'That's the whole
trouble. You can't even find a place that's peaceful, because
there is not any.'
laments Salinger's central hapless character, Holden Caulfield,
from the classic novel
'Catcher in the Rye.' A young 14 year schoolboy from
Abhazi certainly knows
how Holden felt. He decided to visit the countryside
to seek out a peaceful
place where he could read his favorite novel - 'Catcher
in the Rye ' and
failed to find a place. Instead, he was detained by the Russian
border police for
illegally entering Russia. When questioned by the police on
how he had stumbled
into Russia, the teenager told the bemused police ;
"I was looking
for a quiet spot to read my favorite novel 'Catcher in the Rye".
Well accidents do
happen. So the police accepted his explanation and let him
go. The boy was
obviously gripped by Salinger's novel and he is hardly alone.
Many Russians I have
spoken to tell me how Salinger's novel left an indelible
impression. For
instance, fans of Robert Burns are flattered to learn the title of
the novel was inspired
by an old song of Robert Burns, school students who
feel alienated,
misunderstood and expelled from school can easily identify with
the hero and people
who who are brave enough to ask deep questions are
all enchanted by the
novel. American school teachers were fired from schools
for teaching this book
in the 1970's. Love or loathe it, there is something about
the novel which evokes
the most powerful emotions in our souls. Of course, not
everyone adores the
novel. A 17 year old Russian school student told me "I
don't like this novel
as it is too negative and pessimistic. " Yet the mother of the
school student
informed me : "I like Holden. He is not a negative character. He
does not harm anyone
and is very kind to the nuns. He wants to help people."
Svetlana Wilson told
me "When I first read this novel it made a tremendous
impression on me. I
could immediately grasp the deep pain which the character
was experiencing".
It is interesting to
note that there exists a myriad of reactions to interpreting the
novel. While some
Conservative Christians are scandalized by Holden's negative
views, others might
see Holden as positively moving towards Christianity because
of his pleasant
encounter with some Nuns who he donates money to. "Holden is
one of us. His kingdom
is not of this world. " they might reason. Yet an anarchist
or Marxist might view
his novel as a frank critique of the capitalist system. Feeling
confused, some
journalists decided to ask the reclusive author himself for an
interpretation. Being
exasperated by unwanted attention, the author told journalists
who managed to give
him an interview { which represented in itself a great feat},
"just read the
novel ".
The novel tells of the
adventures of a student who has just been expelled from
a boarding
school for a fourth time for failing exams, how he attempts to cope
with his expulsion and
whether he should make a complete break with his friends,
parents and
surroundings, or meet them half way. The main character Holden is
unsure what to do with
his life and who he can turn to for help.He represents the
completely
disorientated outsider adrift and at odds with society.
But one interpretation
which is currently in vogue, is that Holden, like the author
of Catcher in the Rye,
is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. This
interpretation is
based on the biography of Salinger, who was a post war veteran
who saw action at
D-Day and during the Battle of the Bulge. The argument goes
that Salinger never
recovered from the war and became a reclusive who shunned
company. He was not
really an eccentric but still suffering from the deep scars of
the war. In 1945,
Salinger was hospitalized for 'Battle fatigue'. He told his daughter
"You never really
get the smell of burning flesh out of your nose entirely, no matter
how long you
live". The idea is that the character, experiences a traumatic
encounter where one of
his fellow students, who borrowed his sweater, is bullied, forced to
flee and leap to his death from a window. Holden feels 'survivor guilt' for not saving
him. And this is why he wants to become a kind of catcher who waits for confused
children to fall off a cliff so he can save them from death.
There may well be some
substance to this argument but I think it is overstated.
The character of
Holden can 't be reduced to the experience of Salinger but was
creatively invented by
the vivid imagination of Salinger himself. There is a good
Russian proverb which
goes : 'A tale is an invention, a truth and the song'.
In recent years , the
mental health problems of school students have either
increased or at least
been acknowledged more openly than in the past. Some
of the more extreme
cases are being diagnosed as falling under Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome'.
However, many war veterans would claim that their own
experiences are way to
traumatic to be compared to the experiences of school
children. They may
well feel insulted by such comparisons.
