Holden Caulfield:An interview with a disturbed young man.

An interview between Nova News and Holden Caulfield I wrote as my high school English "A Catcher in the Rye" project.

Holden Caulfield

An interview with a disturbed young man

 

Holden Caulfield is a young man from New York City who recently attempted suicide by overdosing on Tylenol Elixir and alcohol. After his attempt failed, he was institutionalized in Avery Asylum for the mentally unstable. He has been in the asylum for a few months now, and is set to be released within a matter of weeks. Holden has agreed to participate in this interview.

 

Nova news: Hello Mr. Caulfield, please, sit.

 

Holden Caulfield: Please, don’t call me Mr.Caulfield. Just call me Holden. I hate it when someone calls me Mr.Caulfield. It makes you sound like a goddamn phony when you say that.

 

NN: Anyway, how are you Holden? How has the treatment been? Is Avery Asylum a good place for the mentally unstable to recuperate?

 

HC: If you’re asking for a goddamn endorsement, then you’ve come to the wrong place. The place smells of this soap that gets up in your nose and tickles the crap out of your sinuses and all. Most of the doctors here are phonier than Mr.Haas"

 

NN: Mr. Haas?

 

HC: Nevermind, it’s not important. And don’t even get me started on the food here. Even those little cardboard steaks they served at Pencey were a hell of a lot better than the crap they spoon you here. I’m not even sure what food group the food we’re fed is in half the time. It’s just a blob of grey’s and the occasional yellow thing that could be corn. Hell if I know.

 

NN: So I assume you don’t like it here whatsoever?

 

HC: Now I never said that! I hate everything here but my fellow patients! Many guys in here, they GET IT. They know what the hell they’re talking about. It’s amazing how many people have no goddamn idea what they are talking about. Take Frankie for example. The guy is one hell of a writer. He’s written a trilogy of books about society and revolution and human nature and all. Its amazing how intelligent it is without being boring. Most of the time when people act intelligent they really aren’t, but this guy gets it. I guarantee you in a few years you will see his books on shelves. And Anne Connor, what a brilliant girl! She"

 

NN: So Holden why did you attempt to kill yourself?

 

HC: I knew it. I goddamn knew it. You b******s just want a sob story for all of the rubberneckers to read so they can pity the poor crazy. Well I’ll tell you why, but not because I give a damn about what you want, but because I feel like it.

 

NN: Ok Holden, tell us, why? Why try to kill yourself, and why the way you did?

 

HC: I’m not gonna give you my whole goddamn life story, but I will tell you the major stuff as to why. Well, one cold night, I went to this hotel. I won’t tell you which one, but you will probably be able to figure it out later. Anways, I go into the hotel to spend the night"

 

NN: What about your parents? Why weren’t you at home, or school?

 

HC: I got kicked out of Pencey prep and I didn’t want my parents to know yet. I don’t like school. It’s always full of phony kids and phony adults. Everywhere ya go there’s some damn phony waiting to hassle you. I got kicked out because I didn’t like it there and I didn’t want to participate in their crap. And I didn’t want to tell my parents because they’d blow a fuse if they found out.

 

NN: Sounds like Pencey prep is a bad school.

 

HC: You don’t know the half of it. Anyway, so I go to this hotel for the night. The guy who operates the elevators, offers me some company for a few hours. He says I looked like a lonely guy and I looked like I needed someone to talk to. He offered to send up someone to talk to me for five dollars. I accept and I go to my room and get cleaned up and all. I don’t want to look like a slob to whomever was coming up to talk with me. It would be outright rude to not even clean up for your guests. Imagine my surprise when this young prostitute MY AGE shows up! She comes in and starts coming on to me and I tell her no, that I’m tired and I don’t want the time from a prostitute. I invited her to talk and I told her I’d pay her but she just got all pissed and left. Before she left though, she demanded TEN, but I told her the elevator guy, Maurice, told me five, so she leaves. Hours later, I hear this big whooping knock on my door and I open it. To my surprise, there stands Sunny, the prostitute, and Maurice. Maurice walks in with this phony toughness and asks for his other five dollars. I tell him that’s bull and that he said five. He bitched and whined at me to give him the money but I said no. Eventually, out of nowhere, the big b*****d punches me! Then he and Sunny rob me of my five dollars and leave.

