Catcher in the Rye excerpt

I just finished reading Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger for the first time, and it is now probably one of my favorite books. This is the excerpt that basically did me in, so I thought I'd go ahead and share it with you all. I think that this can be said to most kids at Holden Caulfield's age. I know for me, as for most people at my particular stage in life, it definitely seems easy to just give up and stop trying because we'll be graduating high school in just a little over 8 weeks after all, and that's when we tend to think life REALLY begins. But don't wait for graduation to come along to take advantage of the things placed in front of you right at this moment.

"This fall I think you're riding for - it's a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn't permitted to feel or hear himself hit the bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement's designed for men who, at some point or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. I don't want to scare you, but I can very clearly see you dying nobly, one way or another, for some highly unworthy cause. If I write you something down for you, will you read it carefully? And keep it? Oddly enough, this wasn't written by a practicing poet. It was written by a psychoanalyst named Wilhelm Stakel. Here's what he said: 'The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.'

I think that one of these days you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you. And I hate to tell you, but I think that once you have a fair idea of where you want to go, your first move will be to apply yourself in school. You'll have to. You're a student -whether the idea appeals to you or not. You're in love with knowledge. And I think you'll find, once you get past the Mr. Vinsons and Oral Composition classes, you're going to start to start getting closer and closer - that is, if you want to, and if you look for it and wait for it -to the kind of information that will be very, very dear to your heart. Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are now. Happily some of them have kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. it's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

I'm not trying to tell you that only educated and scholarly men are able to contribute something valuable to the world. It's not so. But I do say that educated and scholarly men, if they're brilliant and creative to begin with - which, unfortunately, is rarely the case - tend to leave infinitely more valuable records behind them than men do who are merely brilliant and creative. They tend to express themselves more clearly, and they usually have a passion for following their thoughts through the end. And - most important - nine times out of ten they have more humility than the unscholarly thinker.

Something else an academic education will do for you. If you go along with it any considerable distance, it'll begin to give you an idea what size mind you have. What it'll fit and, maybe what it won't. After a while, you'll have an idea what kind of thoughts your particular mind should be wearing. For one thing, it may save you an extraordinary amount of time trying on ideas that don't suit you, aren't becoming you. You'll begin to know you're true measurements and dress your mind accordingly."