The Importance of Being Present
White Mike and Holden
coping with
Parental Absence
Seminar
Missing Mothers Caring Fathers Absent Parents
Shifting Family Models in Recent Young Adult Fiction in the USA
HU Berlin / SS 2004
Author
Marc Kemper
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Table of contents
Table of contents ... - 2 -
1 Introduction... - 3 -
2 The Different Types of Parental Absence ... - 3 -
2.1 White Mike and his Parents ... - 4 -
2.2 Holden and his Parents ... - 5 -
3 The Substitute Role Models... - 5 -
3.1 White Mike's Flesh-and-Blood Role Models ... - 5 -
3.2 Literature as a Substitute... - 7 -
3.3 Role Models of Holden ... - 8 -
3.3.1 His Siblings... - 8 -
3.3.2 His Teachers... - 9 -
3.4 Role Models Reviewed ... - 10 -
4 White Mike and Holden in their Social Outcast States... - 11 -
4.1 What White Mike thinks about being a Drug-Dealer ... - 11 -
4.2 Sociologist and Psychoanalyst Views... - 12 -
4.3 Holden's Motif for Rejecting School ... - 13 -
4.4 Widespread Scientific Explanations... - 14 -
5 Narrating Parental Absence... - 15 -
5.1 McDonell Narrating Parental Absence... - 16 -
5.2 Salinger Narrating Parental Absence... - 16 -
5.3 The End of the Year... - 17 -
6 Conclusion... - 17 -
7 Blibliography and Webliography ... - 19 -
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1 Introduction
A reviewer named Sullivan wrote that "reviews that compare White Mike to Holden
Caulfield" would make her "shudder in disdain"
1
. This was the spark that lit my
thoughts about the lives of the two adolescent protagonists.
"What do you want? Because if you don't want something, you've got nothing. [...] no one will
remember where you were frozen and buried, and you will no longer be anywhere."
2
"Certainly it is! Why the hell isn't it? People never think anything is anything really. I'm getting
goddamn sick of it."
3
It is the very special ways Nick McDonell and J.D. Salinger deal with the idea of
problematic adolescent identities, which make Twelve as well as The Catcher in the
Rye seem extraordinary in many ways. Despite the fact that their techniques and
plots are worlds apart, there are to some extent parallels which catch the eyes of at
least the attentive reader.
The first section of this paper deals with the different types of parental absence
White Mike and Holden have to cope with. Concerning this, there is also laid an eye
on the by many means similar impacts on them. The substitute role models are
discussed in the following part of the paper, while the third part shows up the different
types of outcast state White Mike and Holden live in. Last but not least, the fourth
section of this paper deals with the stylistic devices both McDonell and Salinger use
to create their special atmosphere of parental absence.
2 The Different Types of Parental Absence
There are no doubt many ways in which mothers and fathers can be absent.
Referring to an essay by Frances Nadeau, the absence could be divided into four
different types.
1
2p. Online. Internet. 13.05.2004 15.00. Available FTP :
http://www.smallspiralnotebook.com/reviews/twelvereviewsullivan.shtml
2
McDonell, Nick. Twelve. New York : Atlantic Books 2003, 23. White Mike is thinking about"how rich
everyone is".
3
Salinger, J.D.. The Catcher in the Rye. London : Penguin Books 1994, 155. Holden's sister Phoebe
before was asking him what he wants to be, and he did not give a conventional answer.
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The first type of separation is provided by death and illness, the second type is
separation by living in different places
4
. A third kind of shift in the relationship
between children and their parents may be caused by some "outside force"
5
- like
war. A fourth type of parental absence is the more or less harsh rejection of the
parental lifestyle by the children
6
. If that is the case, a fatal conflict is mostly
inevitable.
A discussion of the different types of parental absence in Twelve and The Catcher
in the Rye is what this chapter provides - focussed on the familiar background of the
main protagonists, White Mike in Twelve and Salinger's Holden Caulfield.
2.1 White Mike and his Parents
At the time when the story takes place, the mother of White Mike has been dead for
three and a half year. At that former point in time, Mike moved with his father
7
, this
being a symbol for the new life both of them had to cope with. That his new room is
depicted as being "hot", and that "there was nothing on the walls"
8
, could be regarded
as a symbol for the gap the death of his mother left in his life, the heat symbolizing
danger and the empty walls showing that his life is in a way incomplete.
The father of White Mike is absent in another way. He is always stuck into his work,
which consists in giving "people a place to eat"
9
in restaurants. The little time they
spend together is the main reason why the relationship between them is very loose.
McDonell himself in an interview gives an unmatched explanation of why the child-
parent-relations in his debut are like that.
