Holden Caulfield Chapman Quotes

Holden Caulfield, The Story of All of Us The Catcher in the Rye is a classic coming of age novel that people from all walks of life have been able to relate to. It has also long been used as a reason or justification of murder. This is as ironic as it is wrong because Holden Caulfield, the books main character, is not very likely to kill someone, nor does he want to kill anyone. Holden craves simple acceptance into the world, something killers seem to take to a delusional extreme. Mark David Chapman shot and killed famous singer John Lennon on December 8, 1980 and was found reading The Catcher in the Rye upon police arriving at the scene. He had Lennon autograph his copy of The Catcher in the Rye and even said that his reasons for killing

Mark Chapman believed the following quote explained his reasoning, “I kept wanting to kill whoever’d written it…. I kept picturing myself catching him at it, and how I’d smash his head on the stone steps till he was good and god damn bloody.” 3 “It” is referring to the graffiti Holden found in his young sister’s school. For Chapman, however, “it” is referring to the album Double Fantasy. He felt like the album was corrupt and that he had to show the world that. Holden and Chapman don’t share many characteristics, but they do share a similar hatred of fakes or “phonies,” as Holden would say. They also share the need to protect innocence, although how they each want to do that is very different. Chapman quoted Holden and said; “Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around—nobody big, I mean—except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff—I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I'd do all

were looked at as being ruled insane, in fact Hinckley himself was ruled not guilty for reason of insanity. Chapman withdrew his insanity plea and received psychiatric help in prison, while Hinckley was institutionalized. Holden himself had a mental break down, he was slightly depressed, and thought very little of himself, “But I knew, too, I wouldn’t have the guts to do it. I knew that. That made me even more depressed.” 3 He hated himself so much that he called himself a coward several times, and was constantly putting himself down. But, what separates Holden from Hinckley and Chapman is the fact that he was much more stable than the other two, even though he suffered from a few of the same things as them. Holden himself is a good guy and he has the mind power to tell right from wrong, he wasn’t delusional like Hinckley and Chapman. John Hinckley and Holden Caulfield are quite similar, but John had such a misapprehension of reality he thought that killing the President would “prove his love” for an actress. Mark Chapman believed that The Catcher in the Rye was the perfect explanation for shooting John Lennon. Both men are equally, and obviously, mentally ill. Yes Holden suffered some hardships, but don’t we all? Holden never really blamed anyone else but himself for what happened to him, Holden never ha such an obsession with someone or something that he thought murder was the only way to prove his intentions. Holden Caulfield