How Is Holden Caulfield Mad

“Much madness is divinest sense- To a discerning Eye-.” Emily Dickinson describes seemingly “mad” people as the sane ones in society. Holden Caulfield is quite different from those around him, especially his roommates at Pencey. Holden is portrayed throughout the book as a hateful, overly analytical and a rather mentally unstable teenager. Only in reality, he is worrisome, rather normal, and not “mad” as he is perceived.
One of Holden’s roommates is a good looking player named Ward Stradlater. Stradlater is very narcissistic and only cares about his own well-being. Stradlater was preparing for a date with one of Holden’s old friends, Jane Gallagher. Holden kept asking question after question about her to Stradlater. Stradlater grew annoyed with Holden and just ignored him completely. He wasn’t trying to be an annoyance, Holden wanted to know all he could about Jane and in no way is he “mad” for that. He was just worried, he knows how much of a player

Stradlater is and that he will just use her for amusement and sex. That’s why Holden told him that “she had a lousy childhood.” He wanted Stradlater to realize that this wasn't a girl to mess with, since she went through too much already.
Holden’s other roommate is Robert Ackley, whose room is connected to his. Ackley is the opposite of Stradlater in nearly every aspect, Holden describes him as “one of those very, very tall, round shouldered guys- he was about six four- with lousy teeth.”
He also had a terrible personality: when Holden asked him to cut his nails over the table, he didn’t listen, nor did he care. He was thoughtless, barging into others’ rooms. Even though Ackley and Stradlater are very different, there are a lot of similarities between him and Holden. Not physically, but mentally. Neither had attended a single football game, they both hated Stradlater’s condescending demeanor. Although Holden was complaining about how annoying Ackley was when he wouldn't let him read his book and got toenail clippings all over the floor, he did the same thing to Stradlater. When he was getting ready to go out with Jane Gallagher, Holden wouldn’t leave him alone, even after Stradlater was beyond annoyed, much the way Ackley was.
On the train ride home from Pencey, Holden encounters a woman, who he comes to know as Mrs.Morrow, the mother of a boy in Holden’s dorm named Ernest Morrow, “the biggest bastard that ever went to Pencey, in the whole crumby history of the school.” He would run around room to room “snapping his soggy old wet towel at people’s asses.

That’s the kind of guy he was.” Holden found a lot of joy and humor in the stories of all the “accomplishments” Ernest had during his school life at Pencey. Holden made Ernest out to be modest and sensitive, which overjoyed Mrs.Morrow. The thought of her son, the “sensitive boy” now well-off and happy at Pencey “glued her to her seat.” Holden liked Mrs.Morrow, so he wanted her to stay naive to her son’s true colors. He didn’t want her to feel ashamed about her troublemaker of a son. Like with Jane Gallagher, he was protecting her. Not just poking fun at some poor woman on a train. Even though he also did it to mess with Ernest a bit, he wanted her to feel proud and accomplished as a

parent.

Holden is in no way “mad” or completely “insane”. Although his thought process was quite different from the social norm that surrounded him at Pencey, Holden was trying to fit in and often help those around him, with a bit of antics in the process.