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Is Complete Independence Always Positive?

Juxtaposing Power Struggles Between the Catcher in the Rye and the Outsiders

By: Scout Bostley

S.E. Hinton and J.D. Salinger created characters cut from the same bread, Ponyboy

(Hinton) and Holden Caulfield (Salinger) are boys on a self-identity mission. Ponyboy is the

protagonist of The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. Ponyboy is a fourteen year-old greaser, being raised

by his brother. Ponyboy represents another generation in a system setting him up for failure and

Ponyboy is trying to figure out how to find his own voice in group of people yelling over him.

Holden Caulfield is the protagonist of The Catcher in The Rye by J.D. Salinger. Holden is a

sixteen year-old rebel who is searching for meaning in the phony world around him. There are

several parallels between not only these two specific characters but several parallels between the

novels themselves. Both of these stories are told in first person narrative, this gives the reader a

direct insight into the minds of these male teenage protagonists. Through experiencing their lives

with them through first person narrative readers explore the give and take between personal, self-

affirming power and the authoritative power of ideological state apparatuss, more specifically in

this case school. Adolescence, in part, is journeying through the balancing of power in everyday

life be it internal power (struggles with identity and taking control over their own lives) or

external power (schools, parents, the system still classifying you as a child); by exploring Holden

and Ponyboys character development through power struggles often juxtaposing we see that

power is a fluctuating force that can have both positive and negative effects on adolescent

development. Brooke Coates argues that there are four steps for the Adolescent male adventure

novel. Two points will be used to argue the role of power in The Outsiders and in The Catcher in

the Rye, removal and Reintegration.

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Coates defines removal as, [a] Character heeds the calling and leaves the safety of his

or her home, journeying into the unknown. There is a distinct change of environment for the

person. This stage is external, (Coates 27). The removal stage is something both Holden and

Ponyboy have in common yet their experiences with this stage happen in different ways. Holden

was a fed up teen who left his school and essentially ran away where as Ponyboy was forced to

leave due to unforeseeable circumstances. Holdens removal is that of defiance. So I went back

to the room and turned on the light, to start packing and all I lit a cigarette and got all

dressedIm a very rapid packer (Salinger 51). This quote follows his decision to go to New

York for three days alone, without telling his parents. The key moment of defiance in the quote is

the reference to the cigarette. Smoking is commonly known as something bad, dangerous, and

rebellious. Mostly however, smoking cigarettes by teens is their way of rebellion. It is a

common theme present in many of books on how teens rebel against society (Okkar Kyaw 4).

When Holden is rebelling he is rebelling against the external powers in his life namely school but

secondly his parents. In adolescence there is a line that is constantly moving and becoming

thinner and thinner and that is the line between things in control by someone else and things in

your control. When Holden is removing himself he is taking control of his life and has power

in situations he has never had complete power in before. Holden left his school which provided

his housing, food, and clothing as well as all the structure that comes with a school. Most teens

go home to parents at the end of a school year or term and when Holden goes against the system

he finds himself completely isolated, all the power is in his court without exterior influence. The

removal for Holden leads to an even greater depressive state in that he was let down, he went to

New York in search for answers, in a search for independence, and instead found answers he

didnt like. When the gloss wheres off for Holden and he must reintegrate he struggles because
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he wont accept that answers he was given. Proving that he is more an immature teen than a

mature one, which he would never admit.

Ponyboy on the other hand is being removed by his brother (a parental figure in his life).

The external power Ponyboy is running from is the law, and the social system he had gotten

himself caught up in. These are constant external powers in every ones lives but to the adolescent

can sometimes be more extreme especially in cases of social external power. Furthermore even

though he is removed from the situation that does not give him the same powers as Holden.

Ponyboy isnt in control of where he is living, who he is with, what he can look like. All of these

are being stripped away from him during the removal stage. With the absence of external power

Ponyboy has the ability to focus on internal power. The next four or five days were the longest

days Ive ever spent in my life, (Hinton 75). One of the themes in the novel is the role of socio-

economic status as it effects the adolescent, and this theme touches each character in the novel

differently but when you focus Ponyboy specifically you see him as potentially one of the most

powerless characters in the novel partially because of his greaser status. He had to run away

from home because of his relation to Johnny, here he has no power. He is seen differently by

teachers and the school system because of socio-economic status, again Ponyboy has no power.

With this lack of power Ponyboy enter into the reintegration phase seeking help and answers.

