Capitalism and Catholicism via Catcher

It's summer, and that means summer reading for my students. My English I Honors students for next year are reading two books along with Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, our school-wide read for the summer: The Catcher in the Rye and Lord of the Flies.

So last night, I picked up Catcher and read a few chapters. What struck me was in Chapter 15, which begins with Holden making a date with Sally Hayes but quickly moves to something much more important, a discussion of luggage:

It isn't important, I know, but I hate it when somebody has cheap suitcases with them. It sounds terrible to say it, but I can even get to hate somebody, just looking at them, if they have suitcases with them. Something happened once. (141)

The "something" that happened is that Holden had a roommate, Dick Slagle, who had cheap luggage and hides it under the bed. Holden feels guilty and finally decides to hide his own expensive cowhide bags under the bed, too. However, this doesn't solve the problem:

But here's what he did. The day after I put mine under my bed, he took them out and put them back on the rack. The reason he did it, it took me a while to find out, was because he wanted people to think my bags were his. He really did. (141)

Flash-forward a couple of pages in the chapter to Holden's encounter with the nuns. He tries to do something nice by donating some money and by showing interest the nun's jobs (one of them is an English teacher), but ends up feeling lousy.

They let me give them ten bucks as a contribution. . . . The both of them kept thanking me so much it was embarrassing. (143)

Then I started wondering like a bastard what the one sitting next to me, that taught English, thought about, being a nun and all, when she read certain books for English. . . . To tell you the truth, it was sort of embarrassing, in a way, to be talking about Romeo and Juliet with her. I mean that play gets pretty sexy in some parts, and she was a nun and all. . . (143-4)

What underpins his embarrassment is his fear that they'll ask if he's a Catholic. He remarks that "Catholics are always trying to find out if you're a Catholic" (146) and tells the story of Louis Shaney, a fellow tennis player who suddenly asks, "Did you happen to notice where the Catholic church is in town, by any chance?" (146) Holden doesn't view this as an honest question, but interprets it as an attempt "to find out if I was a Catholic" (146). Holden thinks that Shaney would have enjoyed the conversation more if Holden were a Catholic. And the conversation with Shaney wasn't bad, according to Holden, but it would have been better if there hadn't been the question of religion.

Just as suddenly as Shaney asks the question, Holden connects this discussion of Catholicism with the earlier one about luggage:

That's why I was glad those two nuns didn't ask me if I was a Catholic. It wouldn't have spoiled the conversation if they had, but it would've been different, probably. . . . It's just like those suitcases I was telling you about, in a way. All I'm saying is that it's no good for a nice conversation. That's all I'm saying. (147)

And he ends the chapter with this comment:

Goddam money. It always ends up making you blue as hell. (147)

So there's something here about judgement, about labeling the people around us. Do you have expensive luggage? Are you part of my social class? Are you a fellow Catholic (or Methodist, or Hindu, or Buddhist, or Bourgeoisie, or whatever)? Do you share my beliefs?

And it's difficult to condemn people for those sorts of questions, for the inquisitive look at your luggage, or clothing, or car, since part of what it's about is finding common ground. The Catholic question that Holden raises seems to be less about "Are you going to hell?" and more about "Do we have something in common?" And the same thing is probably true about the luggage: perhaps when we look at a person's stuff, it's at least partially to find some sort of common ground, some basis for a relationship with the person. Perhaps these questions are, at center, "Is your life like my life in some way?"

But it does end up "making you blue as hell," even if the intentions were good. Because the fact is, we're not all alike, and even though we might sometimes find common ground through those sorts of questions, we're likely to alienate each other more often than not.