I am truly getting tired of typing My Year of Rest and Relaxation every week. Today we’re diving into how MYORR relates back to almost everything I’ve read in class this year, mainly Catcher In The Rye and the infamous Hamlet. If you couldn’t already take away the fact that the narrator is obviously depressed and practically empty, then either you’re being stupid or you haven’t read any of my previous blog posts, which you should probably do. Anyways the narrator is down in her dumps, she even goes as far as to say she can die at the very moment and be okay with it, which if you can’t make the connection, totally sounds like Hamlet the very depressed and very suicidal Denmark Prince and is way too similar to Holden Caulfield. The main connection between MYORR and these two novels from class is that of mental illness, suicidal thoughts, and dissociating. The narrator like the other two doesn’t mind death, and the narrator when connected to Holden a clear relation of dissociation can be presented. Holden dissociates through daydream like fantasies where he presents a hypermasculine trait of some sort that he desires but isn’t perceived to have from others viewpoint in reality, whereas our narrator dissociates by sleeping away her life.
Now Mr. Franklin might hate this, but I wasn’t a big fan of Hamlet and I’m not really feeling it in me to talk more about the connection between him and our narrator because aside from the fact that my heart isn’t in it, it’s also the fact that this specific connection is more obvious and very much more simple. It’s too easy to point out that they both want to die or they really can’t stand the people around them (sounds like a millenial), and both of their love lives are worse than mine. What I really want to talk about and explore is the connection that can be made between Holden and the narrator from MYORR.
I find it really funny how many similarities I see not just between the two books but between the two characters even though the characters would probably hate each other if they met one another. I say that because Holden is this overidealistic kid that hates the adult world and how it strips everyone of their innocence, so he would be quite morridified by the narrator from MYORR, who is anything but innocent and in fact has normalised events and actions that Holden would find to be corrupt. The narrator would hate Holden because of how overidealistic and hypocritical he would be, she would probably critize him, calling him a stupid kid that doesn’t know a damn thing, and ultimately brush him off and probably try to avoid interaction with him, because this woman hates any human interaction there is in the world.
Yet, even though these characters have two different agendas, live in different worlds and time periods, have different moral obligations and so on, they have both been destroyed and instead of confronting their feelings they chose to dissociate, only leading to more dissatisfaction. And even more so they do their dissociation in two very different methods and I think this connection in general is a great way to paint the picture of how mental health and illness has or hasn’t changed and how it has been shaped, and you could go even further to make the argument of how environment contributes to it, because a majority of both settings in both novels, is that of New York City.
I just really enjoy the possibilities and the endless depth that this connection has to offer if one wanted to go on a more in depth literature analysis, especially with the contrast between the two. I like to think that a lot of MYORR is also a plot fueled by digressions just like Catcher, however the bigger more important difference, is the ending. MYORR is a novel about change and metamorphosis and it does more than just follow the narrator’s thoughts and depression, for me I like to see how the novel follows the narrator’s triumph and how she finds a way to fall in love with life again without having such love polluted by external and internal forces as before. Whereas with Catcher, we don’t know if Holden gets that happily ever after, everything is left up in smoke, and we have to make assumptions about whether or not he’ll truly be happy or fall back into another depressive episode that may just destroy him more than his unrealistic ideals.
Another connection that can be further explored is that of cultural capital and social classes, both characters belong to a family with abundance and all their lives they haven’t really ever had to worry about money and such. They were born into a world of privilege and it seems that both characters are rather conscious of such a fact, what’s really interesting is how they react to it. The narrator from MYORR, tries to slink away from it, she doesn’t care about money or designer items, she could have almost anything, but chooses not to, whereas Holden doesn’t seem to mind having the money. At times it does seem to him that money and different classes do define much of social interactions and can go as far to determine someone’s friendships, such as the case with his previous roommate and Holden’s cowhide suitcases.
I ultimately find it unsettling how both characters are so much alike even though they are completely different and even the books in general. Two wildly different perspectives and time periods, I mean Catcher was written in the 40s and MYORR came out in 2015, yet both characters are destroyed by the realities they have created for themselves in their attempts to originally escape reality around them. So the question, I guess one can ask along these lines, is if the human mind has really ever changed or did the world change and human issues stayed the same?
I haven’t really been getting much comments about what others think, more so just about style and writing, but I would genuinely love to hear what you believe to be the answer to the seemingly oversimplified and subjective question above that might just seem a bit stupid, but hey, I’m sure answering it is better than sleeping away your life or being obessesed over a way too red hat. Oh wait, nevermind, naps and hats sound much better than answering an existential question, and overall reading this blog.
“I don’t even like old cars. I mean, they don’t even interest me at all. I’d rather have a goddam horse. A horse is human at least.”
– J.D. Salinger
The Writing On The Wall 