everyone talks about how holden caulfield isn't meant to be liked but while i was reading the book i never resented him or found a reason to, if anything i just felt sorry for him. he's a depressed, suicidal teenage csa victim who's still mourning for his brother who died from leukemia. he broke his hand after punching a window and to this day he can't properly make a fist, which could symbolize how he could never truly get over allie and it became a part of him. the passages where he talks about allie are incredibly realistic and gut wrenching and they really make you feel for him. i feel like having to deal with the loss of someone he loved so much was another reason why he was afraid of change, which is why he loves museums because the exhibits are always the same. it's only you who changes. you can return anytime you'd like and you'd be in the same environment. it's the same thing with how he said he likes carousels because they always play the same song.
when people call him an incel it's such a character assassination. he gets so worried that stradlater would assult jane to the point where he feels physically ill and can't stop thinking about it. he remembers small things about her, like how she keeps her kings in the back row when playing checkers because he loves her as a person. when stradlater doesn't care for holden's request to ask her about if she still keeps her kings in the back, it's implied that he sees her as an object and nothing more which infuriates holden and holden literally starts a physical fight with him over jane. in the flashback scene he gets on jane's lap and kisses her all over her face when she starts crying and goes to the movies with her afterwards even though he complains about how phony they are.
he does hire a prostitute but it's because he was so depressed that he didn't know why he was doing the things he did and even then he didn't want any sexual favors from her, he just wanted someone to talk to. that's how lonely he is. he clearly despises "macho" men and says the difference between him and other guys is that he stops when the girl asks him to and they don't.
it's not that holden hates everyone, he clearly has a lot of love in his heart. it's just that he's become cynical and closed himself off because of all the trauma he had that he doesn't know how to navigate. so he runs.
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