Holden Caulfield

“I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can't accept not trying. (Michael Jordan)” Humans learn from their failures, but they learn nothing if they do not try to succeed as Michael Jordan explains in this quotation. We must try to truly learn, as simply being taught does not lead to true understanding. Frank Money in Toni Morrison’s “Home” and Holden Caufield in J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” are stories about letting go. Frank Money and Holden Caulfield have extremely similar journeys, with both characters experiencing a similar call, challenges, return, and gift. Both Frank and Holden are called by a physical letter, but the call emotionally impacts the two very differently. Frank is called by an ill-boding letter,

Frank sees alcohol as a necessity, “The taste of scotch on the train, two beers hours later-he’d had no problem limiting himself. (Morrison 33)” Frank uses alcohol to ignore his stressors and escape. He has such difficulty remembering what he had experienced throughout the war, that he would rather drink and forget than face the disgusting truth. On the other hand, Holden uses alcohol to pretend to be someone he is not. He wants to escape his reality, “Do I look like I’m under 21? … I can’t sit in a corny place like this cold sober. (Salinger 78)” Unsure of who he is, Holden believes he is mature enough to flirt with 30-year-old women just because he is at a bar. He wants to uses alcohol to show he is not a child, essentially ignoring his current problems with the hope that they’ll disappear. Frank and Holden both drink alcohol as a means of dealing with their problems, without acting as a legitimate solution. For Frank, drinking is a method of dealing with the pain of his best friends dying in front of him, and everything else the war had to offer. On the other hand, Holden uses alcohol to become someone else and ignore his problems. Holden wants to be an adult, and for him that is represented by alcohol and