How Jane's character is used to show Holden's motivation in Catcher in the Rye

Jane is an important character in understanding they psyche of Holden. While we never actually meet her in the story, Holden is constantly mentioning her, saying, "maybe I'll give old Jane a buzz." throughout the story. Holden never actually does, and all we end up learning about her is through Holden's flashbacks. Because of this, we never actually learn if Jane is actually like what Holden describes her as. Holden describes her as a sweet and intelligent girl and admires her (perceived) innocence and simplicity. He admires the unique and peculiar traits she has, like not using the kings in checkers once she promotes to them. Using these descriptions, we can paint a picture of what Holden values in a person, and in turn his actions to protect these people give us an understanding of what motivates Holden.

We first learn about Jane through Stradlater, who explains that he has a date with her. This both excites and frustrates Holden. He is happy to reflect on his time with her, but is uncomfortable with her going on a date with Stradlater. He reflects on a time where he essentially witnesses Stradlater almost manipulate a girl into having sex with him. After Stradlater's date, Holden asks if they had sex. Stradlater hints that they did, "He gave me another one of those playful stupid little socks on the shoulder." (55), and Holden ends up insulting him. Throughout the story, Holden expresses frustrations on not being able to fight back in situations when he is being attacked, like when Maurice essentially robs him. This trait firsts manifests with Stradlater, he immediately starts insulting him while clearly knowing he can't win and refuses to give up even after Stradlater pins and hits him. Holden is unable to physically fight back against Stradlater, and is only able to insult him. Despite this, Holden does manage to upset Stradlater, who worries that he might have cracked Holden's skull. 

So why is Holden able to fight Stradlater despite knowing that he'd lose? I think that it heavily relates to a comment Holden makes towards the end of the novel. Holden's ideal job of the "catcher in the rye" protecting kids from falling off the cliff that they don't know exists reminded me of his confrontation with Stradlater. Holden's self-assigned role of the protector of the innocent (or who he perceives is innocent) is first highlighted with Jane. Even just the idea of Jane's innocence being threatened is enough for Holden to act recklessly. Additionally, Stradlater first starts his conversation with Holden by insulting a story Holden wrote about his dead younger brother. This contrasts Holden's behavior in school, where he is entirely incapable of finding internal motivation for himself. He even tells his teacher not to feel bad for flunking him due to not doing any of the work because he's failing all of his other classes. This also explains why Holden keeps mentioning calling up Jane throughout the story. He keeps doing this as to hold on to some external motivation to validate his meandering throughout NYC. Holden being more motivated through external means rather than internal is also reflected at the end of the story, where Phoebe is able to convince Holden to stay, despite Holden's insistence on leaving. Jane's character is used to show that Holden is able to apply himself when the image or feelings of those he values are threatened. We also see this when Phoebe gets upset with Holden after learning of his plans to run away and when Stradlater insults the very personal story Holden writes about Allie. This understanding of Holden also gives us a partial answer to the psychoanalyst's question at the end of the novel, "A lot of people, especially this one psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if I'm going to apply myself when I go back to school next September." (276). Will Holden fall back into his old habits where he is unable to motivate himself internally? Or will Holden find another peer or teacher that he values enough to keep him motivated? Holden himself isn't even able to answer these questions.

Comments

  1. Emily SFebruary 8, 2023 at 4:47 PM

    yeah i think jane is crucial in understanding his hopes of being the catcher in the rye, like that whole "matyr" concept that we were talking about in class. i wonder what would've happened if he went down to meet jane at the start of the novel

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  2. Gabe DavisFebruary 26, 2023 at 7:51 AM

    I hadn't thought about Holden as the protector of Jane's innocence before. I guess it makes sense, because he pictures her innocence just the same way he pictures Allie's, and so anything that comes between that upsets him. Stradlater insulted both Allie and Jane in one fell swoop, so of course Holden would have to do something.

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  3. JanakiMarch 5, 2023 at 7:45 AM

    Hi Eli, this post was really interesting because Jane's character fascinated me as well - there are three people Holden holds in high regard. One of them no longer exists, one of them ends up reprimanding him when he actually meets her, and then the third one, Jane, we never meet but she's somehow supposed to represent purity and innocence and Holden wants to protect that. In general, Holden seems very threatened by the possibility that people change and grow up and experience the world around them and part of this comes from his distrust of the world because he sees everyone and everything that is deemed to be worth engaging with as phony. Holden also never actually calls Jane - I think part of this is because at the back of his mind, he knows that the image he has constructed of Jane for himself is probably not who she is now and he wants to almost keep that innocence for himself. Anyways, this was fun to read :)

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  4. MitchellMarch 7, 2023 at 2:14 PM

    We didn't fully dig into it in class, but Jane's thing with the kings in the back row not only ranks as an importantly "quirky" detail that Holden proudly notices while guys like Stradlater "don't care about stuff like that." It also reflects something of Holden's emerging system of values: as you note, to leave the kings in the back row after they've been "promoted" is to not USE them, to not PLAY THE GAME "the way it's supposed to be played" (as both Spencer and Stradlater scold Holden for NOT doing), to not try to WIN but just to "like the way they look" all in a line like that. This might make Jane a rather terrible checkers player--if the goal were to compete and win. But Holden frames her as more of an "aethete" who just "likes how they look" and isn't at all interested in "playing the game." I don't know if we'd call this "innocence," but it certainly fits with what we see of Holden's values, as when he dismisses Spencer telling him "life IS a game, boy" ("Game, my ass!").

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