High Hopes

It’s been a long time, hasn’t it? A speed up to game. 4-26-12
Sorry this took me so long. I finished it. 5-9-12 

We’ve been reading The Catcher In The Rye in my english class. I haven’t really thought about it too much since I have such a strong disgust for literature. Every book I’ve read (either in class or on my own time) after A Clockwork Orange back in 7th grade has been nothing but a useless bore to me. But still, something made me stop drifting off to sleep in class today and actually fucking listen for a change.

We were having a class discussion for the chapter we just read. Chapter 22 to be exact. We started going into the significance of the title and all these other themes of the book and how it affected Holden Caulfield’s mindset. My english teacher made it clear for us to always keep in mind the irony of the book and how a lot of Holden’s actions condescend his thoughts in the narration. It was around here when I started to pay attention.

Now, the only reason I barely know jack shit about The Catcher In The Rye is because Green Day wrote a song about it in Kerplunk!. Who Wrote Holden Caulfield? is based all around the novel’s main character, Holden, if you didn’t already figure that out. Credits to the odd dozen play counts and memorizing the lyrics, I really only knew that Holden “fogs his world” in a sense and is constantly getting frustrated with the people around him. Is that really the case in the book? I don’t fucking know since I never really read it with much interest up until today. After the first few chapters, my attention shot out the window just like with every other stupid fucking book I’ve had to read in class. I could only recollect that Holden didn’t take much of a liking to anything, but that’s not what I’m talking about. True point being is that I hardly knew goddamn anything about this book. Well, other than it influenced the assassination of John Lennon and other high class company, but that’s another take.

As we started going more in depth to the book, my class started getting riled up and started conversing more about Holden. One of the first topics my teacher mentioned was how Holden viewed the characters in the book, more notably Allie, his deceased little brother, and Ackley, an unhygienic nerd who goes to school with Holden. My teacher told us that Holden alienates himself from the world around him because he is too afraid to become attached to anyone in fear of losing them, just like Allie. She told us that Holden was so bitter towards society because innocent people like Allie were stripped from their chances to live and yet terrible people or so called “phonies” like Ackley still walk this earth. A classmate of mine then made the observation that life as a whole works in this same way. The innocent always perish. The guilty always succeed. I thought quietly to myself and found it to be true, but once again, this isn’t exactly the topic of this post. Another catharsis for another day.

The lesson then changed into a discussion on the significance of the title. To better explain, my teacher went into a lecture about the book’s reoccurring theme of innocence. Based off of my notes from the lecture, “Holden holds innocence as a virtue that goes above all other things. Holden holds this trait above all other things and sees it as one that is lost within the passing of time.” My teacher then told us that Holden wishes to be the one that never loses his childhood innocence, which explains why he has such a strong emotional bond to his little sister Phoebe in the book. She explained that Holden wanted society to maintain their innocence and that he wanted to be the one to save them from the fucked up world of adulthood. He wanted to “catch” everyone playing in the rye before they run off the metaphorical cliff and grow up. He just wanted everyone to keep their innocence, in layman’s terms. I honestly thought that this was brilliant, but this is where trouble started brewing.

Everyone in my class started yelling over each other, claiming how retarded and insane Holden sounded. “Psychotic,” one of my classmates called him. “Oh, hell no!” one bitch yelled, stating how fucking stupid it was that Holden just wanted to stay young. I was fucking lost. Was I the only one that enjoyed my goddamn childhood? Am I the only one who yearns for another shot at youth? Everything nowadays is so fucking convoluted and confusing. Fuck, man. In all honesty, I just miss elementary days, but I’ll get to that later.

After calming my stupid fucking class down, my teacher brought up the irony of the book. She told us that regardless of what Holden tells us, he’s at the least bit a hypocrite. She told us that no matter how much Holden yearns to stay innocent and young, his actions of smoking and drinking contradicts what he really stands by. “Holy fuck. What is this!?” I exclaimed quietly to myself as I thought about how much this connected to growing up and life as a whole. It made me realize how much adulthood catches up to all of us. Regardless of how much we try to stay young at heart, we just can’t help the fact that we all subconsciously grow up at some point in our lives. Regardless of how much we try to stay the same, we all change eventually and become the very monster some of us choose to hate. All of this time I thought I was trying my hardest to fulfill my childhood dreams by choosing to stay the same, I was really becoming just as bitter as all of my elder, adult counterparts. I was never this full of hatred towards the world when I was ten years old. All of those times I’ve told myself that I’ll never grow up; all of those times I’ve dodged the bullet with bad influences, I’ve really just been letting maturity sneak behind my eyesight. I’ve become so bitter and full of hate towards the world over the past few years that I’ve lost the naivety and ignorance I once had as a child. I just can’t escape the fact that I’m growing up, just like the rest of my childhood friends. Adulthood fucking sucks, man.

I started thinking about elementary school. I was reminded of how much everything seemed so much easier back then. Everything seemed to be so relative and natural as opposed to now where everything seems fake and stupid to me. I really miss living with the ease of childhood. I’m so fucking tired nowadays that I barely have the time to truly enjoy life on a daily basis. I have no time to just sit around and smile like I used to. I’m always fucking sleeping from the amount of work I have to do everyday. I feel as if I’m just throwing my life away. I barely have enough energy to stay up all night like I used to back in elementary school. I’m just fucking sleeping all the time. Whatever, I’m just fucking rambling on. All work and no play makes Rolan a dull boy.

I started thinking of all my old classmates and how much they’ve matured since we were a “family.” I started thinking about how all of the people I used to play dodgeball and tag with during gym are all out smoking and drinking their brains out. I thought about how all of the kids I used to sit around with and crack stupid jokes with are all out fucking their goddamn brains out. It really made me depressed. I started to think as if I was the last of a dying breed. I just sat there in silence in my class and realized how far I’ve come from just some punk kid in a Catholic school. All of this was real. We’re all growing up and becoming our own individual persons. We’re no longer what we were back in elementary school no matter how much we try to stay the same. I think I’m just a lost cause, really. Because everyone in my class thought Holden was a psycho for wanting to stay young. But that’s all I really want in life, to be honest. Just youth. Everything’s gotten so damn complicated within the past few years. I just feel as if I’m the only one that isn’t growing up sometimes. Everyone I know is getting ready for SATs and planning for college while I’m just sitting here watching Spongebob and looking back at the past. I’ve probably been doing this for far too long now. I’m just so unsure about everything at this moment. I really don’t want to grow up. I don’t want to become another bitter fuck and fall in line with the rest of society. I just want my childhood back.

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody’s around-nobody big, I mean-except me. And I’m standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff-I mean if they’re running and they don’t look where they’re going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That’s all I’d do all day. I’d just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it’s crazy, but that’s the only thing I’d really like to be. I know it’s crazy.”

I meant to write more, but I feel as if I’ll burst to tears if I continue. I was just rambling on. I’m damn sure I’ve written this before in another post anyways, so who the fuck cares anymore?

Oh well, nevermind.