The Importance of Being Present - White Mike and Holden coping with Parental Absence

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Culture and Applied Geography, grade: 2,7, Humboldt-University of Berlin (Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik), course: Missing Mothers - Caring Fathers - Absent Parents. Shifting Family Models in Recent Young Adult Fiction in the USA., language: English, abstract: 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. [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.]