Catcher in the Rye's Fictional Influence

As we've discussed in class, The Catcher in the Rye was an immensely popular book nearly from its publish date. Honestly, this fact seems evident from just reading the text; the more we dig into J.D Salinger's novel, the more frequently certain well-known young adult novel tropes seem to pop up. Seriously though, I've been getting killer fiction-deja vu in some of these sections, when the narrator's accessible first-person narrative drifts into familiar territory. Let me highlight a couple of these for you!

Like Mr. Mitchell, I had literally no preconceptions of what this book would be like. For some reason I thought it was a Mark Twain piece about a farm boy, or at least that was the image in my head. Thanks to that, the (in my opinion) oft-imitated introduction really struck me with how recognizable it sounded. For one, the narrator starting off in a far-off place, looking back at his version of the events is a resonant trope in tons of fiction, especially stuff with a funny intruding narrator or noir films (you're probably wondering how I got here). But in this case, we aren't yet privy to his location or end situation, except that it involves "madman stuff that happened to [Holden] last Christmas", and that he is currently "out here" to "take it easy". The "if you really want to hear about it" as the opening line solidifies the narrator as possibly sarcastic, confessional, world-weary with the events that have happened to him, and certainly 4th wall breaking, which is for sure a popular narrative style today (3). Holden also shows his quite common sentiment of being weary for phoniness, as he expresses with disdain for his now Hollywood-working "hot-shot" brother, who used to be WAY cooler when he just wrote weird stories for his own amusement. I don't think I'm alone here in saying that lots of angsty narrators are PO'd for this exact reason in their respective novels.

Let's get a little further into Caufield's ideology, specifically how it relates to his relationships with other people. The Jane plot thread, featuring a remarkably quirky love interest whose beauty and value only he sees including  a mean drunkard guardian and a moronic jock pursuing her is, well, often present in these sorts of YA-appealing novels and films. Like many other aspects, I wouldn't be too surprised if tCitR popularized the trope itself. This whole kings-in-the-back-row spiel is an extremely apt example of this, establishing some kind of memorable trait that distinguishes the narrator's worldview and search for true, non-phony beauty in things. You can carry that over to the enchanting anecdotes of his seemingly perfect siblings Allie and Phoebe, with their poetic baseball gloves and startling maturity. Especially with Allie and Jane, they each make their own rules in the "game of life" that Holden so strongly objects to, and his loss of both of them seems to lead into his mental instability. Each story is extremely cute though, and the format of using a character quirk to create a semi-superficial, idealized projection of that person is a commonly used aspect in narrative fiction, plays, and films. I think it echoes how the human mind makes associations under the influence of love, where the best or most memorable aspects kind of speak for the person's value as a whole, if that makes any sense at all. Those sections are easily the most touching we've had thus far, and it's easy to imagine lots of future writers imitating that style to effectively convey the emotions they feel.

There's my brief analysis on the two shockingly familiar aspects I've picked up on so far. Maybe I'm in some kind of post-Dedalus afterburn, but this is one of the most accessible books I've ever read. That in itself seems to be a movement of the present day in fiction, where authors make YA novels increasingly slangy and easy in the vocab and narrative voice department to wholly immerse readers into the coming-of-age story. It's a trapping of the genre as a whole for sure, and I feel like Catcher has something to do with it!!