kept wanting to throw mine out or something, or even trade with him" (108).

Holden may have been completely wrong about the situation, but in order to make Dick feel better, Holden puts his suitcases under his bed. This shows that he does think about other people and he does want to help when he can. Also in chapter 15, Holden meets a couple of nuns at breakfast, has a wonderful conversation with them, and even gives them money. That isn't destructive or narcissistic—it's very nice of Holden to do that when he didn't have to.

Another example of Holden showing compassion towards someone else, and not being selfish or acting like a narcissist, is in chapter 22. This is when Holden discusses James Castle, a boy who died jumping out of a window to avoid some bullies who blocked him in a dorm room. Holden says the following about how he treated James:

"I think the only time I ever even had a conversation with him was that time he asked me if he could borrow this turtleneck sweater I had. I damn near dropped dead when he asked me, I was so surprised and all. . . I didn't even know he knew I had a turtleneck sweater. . . I almost didn't lend him my sweater. Just because I didn't know him too well" (171).

Holden was kind enough to lend a virtual stranger a sweater because he is generous. He's also doesn't feel so self-important that he talks about himself when he's in a social situation. In fact, with Ernest Morrow's mother, Holden talks big about a kid he doesn't really like just to help a mom not worry about her son off at school. For example, Holden lies and tells Mrs. Morrow the following:

"Well, a bunch of us wanted old Ernie to be president of the class. I mean he was the unanimous choice. I mean he was the only boy that could really handle the job. . . Ernie wouldn't let us nominate him. Because he's so darn shy and modest and all. He refused. . . (56-57).

Mrs. Morrow feels wonderful about hearing great things about her son and Holden didn't make himself look important—he made her son look important. Holden really can be less self-involved. Even though he is highly judgmental and critical of others in his mind, he won't purposefully go out and hurt or destroy someone else for his own benefit. He generally does what's right even though he may think and feel differently.

By introducing Holden as a socially and academically disengaged person who is experiencing his failures through a membrane of bitter humor, Salinger sets up the narrator as a reactionary figure. We see his self-defense at work right away. These defenses continue to distance him from a world that is, for him, foreboding and increasingly hopeless. These are not the hallmarks of narcissism but rather the marks of despair.

Holden's character is sympathetic in large part because of a strong undercurrent of tenderness, nostalgia, ironic innocence and protective instincts. But the careful reader will note that Holden's negativity has a specific source and also that he does not seek out destruction.

In his confused state, Holden positions himself as a child in need of protection before running off the cliff (in the central metaphor of the text) and as the child-shepherd ready to save others. The destructive aspects of his character might be best attributed to the idea that Holden cannot effectively place himself in one role or the other and so suffers alone in between.

On the first pages of the novel, Holden's narrative begins with a presentation of his disdainful attitude in a depiction of his negative evaluations of family, movies and Pency Prep, but quickly following these judgments the narrative speaks to Holden's own failings.

The introduction to Holden's character consists of a snapshot of his attitude and, critically, a clear sense of his flaws, which are connected to an inability to focus and to engage academically and socially.

In successive paragraphs, Holden explains why he is standing on a hill, away from the big sporting event taking place at Pency, and how he has been kicked out of school. He mistakenly left the fencing team's equipment on the subway. The "whole team ostracized [him] the whole way back on the train. It was pretty funny, in a way." And he has been unwilling to "start applying" himself in time to avoid being "given the ax" by Pency Prep.

Holden's response to both of these events is a defensive disdain that reads like highly intentional indifference. While the tone of the narrative is snarky and irreverent when it concerns the world around him, it is superficial and defensive when it deals with Holden's failings.

In this way, Salinger situates the reader within Holden's own point of view rather explicitly and develops a sense of insulation within Holden's thinking that distances the narrative from the outside world. We might sympathize with the fact that this character is a young man who recently suffered the loss of a sibling and who is now socially isolated, academically disengaged and full of bitterness.

Salinger makes the reader fully aware of Holden's protective feelings toward figures of his childhood (his sister and his friends Jane and Sally) and we see that he is in real pain (emotional and psychological). Salinger's choice to situate the reader inside of Holden's point of view effectively means that we participate in Holden's self-defense against the forces that threaten him.

Despite Holden's penchant for dismissing the parts of the world he does not care for, we also see that he thinks often of other people. He is not only thinking of himself as a narcissist would. And he is not dismissing the world in ways that are comparative in reference to himself or even to his tastes. Instead, Holden is reacting to a world that, for him, has lost its sheen of wonder. It is a world where things go wrong and people die.

Reflecting on Pheobe's Saturday trips to the museum, Holden gives his emotionally charged perspective a pointed synopsis:

"Certain things they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone. I know that's impossible, but it's too bad anyway."

When Holden asks the cab driver about where the ducks go in winter, he is not asking with childish imagination and wonder. He is asking out of concern. This painful aspect of Holden's character is subdued, to some extent, by the first-person narrative style as Holden's mind is characterized by attempts to insulate himself from the depth of his real feelings.