The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

In The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Holden Caulfield is constantly depressed and down with his life. He failed out of four schools and even when out of school he isn’t very successful. He’s considered a dropout, a failure, a madman. Along with him is society’s “fink.” In “The Right to Fail” by William Zinsser, the everyday ‘dropout’ is looked at. The dropout, or “fink”, fails but later regains his life. By being pessimistic, Holden is more likely to see failure as a bad thing while the “fink” sees failure as a step in success.

Holden Caulfield and the “fink” both experience failure. The fink’s failure might just be a staircase in success. The fink might need to discover himself and when he does, he will be on his way to achieving better things in life. In “The Right to Fail” Zinsser says, “For the young, dropping out is often a way of dropping in” (Zinsser 2). For Holden, it takes a much longer time to deal with failure. He has to go through many things first. He has to deal with failing out of school, having his brother die, and all the normal teenage problems including sex, girls, and general life. Holden never really tried throughout his life. In The Catcher in the Rye he says, “They kicked me out…I was flunking four subjects and not applying myself at all” (Salinger 4). Holden gave up in showing effort. That led to another failure and then another, making a chain. The fink goes against society, but in the end finds his way, whereas Holden just soaks in his problems, causing a mental drama to himself. The fink can be a person of any age encountering a certain failure. However, Holden is just a teenager dealing with many failures. It is much harder for him to go through life because he is still just growing up. Holden puts in no effort to do something, while at first the fink might not do anything, but later will try to improve his or her life. Zinsser states, “I want to put in a good word for the fink…he has a good chance of becoming our national idle…a man with a mind of his own” (Zinsser 4). Through incomplete stages in life, the fink later succeeds. The fink goes against society but still sticks with it in the end. Holden, on the other hand, completely lives his own life separate from those around him.

In “The Right to Fail” the author always looks to the good side of failure. He says, “I’ve learned a great deal from my failures…it is the only way to grow” (Zinsser 10-11). He is very optimistic. The fink sees failure as a chance to learn more about him or herself. The fink uses failure in a way that will later be beneficial. On the other hand, Holden is quite pessimistic. He doesn’t look to the better sides of his failure. He is always depressed. Holden says things like “It was too depressing,” (Salinger 80) “That killed me,” (127) and “It made me even more depressed when she said that” (169). People who are happy don’t say things like that all the time. Holden