Judged by our own decisions

When reading The Catcher in the Rye a lot of things may come to your mind since it is a book that it can relate to many current situations that our society is facing.  For instance, we can compare Holden's contradictions throughout the whole book, with the contradictions of daily life regarding controversial topics such as abortion and homoparental adoption. In chile, there is a relation between these two topics, for example, some people are against abortion, so they claim the baby is not guilty of the sins of the mother, thus deserving to live. Then if the baby is left for adoption and a homoparental couple want to raise the baby, they are discriminated by the same people who was in favor of  giving the baby an oportunity of a better life.

We can also relate the need of company and at the same time the need for loneliness expressed in the book. Many people get easily irritated because of the stress caused by work, thus wanting to be completely alone in order to function properly for job; but at the same time, the only  moment when they feel happy is when they have no workload and can share with their beloved ones. 

Additionally,  the need of growing up at a younger age. Holden, who is just 16 is pushed to grow up and make responsible and adult decisions, just like students are pushed to do after they leave highschool.

The Catcher in the Rye is a novel  you may never completely understand, especially because  Holden's inestability in thoughts. When you first approach the book you may feel a little bit confused by his attitud about life and at people sorrounding him. However, when you go deep into the narration, you realised that his attitude starts to make sense, at least to my mind. 

From my point of view, Holden gets so touched for the death of his little brother Allie, and by the death of one of his classmates, that he came to believed that life is so fragile and light that you can dissappear at any possible moment.

The possible age in which Holden was completely happy, was a long time ago, when he was a child and his little brother was alive. So that's maybe why he is so attached to childhood. 

If life is so fragile, and you can disappear at any given moment, why you have to stop being "happy" and grow up?. Why do you have to become a "mature" person?. Why do you have to start thinking about your future when you're just about 16 years old?  Why you can't remain happy in the place you want to stay? That's probably one of the questions that the book leaves up to us (at least from my perspective).

Holden is just a boy that has so much pressure over his shoulders by people around him. He is supposed to perform better at school, to behave like a boy of his age, to think about his future, to stay away from his parents during school, etc. He is supposed to be an adult, but an adult of 16 years old? It is obvious that he needs to make a transition from childhood to adulthood, but maybe he is just not prepare, and he doesn't deserve to be criticized for not being ready. Anyway, even when he doesn't like adults and everything that it implies, in some cases he tries to be one, he tries to be interested in adult stuffs, such as alcohol, cigarrets, sex. He may also feel pushed to not be always surrounded by people, to be independent. He really tries to be mature,  even though when sometimes he come back to his perfect childish fantasy life. He tries so hard to be like an adult,  that  he fails, and ended up in a restroom because of getting sick.

Considering this tiny little summary of a part of Holden's life (from my point of view) I want to focus on the transition that Holden is suppossed to do from childhood to adulthood and compare it to our chilean educational system. 

As well as Holden, students from highschool are supposed to become adults at a very younger age, almost the same age that Holden (16) in order to start an adult life at the age of 18. Chilean highschool students are pushed to become adults as fast as possible. The transition made from higschool life to university life is almost inexistent inside the our context. Students, who were used to live with their parents, who were used to be considered "too young" to take some desicions; in a very short period of time, have to become responsible adults. They face a complete different reality at university; new house, professor, environment, house, classmates and so on. As they are supposed to succeed in this new life, they have to adopt the posture of a  grown up in order to fill the society expectations, in which you need to attend  university to get better life opportunities.

Just  as Holden, chilean highschool students may realised and try to accomplish the task of becoming adults, but for some of them this will not be as easy as it sounds or it won't happen. I personally believe that most of the dropouts of university students in Chile is because they were pushed to fill the society expectations of deciding at a very young age what to do with their lives, and when they were finally living according through this decision, they realize it was not what they really wanted. In this sense, the highschool-university transition is not completed since students refused to get done this process at that expected age. So maybe that's why some students fail subjects more than one time or didn't finish their programms in the amount of time they are suppossed to get finished. Some others just quit studying at university, because they may not feel prepared to make such an important decision, and our society needs to understand that it is okey. Even though they may be critisize for being "adults" in terms of age and still being dependent of his parents, they will make a decision later on, and they will have the opportunity to start all again, just as Holden at the end of the book. Even if the end of book feels kind of incomplete, we get to the clue that he will made a decision about his life, no matter if it is a  good one such as keep going in his life and finally complete the childhood-adulthood transiition, or a more bad/tragic one, remaining in his childhood fantasy forever (and yes, with this means that he kills himself).

Still, there are some questions that came to my mind while reading and getting to what I have written...why do we feel so pushed by society to do what we are expected to do? why if someone is not ready yet to make these school-university transition at 25 or even at early 30? Is there really a need to fill the expectations of external people when we are supposed to be the owners of our life?