Post by HOLDEN CAULFIELD on Jan 24, 2012 19:49:06 GMT -5
HOLDEN CAULFIELD
"I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."
[/size]"I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all."
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Alias: Jay
Other Characters: Holden will be my first character, if he is accepted.
Rewritten City Found Via: Tumblr RP Ad.
Contact: PM's, email, Tumblr
Comments: I'm quite excited to join this community!
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00I. full name Holden Caulfield
0II. canon or original Canon-The Catcher in the Rye
III. years of age 17
0IV. orientation (optional) Heterosexual
00V. social status Middle Class
0VI. occupation High school dropout/Starbucks barista(current occupation)
00I. play by Luke Pasqualino
0II. body type Tall and lanky.
III. height 6'2
0IV. eyes color Dark brown eyes, full of contempt for the "phonies" of the world, with a sparkle of innocence within.
00V. description Holden wasn’t from the richest part of town. Having him attend Pencey Prep was a bit of a struggle for his parents financially, but they were able to make the payments. Most people in the area of his neighborhood dress casually, as most New Yorkers do. Holden can be found donning a jacket, either dark blue or leathery brown, over a worn and faded t-shirt. If he’s feeling sort of up to it, he’ll wear a white dress shirt under the jacket, complete with a pitch-black tie. He doesn’t care much for his own appearance, and it shows. His shoes are worn, and a bit scuffed from walking around so much.
His dark brown hair comes in a variety of hairstyles, ranging from messy to a mediocre attempt at looking groomed. However, his hair is almost always covered by his red hunting hat, which stands out from his dully shaded wardrobe. He doesn’t try to look middle class…or like any class, for that matter. All that matters to him is that people are “phonies”. He always manages to find some sort of middle ground with his clothing.
He is usually found walking with his hands in his pockets, with a bit of a slouch in his posture, as if he gave up walking with a straight posture. In a room full of people, Holden tends to wait and see, judging whom he can speak to first.
00I. overall personality There is no doubting that Holden is very pure in some ways. It is his very goodness and openness in some aspects of life that lead him to his very difficulties in his life. He expects others to be as good as he is and this does not happen always. For example, when he is trying to erase the "fuck you" at the school, it shows how he thinks others should be more respectful, Holden does not want people, children especially, to be subject to this un-pure material. He hates the fact that these children could see this.
Holden cannot just bear the fact that some people just have no respect for some things. It kills him even more when it is written in a school where all the children are. This upsets Holden to no end.
Holden is also very sympathetic and thoughtful towards others at times. He respects women a lot better than any of his other friends did, especially Stradlater. Stradlater was considered a date rapist and Holden hated that very much. He then got very violent when Stradlater and Jane went out because he was scared for Jane's safety with Stradlater. Holden is also noted to have asked "boring" Ackley to go to the movies with him, despite the fact that he tells us he does not enjoy Ackley's company. He also donated a good deal of money towards the nuns the day that he ate breakfast with them. He seems to have enjoyed the nuns very much. I think the reason he enjoyed their company so much was because they were pure and very nice just like Holden.
Holden seems anxious to keep up with his contemporaries. His friends consider him to be immature, but he is two years their junior. Society seems to have robbed Holden of everything (one brother dead, the other lost to the glitter of Hollywood). His possession are stolen in school, his relationship with his parents seems to have dwindled down to almost nothing, Holden perceives Stradlater as borrowing all his belongings and stealing his girl. It is not surprising that this is a society that he rejects. The only future Holden can see for himself is that of The Catcher In The Rye. Phoebe is the only person he feels really close to. It is not hard to imagine why Holden feels isolated. He is a loner. When he stands up for what he believes is right, he is knocked down. He is not listened to. Even when he is listened to, people do not understand what he is trying to say, because his thoughts are so complex and diverse.
Holden should not be considered a teenager with a temper, but someone who sees the bad insociety, yet has no way to fix it and is frustrated by this fact. Holden should be considered a modern day prophet who is able to point out the phoniness in today's world.
If anything, his main goal is to save that childhood innocence from the real world.
0II. strengths
- An eye for hypocrisy.
- Reasonably intelligent.
- Cares very deeply for children.
III. weaknesses
- A complete cynic about the world around him.
- Out of touch with reality.
- His rebellious state of mind.
0IV. goals In essence, Holden strives to be that "catcher in the rye". In his extended metaphor, he wants to catch the children before they fall off the cliff, which would signify their loss of innocence. The bottom of the cliff, of course, signifies the real world, that of which Holden has lost touch with. He wants to protect childhood innocence, including that of his sister Phoebe's.
00I. notable family & friends
- Phoebe Caulfield: Holden's younger sister, for whom he cares for very deeply. She is quite intelligent for her age, the only person that Holden can relate to. Holden visits her while in Manhattan, and while with her, he decides that he would like to save children like her from becoming phonies. She also later convinces Holden to return home.
- D.B. Caulfield: Holden's brother, who used to be a serious writer, but is now in Hollywood where he is writing for television programs. Holden views his brother as being a phony since he had "sold out" and given up his principles in return for money.
- Jane Gallagher: Holden's great love and almost girlfriend. Holden did not view her as a phony, perhaps because he knew her when she was younger. He was very upset that she was to go out with Stradlater. He firmly believed that Stradlater would make her a phony too.
