Holden and Reznor in Catcher in the Rye

1253 Words3 Pages

Holden Caufield is a person with many mixed feelings. His

happiness was left, but not forgotten in the past, and he suffers terribly

because he cannot adjust to these changes to his world and also to himself.

In the strong sense, looking back at the lost sense of reality that he

still hangs on to, relieves him of all the troubles he has at the present

time. He always compares things that happened in the past to events that

happen in the present. The song, "Hurt," by Nine Inch Nails (NIN), written

by Trent Reznor, represents many of the feelings Holden experiences in his

time of change. The similarities in suffering, adjustment, and remembrance

between the song "Hurt," by Nine Inch Nails and the novel The Catcher in

the Rye, by J.D. Salinger show that Holden Caufield is not the only person

that experiences these feelings.

Throughout the novel Holden undergoes countless suffering from his

peers, strangers, and his own mind. Throughout the song, Reznor suffers

from everything. As said in the song, "I hurt myself today, to see if I

still feel," Reznor is accounting all the suffering that he has experienced.

He tries to explain that all the terrible things that have happened to him,

all the terrible things he has seen, with a nonstop chronic beat, has made

his soul numb. He has lost track of reality and fallen into this deep hole.

Mr. Antolini, Holden's old teacher, said to him that he was headed for a

great fall. Little did he know that throughout the novel, Holden has been

falling until he reached a stopping point towards the end of the story,

when he decides to stay home. This is exactly what Reznor is trying to

dictate in his song. All these events have made him continuously suffer

that at one point, the pain just goes away. The suffering that Holden

feels, the drunk, sick, child in danger of catching pneumonia easily

relates to the dying, beaten young man that Reznor feels he has become.

For both Holden and Reznor, adjustment to the changes in the world

is a difficult task not only physically but emotionally. Holden hates

himself because he fears that he is changing: he has grayed out hair, he

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