Holden Caulfield's Song

You can easily relate “Creep” by Radiohead to Holden Caulfield and his pessimistic attitude towards everything and everybody in the book. Wherever Holden goes, he constantly refers to people as “phonies”, without even speaking a word to them. He is very critical and hold high standards for not only other individuals, but of himself as well. His low self-esteem is quite apparent from all the negative comments he makes throughout the text. In my honest opinion, I think Holden puts others down as a way to make himself feel better about the bad in his own life. This song tells the story of someone who believes they don’t belong where they are and feel an immense loneliness. “But I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo.What the hell am I doing here?I don't belong here.” (Radiohead Creep) Holden feels socially and academically inferior to the other students at Pencey, therefore, he starts to become an outcast, ditching social gatherings and school events to be alone in his dorm room.

The struggle Holden has to express his feelings to Jane can be communicated in this song with the lyrics, “When you were here before, couldn't look you in the eye. You're just like an angel, your skin makes me cry. You float like a feather, in a beautiful world. And I wish I was special, you're so ****in' special.” Through this excerpt of “Creep”, you can connect it with Holden putting Jane up on a pedestal, even though it is communicated through her family history that she is anything but perfect. He doesn’t feel equal to her socially, or physically, because he, as I said before, is very critical of himself ,especially now that she is dating his seemingly “perfect” roommate,