Coates defines reintegration as [a] character returns as a hero to the society he or she left

in the Removal stage. The person has defeated the greatest challenge either physically or

mentally and feels a sense of maturity and responsibility. The adults of the community do not

perceive him or her as young and naive any longer. Holdens reintegration happens in waves

and doesnt happen completely in the story. Holden comes home to his sister, Phoebe, without

telling his parents and leaves to stay with a teacher, still without his parents knowing he is home.
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Holdens decision to keep his return home secret from his parents is a power move, by keeping

his parents in the dark he retains the power in his own life. Holdens reluctance to return fully

reintegrate keeps him from completing the adolescent journey Coates laid out.

Ponyboys reintegration is text book character development using the points Coates

defines. Ponyboys reintegration begins with him and Johnny being seen as heroes after saving

the children from the burning church. Ponyboys reintegration is different from Holdens because

he is seeking support. The support comes in the support of a teacher, and attachment to the

overarching power of school in an adolescents life. The moment Ponyboy is able to give up

control to Jerry Wood (the school teacher) he notices things he had never seen before. I was

sitting there, smoking a cigarette, when Jerry came back in He stared at me for a second. You

shouldnt be smokingHow comeJerry stammered, uh, youre too youngI had never

thought about it (Hinton 97). Here is another place cigarettes can be seen as a symbol. The

cigarette is power that was never supposed to be in Ponyboys hands. Unlike Holden who uses it

as a symbol of rebellion because the adult/negative stigma associated with it Ponyboys cigarette

is part of his life style. With Jerry Woods interjection on his smoking is the first step of Ponyboy

relinquishing power to external forces and doing so willingly with his well-being in mind. This

shift in power is a sign of maturity. Even in the last page Ponyboy mentions the cigarette again

when remembering a younger, more immature, version of himself. Remembering a handsome,

dark boy with a reckless grin and a hot temper. A tough towheaded boy with a cigarette in his

mouth and a bitter grin on his hard face, (Hinton 180). In this moment Ponyboy has immense of

internal power, recognizing who is now and who he was then. He has power over how people

perceive him from this point forward and he utilizes this power by writing down his story (the

novel).
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The adolescent journey is learning to balance the role of internal and external powers in

life without any right or wrong answer, through analysis of Ponyboy and Holden the reader

witnesses two different approaches to the coming of age character development in relation to

power. In the end it seems that they are both losing a form of power. However Ponyboy

relinquishes power to the external while also maintaining some internal power knowing that he

was the one in control of his life not the Socs or the greasers. At the end we see Ponyboy, heart

broken, not wanting to do his homework but the decision to his homework, his own way, telling

his story he sets himself apart from Holden while also highlighting the balance he has found in

his life. Needing and want school (with that the support school offers) while also knowing who

he is and where he has come from. Holden seems to have the power slip away from when he

realizes how little power he has in the external. Holden ends the book with still an indifference to

school, not caring and more importantly not taking control of his perception of school. This one

psychoanalyst guy they have here, keeps asking me if Im going to apply myself when I go back

to school next September. Its such a stupid question, in my opinion (Salinger 213). His

compliancy shows that he hasnt found a balance between the external and internal powers in his

life, that could also be said for why he is in the asylum in the first place. These protagonists

highlight two types of adolescents in relation to power. Holden shows us what a teen with little

power in his life struggles with; idealizing independence only to be left more depressed and

confused than at beginning of the novel. On the flip side Ponyboy is an example of teen left with

little external support with the loss of his parents and his greaser (low-income) status he also is

left unsupported by the social system of the time. This leads to him appreciating the comfort of

school and the dismantling of the gang system that caused him so much trouble. Ponyboy runs

into the arms of external forces knowing that he is not ready to hold the reigns alone.
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Works Cited
Coates, Brooke. Analysis of The Coming of Age Cycle Archetype Represented in

S.E. Hintons The Outsiders. California State University, Dominguez Hills, ProQuest

Dissertations Publishing, 2003. 1431177.

Dashti, Sorour Karampour; Bahar, Ida Baizura Binti. Resistance as Madness in

The Catcher in the Rye. Theory and Practice in Language Studies5.3 (Mar 2015): 457-462.

Hinton, S. E. The Outsiders. New York: Viking, 1967. Print.

Parker, Robert Dale. How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and

Cultural Studies. Third ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print.

Salinger, J. D. The Catcher in the Rye. Ed. E. Michael Mitchell and Lotte Jacobi. Boston:

Little, Brown, 1951. Print.