 

NN:  That’s terrible Holden! What did you do after that, I might ask?

 

HC: Might? Might? Ya just did ask! Why the hell do adults say that? Why? It’s stupid and irritating!

 

NN: Sorry, sorry! Did you call the cops?

 

HC: No. I knew the cops would believe stupid old Maurice over a kid like me. They would assume I had bought a prostitute and all! Even worse, afterward, the b*****d blackmails me into giving him more money! He told me if I didn’t give him more money he’d tell everyone I’d bought a prostitute! However, I just called him a moron and left. But you can’t escape this guy. He’s got contacts in the criminal underworld, and he sent big morons after me to bring me back.

 

NN: Why didn’t he just stop you himself?

 

HC: Moron probably wanted me to run in fear. Learn my lesson for “smarting off to him” or something like that. Anyway, I hid ok for a few days, but then he and his goons almost caught me. They got a few heavy hits in, but I escaped. A few more times similar things happened, but I always escaped. The last time, he threatened to kill me! For money I didn’t owe him! He was about to chuck me out a window before I narrowly escaped!

 

NN: So what does that have to do with you attempting suicide?

 

HC: I was tired of running and living in fear of the big moron. So one night I got a little scotch and Tylenol and overdosed and drunk myself to death. Somehow, the damn thing didn’t pan out and now I’m here.

 

NN: But, according to your files, you went home for a day or two before you attempted suicide. Did your parents do nothing? And how did they not notice you out?

 

HC: I was only home for one day, and that’s when I did it. My dad’s a lawyer but when you’re dead a lawyer is no use to you whatsoever. I knew the second I left the house I was going to get jumped. I knew that I would have to leave, alone, sometime, and I knew Maurice would never give up trying to hound me for money. So that night, when everyone was asleep, I just did it. But I screwed even that up.

 

NN: Do you feel as if you are a screw up?

 

HC: What? Where the hell did you get that idea?

 

NN: You just said--?

 

HC: I didn’t say a goddamn thing about being a screw up!

 

NN: Ok, ok, ok Holden, you didn’t say anything. Why did you choose to kill yourself in the way you did?

 

HC: Because I didn’t want to be a gory mess for the rubberneckers to stare at. If I jumped out of a window or something, I would have been a big bloody mess and the same if I had shot myself. I wanted the people who found me to be able to keep their lunches and most of all I didn’t want people looking at me. Once dead, I just wanted to be left alone. Thrown in a goddamn river and forgotten. By overdosing, I would leave no mess. I didn’t want to leave a mess like James Castle did.

 

NN: Who’s James Castle?

 

HC: He’s a kid who went to one of my previous schools who committed suicide by jumping out of a window. When he landed he was a bloody mess. I could hear the sound of him hitting the ground from inside the shower!

 

NN: I’m sorry to hear that. We’re you close to him?

 

HC: No. I only talked to him once when he asked me if he could borrow my turtleneck. That’s the shirt he died in too.

 

[Silence for two minutes]

 

HC: Nobody respects the dead. It’s really sad. Either some rubberneckers stare at you or someone writes “F**k you” all over your grave. It’s really sad. If anybody did that to my brother Allie’s grave, I’d kick their a*s. Normally I’m rather yellow but"

 

NN: What happened to Allie?

 

[Holden looks down at the ground and doesn’t answer for a minute]

 

HC: Leukemia. Goddamn Leukemia. He had so much of his life left to live. And Allie would have had one hell of a life. Allie was one hell of a guy and all. He was always laughing at stuff he thought up and he was always nice to everybody. I’d never seen him get sore at anybody in his entire life. He was two years younger than me. In all honesty, I wished I had spent more time with him before he died. He was such a great guy to be around. Oh, if you only had met him. You would have loved him right away.

 

NN: Sounds like he was very close to you.

 

HC: Yes and no. I mean, we were close and all but we weren’t REALLY close. We talked and enjoyed each other but he was always my younger brother and all. You can never really be best friends with your brothers, truly. But he was one of the closest things to a friend I ever had.

