George F. Will on Holden Caulfield

A month ago conservative pundit George F. Will was interviewed by The New York Times Book Review. The only unusual statement he made is a claim that Holden Caulfield is sullen, and that the boy should have been strangled in the cradle.

I must point out that George F. Will’s reading of Holden Caulfield is his personal reaction, and that it is contrary to the facts. I seriously doubt that Mr. Will ever read the book. The protagonist, Holden Caulfield, is not sullen.

He’s grieving over the death by cancer of his younger brother. His parents are absent, both emotionally and physically. He may suffer from depression over the traumatic death of his sibling; certainly, the adults and children around him – even his own sister – view his depressed affect as a moral failing.

Holden is an “at risk” teenage character, but not sullen. Romeo is more sullen, and he kills himself when he doesn’t get what he wants. Juliet is dutiful, obedient, polite, and pleasant when her mother insists she fall in love with Count Paris: “I’ll look to like if looking liking move, but no more deep will I endart my eye, than your consent gives will to make it fly.” Her mother doesn’t catch the equivocation buried in Juliet’s formulaic obedience. Willful Juliet doesn’t seem sullen, yet she kills herself for lack of options. Ophelia is kind, obedient, trusting in her father, if a bit rowdy with her brother. She does as she’s told, smiling all the way, because her father dictates. She’s anything but sullen looking, and yet she drowns herself when the road paved by her family comes to a dead end. Suicidal behavior is as sullen as it gets, and yet we often don’t see the warning signs.

Holden, in contrast, isn’t going to kill himself. He has had to live in an apartment full of tragedy and emotional absence, but he knows that he must be self-reliant. He sets out on his own in the middle of the night in New York because he literally has no place to call an emotional home for the Christmas holidays. His parents don’t control his every thought and deny him the basic level of autonomy necessary for good health. However, they can’t rise to the occasion of mourning with him. Their absence makes them blameworthy. Yet he never says he hates his parents – nor anyone. Judge for yourself whether Holden is sullen.

He respects his teachers. When Spencer is sick with flu, Holden goes to visit him; and when the grumpy old historian lectures him on his inattention to the curriculum, Holden isn’t rude or disrespectful. He isn’t even angry at the old guy. Granted, however, Holden isn’t mature enough to see or understand what motivates Mr. Spencer.

When he meets the mother of a bully from his school, she tries to find out how well he’s fitting in with the other boys. Although cruelty might signify sullenness, Holden isn’t cruel. He tells her that her son is adjusting well, when in reality her son is a sadist. Holden knows that nothing but another's pain could come from telling her the truth.

He yells, “So long, ya morons,” when he leaves the dorm. So what? It’s a way of demonstrating his independence from the group. They’re all teenage boys. Almost by definition, they’re morons. His roommate is lacking in bodily hygiene, which is an issue with teenagers. It’s not unusual for a teenager to be judgmental about his peers.

So let’s look at what Holden does not say. He does not say that his roommate, or any of the boys in the dorm, should have been strangled in the cradle. He doesn’t threaten anyone with violence - not others and not himself.

When the elevator operator sends a child prostitute to Holden’s hotel room, the boy tries to be an “adult.” But all he sees is that Sonny is just a child, and he begs off the deed, inventing for his excuse a broken “clavichord.” What does his goodness earn him? A beating from Maurice.

Holden asks what others think about death. His metaphor for death is hibernation. He doesn’t ask if the dead are asleep underground. He asks where the ducks go in the winter; and do the fish sleep under the ice? What’s important here is the implicit arrival of spring and return of life. He isn’t sullen; he’s a romantic at heart. Death is not the end, in his metaphor.

After many disappointments, he goes home because, like Thoreau, he discovers that it’s easy to claim you live alone and totally independent of society in a rough shelter in the woods, but impossible to do it.

Like everyone who suffered from a depressed affect when the novel was written in 1948, Holden has to endure loved ones telling him to lighten up. A truly sullen boy would have lashed out; but Holden turns himself in, and not for his own sake but for his little sister’s. He doesn’t want to hurt her by disappearing.

I think I’ve shown that Holden is not sullen. So, what is it about Holden that George F. Will wants to strangle? The boy’s confident assumption of self-reliance, which makes him set out on his own in the middle of the night? His kindness to the mother of a thick-headed bully, which makes him tell her that the other boys all like him and she need not worry about his being too sensitive?

Is it Holden’s respect for his elders that triggers Geo. Will? Holden’s unnecessary visit to Mr. Spencer, and his refusal to talk back to the old man who chews him out? Is it sullenness to treat grumpy old men with respect, even while being judged by them?

Or is it the fact that Holden is not smiling in his heart, not marching in lock step with other boys his age, and not toughening and thickening his skin for the ideological battle ahead?

Does Mr. Will despise Holden for his genuine individualism, which is demonstrated in the fact that Holden selects what interests himself (the process of mummification) and undervalues the monuments that entrenched authority tells him should be paramount (the Dynasties and their Pyramids)?

I'm good at hectoring men who make absurd statements without justification. I come by it naturally; it was the key to my own survival when I was a boy. But calling out like Hector to the Greeks, "Where is your hero? Hiding in his tent with his slave girl?" isn't going to get a response from George F. Will.

So I must also try to defend him. Let us assume Mr. Will was using a figure of speech, and he doesn't really want to strangle children, but does want to suppress what he regards as sullen behavior. I still must ask, if "strangled in the cradle" is a metaphor, what is the analog? What should we do with sullen children?

Maybe he meant we should recommend therapy. But Holden is already in therapy: the entire book is addressed to his therapist, and is written at the direction of the doctor. Mr. Will, like many conservatives, may view therapy as useless coddling; I don't know what he really thinks, because "strangled in the cradle" is a metaphor that dodges the question of society's responsibility to endangered children.

I suspect he means the book should be suppressed. The publisher didn't think so, and made millions of dollars from satisfied readers. But the book is out of favor today. I used to teach it every year to adolescents. Year after year, their response to the novel grew more hostile. I decided to quit teaching it after a year when every class was full of little George Wills, calling for Holden to be shamed into smiling and never, ever, saying "damn." Their main complaint: That Holden was mean.

Year after year, as children had more to do and less time to think, my class evolved into "Short Attention Span Theater." Their minds, even at fifteen, were more concrete than the minds I'd tutored a decade earlier. I could no longer count on empathy moving them to understand, or abstraction moving them to imagine a similar case in their own lives.

I recommend the book to adults, but not to high school children today. If, therefore, some version of what I've said is what George F. Will means by strangling sullen children in the cradle, then I understand something about him.