ESSAY

Evan Diomede 10/21/09 Ashlee O’Doherty Rough Draft

Articles of Clothing will most likely change the person wearing them and their personality. In the case of Holden Caulfield he has a red hunting hat that he had purchased in New York City. His hat lets him change his personality into what he would like to be, more confident. When Holden puts his hat on his personality changes from a very shy and snobbish child to a confident more talkative adult like character. Holden also acts differently around people while wearing the hat. At Pencey he puts on the hat in order to overcome the overwhelming sadness of his brother Ally’s death, while writing the poems for Stradlater off of Ally’s baseball glove. At the time he spent at Pencey he never wore his hat outside of his room because he didn’t really want to fit in with the guys there. While Holden is in the City he wears the hat whenever he meets some one, he feels as though he can act however he likes because the hat gives him a new personality. When Holden is around his sister he doesn’t feel like he needs a new personality but that he just can be himself around her.

While Holden is alone in his room at Pencey he wears his hat to escape from Stradlater who he finds to be obnoxious and Ackley who Holden finds to be extremely repulsive and annoying. Holden wears his hat generally to change his personality to fit in with people. Yet at Pencey he only wears it while he is alone writing the poems down, from Ally’s baseball glove, for Stradlater and to escape the pain of his brother’s death. When Holden’s brother died form cancer he was very angry and upset so upset that he punched the windows in his garage out. Yet while he is wearing this hat thinking about Ally he doesn’t want to do anything out of rage. Instead he wants to think about his brother and read what he wrote and admire it. At Pencey Holden wears his hat only in his room so he won’t fit in with the obnoxious jerks/crooks at Pencey. He tries not to fit in with them as much as possible

While Holden is in the City and has his hat on he feels as though he is on top of the world. He doesn’t have a care in the world about what is going on around him he just feels like he fits in. He doesn’t really care how he looks or how he sounds he just feels “cool”. While Holden is in the cab he constantly asks the cab driver about the ducks and where the go for the winter. The cab driver always answers I don’t know but Holden still tries to make a connection. His hunting hat gives him this confidence to ask the cab driver if he wants to get a drink or hang out with him. He is always trying to make connections with random people who he deems not a “phony” or a “snob”. The hat helps him to do this.

When Holden goes to his old apartment where his parents and sister lives he gets to talk with his sister. For some reason he can act himself around her and he feels good while talking to her. The reason he can talk freely to his sister and not care about what he sounds like or what he looks like even without the hat is because he knows she went through the same traumatic event of Ally’s death. She knows exactly how Holden feels she just expresses it in different ways. While he is talking to Phoebe he also protects her from swearing. He is protective over her because he doesn’t want her to grow up. His hat is his new identity and his “portal” back to childhood because he knows how painful Adulthood is. He doesn’t want Phoebe to go through the change from Childhood to Adulthood. At the end of this book when Holden and Phoebe are by the Merry-go-round she has his hat and even without the hat Holden is still so protective over her. He doesn’t want her to reach for the ring because he doesn’t want he to fall. This also shows how he doesn’t want her to fall into the pain of adulthood.

Holden wants to make connections while he has this false confidence in the hat. This may not even be false confidence, his confidence could be his real personality but its buried underneath the blanket of pain of Ally’s death so when he wears his hat it unmasks the real Holden Caulfield. He wears this hat to escape from the pains of his life in adulthood. He changes them to confidence and this hat also becomes his portal to childhood. Holden has an attachment to this hat all the way to the end of this book. At the end of his story he gives his hat to phoebe and then doesn’t care about anything but phoebe he lets go of this blanket of pain and of this childish attachment to the hat and puts in phoebe to make sure she doesn’t feel the pain of the “fall”. The “fall” being the change from childhood to adulthood. Holden is becoming the “Catcher in the Rye”. Holden’s hat in general changes his personality to be more confident and care free.