 

NN: How did Allies death make you feel?

 

HC: The night he died, I slept in the garage. I punched out all of the windows in the garage with my bare hands, just for the hell of it. I went to the hospital and all, but it was no big deal. It hurts but I do just fine. I miss him, but it gets easier everyday.

 

NN: If you could tell Allie one thing now, what would it be?

 

HC: I’d tell him I loved him or some other thing like that. I don’t know what the hell I could tell him.

 

NN: Do you think you’ll see him in Heaven?

 

HC: No. I don’t really believe in Heaven and all.

 

NN: So you don’t believe in Christ and God?

 

HC: No. I really like Jesus. He wasn’t a phony b*****d like the disciples. The disciples would have sent Judas to hell after he betrayed Jesus but Jesus wouldn’t have. Arthur Childs, this guy I went to school with, told me I must hate Jesus cause I hated the disciples, and Jesus picked them. But, as I told him, he picked them at RANDOM! Jesus was great and all, it’s just his disciples.

 

NN: Hating the disciples isn’t enough reason to be an Atheist. Why do you not believe?

 

HC: Cause if there was a God, he wouldn’t have put all of these phony b******s on this earth. If there was a God he wouldn’t have let James Castle kill himself. If there was a God he would have stopped Maurice from hurting me and threatening to kill me. If there was a God, he would have stopped me from attempting suicide. If there was a God, Allie would still be alive today and he would be happy and all.  But Allie’s in a coffin in St.Peter’s cemetery; all alone except for the phony b******s all around him. He’s dead. Goddamn dead.

 

NN: You seem really upset by the world around you Holden, and the people who inhabit it.

 

HC: That I am. The entire goddamn world is phony as hell. Everywhere you go its all about living in this tight little world. You have to squeeze yourself into this narrow tube of adult expectations. Adults. Every goddamn problem in this world would be solved if we never “grew up”. What the hell is maturity anyways? What the hell does that damn concept even mean? It’s this bull term invented by phony adults who want to change children into adults before their time. Before they even need to grow up! Who the hell says you have to grow up? Adults are phony b******s who are hypocrites and care only about money. When you’re a kid, you’re free and innocent. The stupid phony world means nothing to you; only the simple joys of fun and freedom matter. But when you’re an adult, all of that fun goes away to be replaced by this insane desire for money and social status. Who the hell cares how much money you have or who you are in society? In a few decades most of those phony b******s will be in the ground. It kills me when I look around and see all of these adult phonies lying through their teeth to gain favor among those higher up on the social ladder. It’s even more annoying when they try to act all goddamn superior to you by only paying attention to the hotshots. Or, even worse, when they act like a goddamn hotshot because they’ve got a goddamn superiority complex. Bernie, this guy I knew who played at this bar, was that way. B*****d kept this mirror up on his piano so every damn rubbernecker could just stare at his mug as he played. Also, this old friend of mine, Carl Luce, was that way. I invite the b*****d to a couple of drinks with me and he just comes in and acts like I’m a goddamn waste of his time. He acts like I’m beneath him and when I try to bring up a conversation he’d just brush me off like I was just a goddamn annoyance. I paid for that for that b******s drinks and he just pops in to b***h and act all superior. It’s goddamn sickening how many people are like that. You can’t find a decent conversationalist anymore.

 

NN: Holden, have you ever considered that your view on people and the world is a little negative? Not everyone is a phony as you say.

 

HC: You certainly are. You just came here to write a story about the crazy so that you could sell more papers. You just wanted everyone to pity and look down on the poor old crazy. Why the hell do you care what I have to say? No one ever did while I was alive really. No one but my kid sister Phoebe and Allie and D.B., my other brother. But they are just kids, except D.B., but he went off to Hollywood to waste his talent on the pictures. You’re just another goddamn adult with a superiority complex. Why should I believe you give a damn? You don’t. Now please just go. Just leave me alone. You got what you wanted, now go. I’m done talking to you.

 

[Holden gets up and walks out of the room, out back into the asylum. Guards walk him around a corner and then he is out of sight.]