How to Deal with Devils
You take the desert approach or the Holden Caulfield approach
Toward the end of The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield tells himself he will move out West and shut himself off from everyone and everything, possibly by posing as a deaf-mute.
If he pretends to be a deaf-mute, he reasons, people would have to write messages to him on a piece of paper, and then, after they got tired of it, he’d be finished with conversations for the rest of his life.
Holden, a radically-disaffected youngster, thought his move out West would contain the seeds of his salvation because it would take him away from a world that held scant meaning for him and from a world that quietly tormented him with a parade of everyday things that irritated him.
Holden’s dream of fleeing to a remote area is not unique. The allure of leaving everything behind has enticed men and women throughout history. Unfortunately, like Holden’s contemplated flight, many flee for all wrong reasons.
But that doesn’t mean the flight is always wrong.
Although some flights are the retirement of cranks, others are the fodder for saints — like the flight of the desert monks in the fourth century.
