Compare And Contrast Paul's Case And Catcher In The Rye

There is a story that was written in 1904, about a teenager boy. Paul’s Case was the story and it was written by Willa Cather. It talked about a teenage boy, Paul, facing problems in school and personal life, and the way he reacted to it was by lying about it, for in some way escape his reality. Throughout the story the narrator also tells us about his depression, the lies he tells and about his social life. Some similarities could be found in the novel “Catcher In The Rye” by J.D Salinger, about another teenage boy with similar characteristics as Paul. J.D Salinger and Willa Cather have created two different characters that have many things in common, such as being outsiders, lying frequently and feeling depressed.

After reading both,

the story and the novel, I have found reasons to believe in the
similarities of the two characters. As an illustration, being outsiders. “His house was next to
the Cumberland minister. He approached it tonight with the neverless sense of defeat, the hopeless feeling of sinking back forever into ugliness and commonness that he had always had when he came home.” (Cather 202) In this passage, the narrator tells us about how Paul feels that he is “sinking back” into the commonness and ugliness of the environment around him, as if the people around him are all the same and do the same things, but he isn’t. Paul’s way of feeling different and seeing the commonness around him could be related to Holden’s. “You could hear them all yelling, deep and terrific on the Pencey side, because the whole school except me was there,[...]” (Sialinger 4) According to this passage and Holden, it was a common thing to go to a football game there and support your team, but he was an exception. He would watch the game from far. It’s interesting how both characters, Paul and Holden, are outsiders but they have different ways of being so.
Throughout the two stories, many similarities have been found. Another illustration of them is the lying done by the characters. “When questioned by the principal as why he was there, Paul stated, politely enough, that he wanted to come back to school. This was a lie, but Paul was accustomed to lying - found it, indeed, indispensable for overcoming friction.”(Cather 197) The narrator explains in this passage that Paul lies, and is used to it, to avoid or “overcome” his reality. This characteristic of him can be also found in Holden many times in the novel, such as when he says “I’m the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It’s awful” This passage is one of the many that tells that Holden is a liar, or he lies very often. Other examples that relate him to it are when he lies to a one of his classmates mother to how he was doing in school, or when he lied to Phoebe about getting kicked out of school. The two characters seem to be very used to lying.
As a final point, depression.

Paul and Holden show signs of going through difficult times. In both, the novel and the story, one of the themes seems to be depression. “The nearer he approached his house the more absolutely unequal Paul felt to the sight of it all: his ugly sleeping chamber[...]” This passage was one of the many the narrator has used to describe how depressed or “unequal” Paul felt because of the appearance of his house and how it reflected his economic status. Holden also seems to talk about it throughout the novel due to how much it bothered him that he was wealthy in comparison to others and made him be seen and feel different. “They were so ignorant, and they had those sad, fancy hats on and all. And that business about getting up early to see the first show at Radio City Music Hall depressed me.If somebody, some girl in an awful-looking hat, for instance, comes all the way to New York –from Seattle,Washington, for God's sake – and ends up getting up early in the morning to see the goddam first show at Radio City Music Hall, it makes me so depressed I can't stand it. I'd've bought the whole three of them a hundred drinks if only they hadn't told me that.” (Salinger 84-85).

All in all, I have reasons to believe that Paul ,from Paul’s Case, and Holden, from Catcher In The Rye, have things in common such as they lie to escape their reality, they both feel depressed about their reality and that they are outsiders. Both of stories have different backgrounds and were written by different writers but, the two have characters that share similar

characteristics.