The characterizations of Holden Caulfield in J.D Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye and Miles Halter in John Green’s Looking For Alaska are reasonably comparable and similar to each other. Holden Caulfield was a character coming from a completely different background from the other characters in the book and he was troubled and unreliable. However, his vivid way of expressing himself makes the reader keep on reading without questioning instead of trying to understand what is wrong with him. Holden was unable to connect with other people, he was kicked out of four schools, he hadn’t got any stable decisions for his future and a psychoanalyst visited him when he was hospitalized. He had a mental disorder and had more than one trauma in his past, which caused him to be in this point. He was extremely judgmental of everything and criticizing everybody, accusing them of being boring and being “phony”. An other thing about Holden was his attitude toward sex. He thought a lot about sex in the entire book although he is a virgin. He thought that sex should happen between two people who really care about each other and respect one another. One part of him was still child and blind to see the real complexity of the adulthood. What he wanted was to rely on and hold on to innocence and what he saw as innocent which actually created his blindness. Similarly, Miles Halter didn’t have a stable mind and searching for the purpose of his life. He also changed his school and came to Culver Creek High where he met Alaska Young, The Colonel, Takumi and Lara and call them his friends. He had never really fit in his hometown and he always felt like his life was unfulfilled which makes him much more similar to Holden. He was somewhat nerdy and unsocial kid in the story. He mentioned “The Great Perhaps” in the beginning of the novel and when he met his new friends in his new school he became the kind of person that he always wanted to be. In p. 221 he says “Thomas Edison’s last words were: ‘It’s very beautiful over there.’ I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.” Which proves that he was hopeful and searching for something, something that can make his future beautiful, much more worthy to live, seeking “the great perhaps”…
To compare these two characters, both Holden Caulfield and Miles Halter are on a journey towards maturity. They both have the purpose of finding their identity as they grow up through the adolescence. They figure out life is a journey itself which is full of experiences and an interaction between different types of people and in order to gain some experience from life, a person should be mature. Both of the characters are explaining the reader that without maturity there will be just an empty person never truly feeling passion or love.