"And why are there no parents? Because these are rich kids and their parents are off getting
rich and being rich."
10
4
Nadeau, Frances A.. The Mother/Daughter Relationship in Young Adult Fiction. In: The Alan Review.
New York : 1995, 15.
5
Nadeau, Frances A., 15.
6
Nadeau, Frances A., 16.
7
McDonell, Nick., 58.
8
McDonell, Nick., 58.
9
McDonell, Nick., 158.
10
4p. Online. Internet. 24.05.2004 12.15. Available FTP :
http://www.readinggroupguides.com/guides3/twelve2.asp
Nick McDonell is interviewed by his Editor Morgan Entrekin. The question to McDonell's answer
From which these lines are quoted is: "What about the question of the adults? They're strangely
absent in this book. Was that intentional?"
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Reading that they are spending their time and energy just for earning money, it
seems obvious that White Mike's father as well as the other parents do not provide
any basis for a satisfying relationship.
2.2 Holden and his Parents
It is a boarding school where Holden lives, except for his vacations. This fact
reveals how weak the relationship between him and his parents is. Physical
togetherness only exists in the short intervals when he is at home. His father being a
successful lawyer, his mother being occupied by her social duties, even in his
vacations Holden seems to be alone in at least in a psychological way. Throughout
the story, not a single word is exchanged between Holden and his parents. It could
be argued that this lack of communication intensifies Holden's feeling misunderstood.
That he thinks his parents would like him to be a "hot-shot"
11
, and knowing that he
is not, seems to be his existential problem. He is most of the time moving back and
forth between his wish for earning the respect of his wealth-oriented parents and his
own system of values, which concentrates on honesty and humanity.
3 The Substitute Role Models
Being parted from their parents, either in a physical or in a psychological way, both
White Mike and Holden Caulfield are in a strong need of substitute role models they
can identify with. To show up the wide-spreading spectre from which these
substitutes are drawn, is the aim of this chapter.
3.1 White Mike's Flesh-and-Blood Role Models
Though "buried and mourned by a few"
12
, White Mike's mother is still very crucial to
his edifice of ideas. Attending her burial, for him the loss appears to be a symbol for
the senselessness of life:
"You have seen that before you lies a great stretch of road, and it is windswept or blasted by
the hot sun or covered in snow, [...], but no matter what, it is utterly empty."
13
11
Salinger, J.D.., 50.
12
McDonell, Nick, 88.
Here it is told what White Mike was thinking while attending his mother's burial.
13
McDonell, Nick, 88f.
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Though she is dead, his mother still is an important role-model for White Mike,
because what she said and did is the key to many of his thoughts. When he thinks
about what his mother told him about chaos theory, he is just walking through the
streets of New York City - lit up for Christmas. He sees the lights in the branches
turning on and the "trees almost disappear between the bulbs"
14
. Just as they turned
on, his beeper starts to vibrate again, signalling that somebody wishes to buy drugs
from him. This could be regarded as the consequence of the lights going on, which
itself is a clear consequence of "getting past dusk" in Christmas time, if we are
referring to the Chaos Theory.
"[...] if a butterfly dies over a field in Brazil and fell to the ground and made a mouse move
[...], then everything might be different here, thousands and thousands of miles away."
15
The fact that he is thinking about his mother's words about chaos, can also be
interpreted as a metaphor for the fear he feels being quite alone in the large city, for
the image of chaos "depicts the dread of facing the dark, inner world of unconscious
forces"
16
. It sometimes seems that Mike tries to draw answers on existential
questions from the little he still knows his mother once taught him.
Except his dead mother, there cannot be figured out any important real-life role
model who really influences White Mike. His peers misusing drugs and spending his
or her parents' money, "for the simple reason that they have nothing else of any real
meaning"
17
, but at least an eye should be laid on Hunter and Warren, the friends
Mike had in High School and who are now trying to convince him of joining them at
Harvard.
White Mike thinks about going to Harvard as being quite senseless compared with
the life he leads, not without being a little cynic, which comes to light in his phone-talk
with Warren.
"So I went down [...] and it's all dark and humid there, and there was a rat. And you know
where I was?"
"Hell? With Dante?"
"And you go to Harvard, and who do you think is learning more?"
18
14
McDonell, Nick., 6.
15
McDonell, Nick., 6.
16
Chetwynd, Tom. A Dictionary of Symbols. London : Paladin Grafton Books 1982, 76.
17
1p. Online. Internet. 24.05.2004 12.20. Available FTP :
http://www.cornellreveiw.org/cgi-bin/editart.cgi?num=342
18
McDonell, Nick., 136.
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