- Allie Caulfield: Holden's younger brother. While he is not seen in the novel, he is mentioned by Holden, as a symbol of innocence to him. Allie was said to have died of leukemia.
0II. overall history Holden’s story begins while he is in the mental hospital in Southern California, where he currently resides. His real story begins on the Saturday following the end of classes at the Pencey prep school in Agerstown, Pennsylvania. Pencey is Holden’s fourth school; he has already failed out of three others. At Pencey, he has failed four out of five of his classes and has received notice that he is being expelled, but he is not scheduled to return home to Manhattan until Wednesday. He visits his elderly history teacher, Spencer, to say goodbye, but when Spencer tries to reprimand him for his poor academic performance, Holden becomes annoyed.
Back in the dormitory, Holden is further irritated by his unhygienic neighbor, Ackley, and by his own roommate, Stradlater. Stradlater spends the evening on a date with Jane Gallagher, a girl whom Holden used to date and whom he still admires. During the course of the evening, Holden grows increasingly nervous about Stradlater’s taking Jane out, and when Stradlater returns, Holden questions him insistently about whether he tried to have sex with her. Stradlater teases Holden, who flies into a rage and attacks Stradlater. Stradlater pins Holden down and bloodies his nose. Holden decides that he’s had enough of Pencey and will go to Manhattan three days early, stay in a hotel, and not tell his parents that he is back.
On the train to New York, Holden meets the mother of one of his fellow Pencey students. Though he thinks this student is a complete “bastard,” he tells the woman made-up stories about how shy her son is and how well respected he is at school. When he arrives at Penn Station, he goes into a phone booth and considers calling several people, but for various reasons he decides against it. He gets in a cab and asks the cab driver where the ducks in Central Park go when the lagoon freezes, but his question annoys the driver. Holden has the cab driver take him to the Edmont Hotel, where he checks himself in.
As Holden goes out to the lobby, he starts to think about Jane Gallagher and, in a flashback, recounts how he got to know her. They met while spending a summer vacation in Maine, played golf and checkers, and held hands at the movies. One afternoon, during a game of checkers, her stepfather came onto the porch where they were playing, and when he left Jane began to cry. Holden had moved to sit beside her and kissed her all over her face, but she wouldn’t let him kiss her on the mouth. That was the closest they came to “necking.”
Holden leaves the Edmont and takes a cab to Ernie’s jazz club in Greenwich Village. Again, he asks the cab driver where the ducks in Central Park go in the winter, and this cabbie is even more irritable than the first one. Holden sits alone at a table in Ernie’s and observes the other patrons with distaste. He runs into Lillian Simmons, one of his older brother’s former girlfriends, who invites him to sit with her and her date. Holden says he has to meet someone, leaves, and walks back to the Edmont.
After his misadventures, he then decides to sneak into his own apartment building and wake his sister, Phoebe. He is forced to admit to Phoebe that he was kicked out of school, which makes her mad at him. When he tries to explain why he hates school, she accuses him of not liking anything. He tells her his fantasy of being “the catcher in the rye,” a person who catches little children as they are about to fall off of a cliff. Phoebe tells him that he has misremembered the poem that he took the image from: Robert Burns’s poem says “if a body meet a body, coming through the rye,” not “catch a body.”
Holden goes to Phoebe’s school and sends her a note saying that he is leaving home for good and that she should meet him at lunchtime at the museum. When Phoebe arrives, she is carrying a suitcase full of clothes, and she asks Holden to take her with him. He refuses angrily, and she cries and then refuses to speak to him. Knowing she will follow him, he walks to the zoo, and then takes her across the park to a carousel. He buys her a ticket and watches her ride it. It starts to rain heavily, but Holden is so happy watching his sister ride the carousel that he is close to tears.
Soon after moving to Southern California to be with his older brother, Holden checked himself into a mental hospital, which is where we last see him. He stayed there for about a few months or so, and left, to try and see if he could make a sort of crummy living in Los Angeles. Seeing as that wouldn't work, Holden took up Phoebe's offer, and returned to New York. He now lives alone in his own small apartment, scraping together whatever money he can earn from his part-time job.
III. sample postIt was finally the end of his shift, and needless to say, Holden was quite excited to head back to his apartment. He absolutely hated his job, but he had to do something to get money. How else had he been able to afford a small living space for himself? Living at home was out of the question…he really didn’t want to face his parents ever again.
Shaking his head, Holden pulled his red hunting cap on as he stepped out the door of Starbucks, hands shoved in the pockets of his jacket. “Bunch of phonies.” Holden muttered to himself, remembering the few angry customers that day. They complained too much about how the freaking coffee was made, or that it was too strong, too light, whatever. A small breeze picked up, blowing some leaves across the sidewalk, and to the side of the brick wall Holden was passing by. He stepped on a few of them, before turning left for a small detour. The path he was now on wasn’t the regular one he took home pretty much everyday.
But it was a path down memory lane…or really, 79th Street. Up ahead loomed the Museum of Natural History, the place that Holden always frequented. He had loved the museum as a boy, and now, as a young adult, it brought even more intrigue to him. Sure, exhibitions shifted now and again, but other than that, things stayed the same as always. As he strode in, still in his black shirt and pants, sans green apron, Holden paused at the entrance, taking in all that he could with one look.
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SYR INTEGRA of CAUTION 2.0 created this, modified by Yols with Shakespeare lines.