We should at least try
to define this syndrome. In succinct terms, the syndrome
arises from deeply
traumatic events in wartime which lead to mental scars where
the victim can't let
go of painfully crippling memories, has recurring nightmares
where old events of
the war are relived and is afflicted by very negative feelings
of alienation, guilt
at what he did and how he survived. The war has left him with
an almost unbridgeable
gap with a society which can't or won't understand his
pain. Of course, many
school students feel traumatized by bullying, fighting ,being
misunderstood and low
self esteem. But there is not the same sense of , say a
veteran who goes into
a forest for a picnic but ends up planning how to dig in
for a military defense
lest he come under attack.{in Erich Remarque's novel,
The Road back, a war
veteran can't go for a quiet walk in the woods without
being disturbed by war
memories and in Robert Mason's Chickenhawk , Back
in the World After
Vietnam, he states : 'I wasn't thinking about Vietnam, but it was
there. Awake, in quiet
moments, I felt a familiar dread in the pit of my stomach,
even as I angrily
informed myself that I was home. Asleep , my dreams were
infected by what I had
seen.The explosive jump ups I'd been having since the
last month were
getting more frequent'.
Perhaps one thing a
troubled teenager and war veteran both lament is 'Nobody
understands me' as
well as the trauma of having to adapt to a society based on
trivial and phony
values. It might be more accurate to state that Salinger's wartime
experience helped him
to better understand the trauma of youth who felt
completely lost or
disorientated in society. English teachers should at least creatively
use the novel to raise
deep questions on what is Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome,
in what way does it
assume different forms and intensity and how it might be
better understood.
That is teachers should try and go beyond the academic. This
is because school
students may well encounter war veterans in the future .
I myself have
encountered war veterans in Moscow. For example, when Jim Vail
and I were working
with the homeless in Moscow , near Kazansky rail station we
noticed a strange man
approaching us. He looked dazed, disorientated and utterly
lost. We wondered if
he was about to attack us. But instead he just asked for
directions and
informed us he had just returned from Afghanistan. A war veteran
i met who had returned
from the war in UKraine could not seem to settle down
or hold a job for long
. He took to heavy drinking and then returned again to the
front. A young Russian
student based in Moscow, informed me that a war veteran
who was American , was
teaching English to children . He told her this work with
children helped him
forget the trauma of the war he experienced in Afghanistan.
He declined to be
interviewed. I can never forget encountering a shattered Irish
man who was mentally
trembling, traumatized whom I thought was about to
assault me. It was
clear that he had undergone some form of torture under
British detention in
Northern Ireland. You notice that many traumatized victims
of rape or assault can
overreact and wonder if they will be safe when either
going up on a life
full of men or seeing a male guest visit their friend's apartment.
The fear and distrust
is so deep they can't always discriminate between real
and imagined threats.
I found that there was
no hospital which specifically catered for war veterans
in Moscow. Most of the
care for war veterans is sporadic, spontaneous and
not coherently
organised. Many war veterans thought it was a waste of time
speaking to
psychologists or doctors because they could never understand
what they experienced.
What makes recovery of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome
highly problematic is
a culture which largely frowns upon any admission of
weakness or not being
'a real man'. War veterans are not supposed to tell
people about their
pain but 'put up with it'. They are expected to suffer in
silence. So it comes
as no surprise to find veterans can't find anyone to turn
to or take to heavy
drinking,drugs or commit suicide. However, it is not all
bad news. There are
some people in Russia who understand the problems
of war veterans and
seek to aid them. For example, I spoke to a psychologist
who told me how she
felt happy about seeing a war veteran emerge from
her session with a
beaming radiant face. It was as if she had helped left
some burden from this
soldier tortured by war guilt and plagued by recurring
nightmares of meeting
old soldiers he had killed. The organisation 'The Union
of Volunteers of
Donbass ' sends 20-30 people to psychologists to be treated
for Post Traumatic Stress
Syndrome a month. However, as Maria Koleda,
a representative of
this group states, veterans also need aid with obtaining
residential rights,
citizenship and work.
It is possible that
certain people with a high level of empathy can comprehend
the experience of war
veterans even if they have not experienced war. For instance,
when veterans heard
the songs and poems penned by famous singer Vladimir
Vysotsky, they
thought that he himself was such a war veteran. The poet wrote
the lyrics of songs
which tell about 'Survivor guilt ' such as 'The Man who did
not return' and 'The
One who refused to shoot'. Both characters in the songs
feel survivor guilt
because they felt unworthy to live compared to their comrades
who sacrificed their
lives for them.Yet this poet had never been to the front. So
somebody out there can
understand Holden as well as war veterans. We only
need a quiet spot to
lend an ear to those that are misunderstood.
