AP English Students Aren’t Thirsting After Holden Caulfield Like They Used To

Listen, I don’t have thin skin. If I did, I would teach fourth grade and cry along with my students when the spider died at the end of Charlotte’s Web. Anyone can teach kids; I teach young adults. And I introduce them to their mentor, who will decide their fate: New York’s most haunted forever teen, Holden Caulfield.

By introducing decades of students to the philosopher in the backward red hunting cap, I’ve presented them with their next step into adulthood. Most English students make one of two choices: Either they love Holden and go on to have intense, fleeting, and passionate careers in fields like English or theater, or they realize they have good relationships with their mothers.

These past few years, however, I’ve noticed a startling trend: ambivalence.

My students feel nothing for this young man. In 2022, some of them began dismissing Holden as cringe—not cringey, just cringe. The kids aren’t all right—they used to froth at the mouth over this complex character. The ’90s kids made magazine collages about his general disillusionment. Ten years ago, my students were crafting Tumblr pages around things that felt like the essence of Holden, like Arctic Monkeys songs or angsty messages sharpied on restaurant walls. Not anymore. Now, my discussions start with the most promising emo kid in my class saying, “Sounds like cope.”

Well, I have news for you, tenth graders at Bellview West High: Life is cope. And if you don’t want to sit with the fact that ducks leave the pond in the winter, you’re going to look stupid when your family leaves you on a random Thursday with no note. You need to long for Holden Caulfield because longing for something is good for the emotionally unwell. That’s what I told my friends when they stopped coming to my parties because I was getting “too intense” about metaphors.

Well, you know what? It’s not my fault that humanity is one big tenth grader who only wants to play Fortnite. Nobody wants to read anymore. And I’m starting to think our society doesn’t deserve metaphors—or symbolism, for that matter. Holden’s struggle doesn’t mean anything to my disappointing students or nonexistent friends.

They’re all phonies.